BOOK REVIEW Tomorrow never
dies The End of Saddam Hussein:
History Through the Eyes of the Victims by
Prem Shankar Jha
Reviewed by Chanakya Sen
Reams have been written about the ethics of
journalism in relation to the American wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet the larger question of how the
media influence foreign policy itself remains. Analyst
Prem Shankar Jha's new book goes to the heart of this
matter. In the James Bond film Tomorrow Never
Dies, a maniacal media baron orchestrates
wars with the objective of world domination by his
newspaper, Tomorrow. Jha's meticulous account is less
cinematic, but equally gripping.
The media
played a sinister role in the Anglo-Saxon mutilation of
Iraq. Thus, the world media have to accept partial
responsibility for the rioting, looting, sectarian
terrorism, violence against women, utility blackouts and
rampant unemployment that have engulfed Iraq since the
fall of Saddam Hussein. "The destruction of Iraq was not
accidental, but cold-bloodedly intentional"
(Introduction, p X), arising from the combination of
Washington's paranoia, awesome military power and misuse
of the media for propaganda or "spin". A constant tussle
between the state and the media in the era of
information technology laid constraints on foreign
policy, culminating in Iraq's "civilization being torn
to pieces" (Robert Fisk). When he was in his early
20s, Saddam was integral to an American plot to
overthrow Iraq's then-dictator, General Abdel Karim
Kassem. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
installed him in an apartment on al-Rashid Street in
Baghdad to observe the ruler's movements. But after a
botched assassination attempt in 1959, the Americans
whisked Saddam away to Cairo, Egypt. The 1963 coup
against Kassem was a redux of the anti-Mosaddeq coup in
Iran, planned to perfection by the CIA. American agents
then provided Saddam with lists of "communists" who were
subjected to mass summary executions. The CIA station
chief of the time regarded it as "a great victory".
In the Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980, the
US delivered battlefield intelligence, food, loans,
dual-use technologies and cluster bombs to Saddam's
Iraq. Prior to this, the US had mildly encouraged Iraq
to invade Iran, meanwhile, hushing up its resumption of
diplomatic ties with Baghdad due to fear of media
suspicions. The rupture of Iraq's relations with
Washington started before the 1990 occupation of Kuwait,
thanks to persistent media coverage of Iraq's
deteriorating human rights situation and the barrage of
criticism regarding president George H W Bush
administration's closeness to Saddam. It was from the
Israeli-influenced US media that Saddam learned of the
Iran-Contra scandal, and it was the media that mainly
discredited the US-Iraqi friendship. "Revelations in the
US media created a sense of betrayal, isolation and
desperation in Iraq" (p 20), and triggered the fatal
invasion of Kuwait.
Once Kuwait was occupied,
the Bush administration embarked on a demonization
campaign against Saddam, who was suddenly re-labelled
"the butcher of Baghdad". With the US government now
backing the vilification, tales of Iraq's purges and
mass graves flooded the media. Meanwhile, severe
violations of humanitarian law by coalition forces went
unreported during the first Gulf War.
The
cat-and-mouse weapons inspection game that ensued during
Bill Clinton's presidency was also affected at various
junctures by the clever use of psychological warfare
planted in the media. By 1998, the United Nations
Special Commission (UNSCOM) had eliminated 90 percent to
95 percent of all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), but the US and United Kingdom's cruel and
self-defeating policy of retaining sanctions continued.
In the media-driven politics of the 1990s, sowing
doubts, and convincing the world that Saddam was
irrational and could not be trusted, counted for more
than the truth. In February 1998, Clinton's press
relations machine launched a public relations blitz
advocating war on Iraq, a move that was narrowly averted
by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's intervention.
Smear operations and leaks to the press hustled
the UN Security Council and US public opinion into
retaining economic sanctions, crippling Iraq's
infrastructure. Cooked-up stories about Iraq's
weaponization of VX gas, and UNSCOM chief Richard
Butler's questionable use of press conferences, national
radio and television in order to serve American
viewpoints, pointed to the power of misinformation
serving vested interests. Operation Desert Fox, four
days of intense pounding of alleged Iraqi WMD
installations, was "not simply at attack on Iraq but the
United Nations itself" (p 55). It was aided by a pliant
media, setting a precedent for President George W Bush's
own unilateralist wars two years later.
By
December 2001, thanks to the pretext of the September 11
terrorist attacks, Bush was more or less convinced of
the need to invade Iraq immediately. His new National
Security Strategy that confused "preemption" with
"prevention", and "capability" with "possibility" needed
a laboratory. "Iraq was chosen to be the first guinea
pig" (p 87). Justice and fairness again became the
victims of a media jamboree. War plans were leaked to
newspapers on the eve of any compromise solution that
Kofi Annan or chief weapons inspector Hans Blix had
cobbled together.
Five weeks after the United
Nation's Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission (UNMOVIC), the successor to UNSCOM, admitted
to finding "zilch" in Iraq, Britain and the US
manufactured consent by reiterating crude falsehoods in
the media and declaring that Iraq was in "further
material breach" of UN resolutions. Deliberate abuse of
intelligence was known, but rarely dissected
dispassionately in even the so-called "liberal" media
outlets.
