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The real ‘Saving Pte. Lynch’
Iraqi medical staff tell a different story than U.S. military ‘We all became friends with her, we liked her so much’ MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU May. 5, 2003. |
NASIRIYA, Iraq — The fog of war comes sometimes with a certain odour, and cutting through its layers, like cutting through an onion, can bring tears to the eyes.
Such is the case with what is far and away the most oft-told story of the Persian Gulf War II — the saga of Saving Private Lynch.
Branded on to our consciousness by media frenzy, the flawless midnight rescue of 19-year-old Private First Class Jessica Lynch hardly bears repeating even a month after the fact.
Precision teams of U.S. Army Rangers and Navy Seals, acting on intelligence information and supported by four helicopter gunships, ended Lynch’s nine-day Iraqi imprisonment in true Rambo style, raising America’s spirits when it needed it most.
All Hollywood could ever hope to have in a movie was there in this extraordinary feat of rescue — except, perhaps, the truth.
So say three Nasiriya doctors, two nurses, one hospital administrator and local residents interviewed separately last week in a Toronto Star investigation.
The medical team that cared for Lynch at the hospital formerly known as Saddam Hospital is only now beginning to appreciate how grand a myth was built around the four hours the U.S. raiding party spent with them early on April Fool’s Day.
And they are disappointed.
For Dr. Harith Houssona, 24, who came to consider Lynch a friend after nurturing her through the worst of her injuries, the ironies are almost beyond tabulation.
“The most important thing to know is that the Iraqi soldiers and commanders had left the hospital almost two days earlier,” Houssona said.
“The night they left, a few of the senior medical staff tried to give Jessica back. We carefully moved her out of intensive care and into an ambulance and began to drive to the Americans, who were just one kilometre away. But when the ambulance got within 300 metres, they began to shoot. There wasn’t even a chance to tell them ‘We have Jessica. Take her.’”
One night later, the raid unfolded. Hassam Hamoud, 35, a waiter at Nasiriya’s al-Diwan Restaurant, describes the preamble, when he was approached outside his home near the hospital by U.S. Special Forces troops accompanied by an Arabic translator from Qatar.
“They asked me if any troops were still in the hospital and I said ‘No, they’re all gone.’ Then they asked about Uday Hussein, and again, I said ‘No,’” Hamoud said.
“The translator seemed satisfied with my answers, but the soldiers were very nervous.”
At midnight, the sound of helicopters circling the hospital’s upper floors sent staff scurrying for the x-ray department — the only part of the hospital with no outside windows. The power was cut, followed by small explosions as the raiding teams blasted through locked doors.
A few minutes later, they heard a man’s voice shout, “Go! Go! Go!” in English. Seconds later, the door burst open and a red laser light cut through the darkness, trained on the forehead of the chief resident.
“We were pretty frightened. There were about 40 medical staff together in the x-ray department,” said Dr. Anmar Uday, 24.
“Everyone expected the Americans to come that day because the city had fallen. But we didn’t expect them to blast through the doors like a Hollywood movie.”
Dr. Mudhafer Raazk, 27, observed dryly that two cameramen and a still photographer, also in uniform, accompanied the U.S. teams into the hospital. Maybe this was a movie after all.
Separately, the Iraqi doctors describe how the tension fell away rapidly once the Americans realized no threat existed on the premises.
A U.S. medic was led to Lynch’s room as others secured the rest of the three-wing hospital. Several staff and patients were placed in plastic handcuffs, including, according to Houssona, one Iraqi civilian who was already immobilized with abdominal wounds from an earlier explosion.
One group of soldiers returned to the x-ray room to ask about the bodies of missing U.S. soldiers and was led to a graveyard opposite the hospital’s south wall. All were dead on arrival, the doctors say.
“The whole thing lasted about four hours,” Raazk said.
“When they left, they turned to us and said, ‘Thank you.’ That was it.”
The Iraqi medical staff fanned out to assess the damage.
In all, 12 doors were broken, a sterilized operating theatre contaminated, and the specialized traction bed in which Lynch had been placed was trashed.
“That was a special bed, the only one like it in the hospital, but we gave it to Jessica because she was developing a bed sore,” Houssona said.
What bothers Raazk most is not what was said about Lynch’s rescue, so much as what wasn’t said about her time in hospital.
"We all became friends with her, we liked her so much,” Houssona said.
“Especially because we all speak a little English, we were able to assure her the whole time that there was no danger, that she would go home soon.”
Initial reports indicated Lynch had been shot and stabbed after emptying her weapon in a pitched battle when her unit, the U.S. Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, was ambushed after its convoy became lost near Nasiriya.
A few days after her release, Lynch’s father told reporters none of the wounds were battle-related.
The Iraqi doctors are more specific.
Houssona said the injuries were blunt in nature, possible stemming from a fall from her vehicle.
“She was in pretty bad shape. There was blunt trauma, resulting in compound fractures of the left femur (upper leg) and the right humerus (upper arm). And also a deep laceration on her head,” Houssona said. “She took two pints of blood and we stabilized her. The cut required stitches to close. But the leg and arm injuries were more serious.”
Nasiriya’s medical team was going all out at this point, due to the enormous influx of casualties from throughout the region. The hospital lists 400 dead and 2,000 wounded in the span of two weeks before and during Lynch’s eight-day stay.
“Almost all were civilians, but I don’t just blame the Americans,” Raazk said.
“Many of those casualties were the fault of the fedayeen, who had been using people as shields and in some cases just shooting people who wouldn’t fight alongside them. It was horrible.”
But they all made a point of giving Lynch the best of everything, he added. Despite a scarcity of food, extra juice and cookie were scavenged for their American guest.
They also assigned to Lynch the hospital’s most nurturing nurse, Khalida Shinah. At 43, Shinah has three daughters close to Lynch’s age. She immediately embraced her foreign patient as one of her own.
“It was so scary for her,” Shinah said through a translator. “Not only was she badly hurt, but she was in a strange country. I felt more like a mother than a nurse. I told her again and again, Allah would watch over her. And many nights I sang her to sleep.”
In the first few days, Houssona said the doctors were somewhat nervous as to whether Iraqi intelligence agents would show any interest in Lynch. But when the road between Nasiriya and Baghdad fell to the U.S.-led coalition, they knew the danger had passed.
“At first, Jessica was very frightened. Everybody was poking their head in the room to see her and she said, ‘Do they want to hurt me?’ I told her, ‘Of course not. They’re just curious. They’ve never seen anyone like you before.’
“But after a few days, she began to relax. And she really bonded with Khalida. She told me, ‘I’m going to take her back to America with me.’”
Three days before the U.S. raid, Lynch had regained enough strength that the team was ready to proceed with orthopaedic surgery on her left leg. The procedure involved cutting through muscle to install a platinum plate to both ends of the compound fracture. “We only had three platinum plates left in our supply and at least 100 Iraqis were in need,” Raazk said. “But we gave one to Jessica.”
A second surgery, and a second platinum plate, was scheduled for Lynch’s fractured arm. But U.S. forces removed her before it took place, Raazk said.
Three days after the raid, the doctors had a visit from one of their U.S. military counterparts. He came, they say, to thank them for the superb surgery.
“He was an older doctor with gray hair and he wore a military uniform,” Raazk said.
“I told him he was very welcome, that it was our pleasure. And then I told him: `You do realize you could have just knocked on the door and we would have wheeled Jessica down to you, don’t you?’
“He was shocked when I told him the real story. That’s when I realized this rescue probably didn’t happen for propaganda reasons. I think this American army is just such a huge machine, the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing.”
What troubles the staff in Nasiriya most are reports that Lynch was abused while in their case. All vehemently deny it.
Told of the allegation through an interpreter, nurse Shinah wells up with tears. Gathering herself, she responds quietly: “This is a lie. But why ask me? Why don’t you ask Jessica what kind of treatment she received?”
But that is easier said than done. At the Pentagon last week, U.S. Army spokesman Lt.-Col. Ryan Yantis said the door to Lynch remains closed as she continues her recovery at Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Centre.
“Until such time as she wants to talk — and that’s going to be no time soon, and it may be never at all — the press is simply going to have to wait.”
Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. |
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JESSICA LYNCH RAPE CLAIM CHALLENGED BY DOCTORS WHO SAVED HER LIFE
Fri Nov 07 2003 14:14:43 ET Iraqi doctors who treated Jessica Lynch dispute claims made in her biography, penned by former NEW YORK TIMES reporter Rick Bragg, that she was raped. Dr. Mahdi Khafazji, who performed surgery on Lynch's fractured femur said he found no signs of sexual assalult. Khafazji said he examined her extensively and would have noticed signs of rape, and said the examination turned up no semen. "She was injured at about 7 in the morning," Khafazji said.
"What kind of animal would do it to a a person suffering from multiple injuries?"
Dr. Jamal al-Saeidi, head of the orthopedic department at the now closed Military Hospital, recounts:
"When she was brought there she was fighting for her life.