The invasion of Iraq in May 2003 was "a
straightforward exercise in brute power with no
international sanction whatsoever" (p 113) . More than
500 eminent international jurists declared that this
unprovoked attack on a tired and weakened nation would
go against every principle of international law.
However, the virtual war for "hearts and minds" through
the media ensured that five months after the war was
declared over, 69 percent of Americans still thought
Iraq had a hand in the September 11 attacks.
Due
to the crisis facing American hegemony, Jha reasons that
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were prepared
to go so far in the media to convince the public of a
case for war. Hegemony is not purely dominance but
requires an extra moral dimension to confer legitimacy
on the exercise of power. Exaggerations, distortions and
suppression of the truth were essential for the US to
maintain moral leadership over a world that was
increasingly skeptical of American empire building.
The hegemonic discourse in the media continued
after Iraq was occupied, using the "liberation" jargon.
Determined Iraqi resistance fighters and nationalists
were depicted as "irregulars", "Ba'ath Party fanatics",
"Saddam loyalists" and "terrorists". Never were they
described as people outraged by the violation and
occupation of their country. In order to enshrine the
myth of liberation, US forces stood by and allowed for
the ransacking of national treasures as an expression of
"freedom". International media were instructed to act as
legitimizers of this "liberation" by denying victims of
coercive action - the Iraqi people - a voice. Hardly
anyone presented the Iraqi side of the story to readers
(Pepe Escobar of Asia Times Online was one of the very
few. See The Roving Eye, the best of
Pepe Escobar ).
Jha gives two examples of gross
misrepresentation of Iraqi sentiments. Private Jessica
Lynch's "rescue" was a hoax that the press swallowed.
Iraqi soldiers had left the Nasiriyah hospital where
Lynch recuperated two days before the so-called daring
commando raid. No threat existed on the premises and
canards that Iraqis abused and tortured Lynch were
absurd. The Pentagon, advised by Reality TV producer
Jerry Bruckheimer, went further in the episode by
surrounding the demolition of Saddam's statue in
Baghdad's Firdous Square. BBC and CNN used close-up
shots to convey the impression of a huge crowd cheering
the statue's fall. In fact, only 150 to 200 supporters
of Ahmed Chalabi, the dissident exile, were present on
the occasion, and several of them were hired just for
the occasion. An American motorized vehicle, not
jubilant Iraqis, pulled down the statue.
Television networks and wire services carried
accusations as facts, without disclaimers. US military
confessions that 70 percent of the bombs dropped on Iraq
missed their targets were seldom reported. The media
treated the war like a "video game's demon to fight,
hi-tech weapons to fight him with, it was all over
quickly and 'we won' (p 135)". Technology's ability to
reduce modern warfare to a bloodless video game was a
falsity that served militarism as a doctrine. When tough
questions needed to be asked about civilian casualties,
all the hacks did was swap impartiality for patriotism.
Instead of critiquing the Chalabi-directed mismanagement
of post-occupation Iraq, all readers were told was that
terrorists hate Iraq's rebuilding.
Embedded
journalists on the front lines gave the Anglo-American
military new opportunities in news editing. Pentagon
guidelines separated the media into the "good guys"
(embedded) and the "bad guys" (independents and Arab TV
channels), creating a blatant new caste system among
journalists. Seventeen journalists were killed in the
three-week war by the US military, a majority of whom
were independents. According to Reporters Sans
Frontieres, "the US army deliberately and without
warning, targeted journalists" (p 159).
After
the fall of Baghdad, when an army of more than 1,000
American scientists came up with absolutely nothing in
terms of Iraq's proscribed WMD, it was a stinging
reminder of the UN's representative to Iraq Mahmoud
al-Doury's protest that "an empty hand has nothing to
give. You cannot give what you don't have." However, the
mainstream English media fell for the incredulous alibi
put forth by Blair and Bush that Saddam was "bluffing"
and "pretending" he possessed WMD to deter an invasion
and that this was further proof that the dictator was an
unreliable fox.
The rising chorus of worldwide
disbelief and disagreement could not have been prevented
despite this sickening marriage of state and press. Jha
concludes that "in the case of Iraq, the truth was
buried from the very beginning in layer upon layer of
'spin' (p 196)". A monstrous injustice has been done to
the people and the state of Iraq, thanks to the complex
interplay of foreign policy and the media, known also as
the Fourth Estate. James Bond's Tomorrow both influenced
policymakers and got suborned by them in the horror
story called Iraq.
The End of Saddam Hussein:
History Through the Eyes of the Victims by Prem
Shankar Jha. Rupa & Co: New Delhi, 2004. ISBN:
81-291-0362-1. Price US$ 9.50, 222 pages.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
media baron orchestrates
wars with the objective of world domination by his
newspaper, Tomorrow. Jha's meticulous account is less
cinematic, but equally gripping. 