"She was in shock because of the severity of her injury...
"Her clothes were not torn, buttons had not come off, her pants were zipped up."
Al-Saeidi also said he found no evidence of rape during an examination — though he said he was not looking for evidence of a sexual assault.
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"We had a few minutes, golden minutes to save her," he said.
"Why are they saying such things?" the hospital's deputy director Dr. Khodheir al-Hazbar said.
"We were good to her."
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Lynch: Military played up rescue too much
Friday, November 7, 2003
(CNN) — Former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch said that she believes the U.S. military overdramatized the story of her rescue in Iraq.
Lynch made those comments in an interview for ABC's "Primetime" to air Tuesday. The network released excerpts of the 90-minute interview Friday.
But a senior U.S. military official denied that the military ever exaggerated the rescue. Inaccuracies in reports of Lynch's ordeal were the fault of the media, which reported the story with incomplete information, the official said
Responding to questions that the military may have exaggerated the danger of her nighttime rescue from a Nasiriya hospital by U.S. commandos, she said, "Yeah, I don't think it happened quite like that."
However, she also said that anyone "in that kind of situation would obviously go in with force, not knowing who was on the other side of the door."
Ex-POW calls rescuers 'heroes'
Lynch, 20, a former private first class from Palestine, West Virginia, who has since left the Army, said the way the military publicized her rescue also bothers her, including the filming of it.
"It does [bother me] that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," she said. "It's wrong.
"I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things they [say], you know. ... All I know was that I was in that hospital hurting. ... I needed help. I wanted out of there. It didn't matter to me if they would have come in shirts and blank guns; it wouldn't have mattered to me. I wanted out of there."
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But Lynch said she considers her rescuers "my heroes." "I'm so thankful that they did what they did. They risked their lives."
Lynch and 16 other soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Company were ambushed March 23 after taking a wrong turn. Under heavy fire, the Humvee in which Lynch was riding crashed into a tractor-trailer, severely injuring her. Eleven soldiers died; six, including Lynch, were taken into custody.
Nine days later, the small-town private became a celebrity when U.S. forces stormed the hospital and rescued her in what the military characterized at the time as a dangerous, daring raid.
Subsequently, the hospital staff said no Iraqi troops were in the hospital at the time — and that they had unsuccessfully tried to turn Lynch over to American forces earlier.
A defense official said, "Some media organizations had significantly inaccurate stories in the early days following the rescue, while the military was still collecting the facts and assessing her condition."
On Sunday, the rescue will be the subject of an NBC television movie, "Saving Jessica Lynch."
Response to revelations of rape
In her ABC interview, Lynch also responded to the revelation in a new book about her ordeal that she may have been sexually assaulted during her captivity.
She told ABC's Diane Sawyer that she does not remember being raped and "even just the thinking about that, that's too painful." She also said that she was not beaten during her captivity and that one nurse in the hospital even sang to her.
The book, "I Am A Soldier, Too," an authorized biography written by Rick Bragg, cites a medical report that shows Lynch was sexually assaulted.
Army officials would not comment on the account. A spokesman said that federal privacy laws prevent the military from discussing hospital records that would contain such details.
Iraqi doctors who treated her after her capture disputed the claims of rape, The Associated Press reported.
Dr. Mahdi Khafazji, an orthopedic surgeon at Nasiriyah's main hospital who performed surgery on Lynch to repair a fractured femur, told the AP he found no signs that she was raped or sodomized.
Bragg resigned as a national correspondent for The New York Times in May after the newspaper determined he had written a story for publication under his byline that had largely been reported by an unpaid, uncredited freelancer. Bragg insisted that he was following newspaper policy and did nothing wrong.
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Lying injured in the Iraqi hospital, Lynch said she "seriously thought I was going to be paralyzed for the rest of my life."
"I've never felt that much pain in my whole entire life. It was, you know, from my foot to my other foot to my legs to my arms to my back, my head."
Lynch told Sawyer that she doesn't consider herself a hero. "I was just there in that spot, you know, the wrong place, the wrong time."
Lynch and her fellow soldiers were tired, hungry and "weren't thinking quickly" when they made the wrong turn into an ambush, she told Sawyer. During the confrontation with Iraqi forces, she said, her rifle jammed and she did not fire a single round.
She said it hurt her to learn that some news accounts of her capture said she had fired at Iraqis until running out of ammunition and had suffered bullet and knife wounds. In fact, her injuries were the result of the Humvee crash.
"It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about," she said. "Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell that story. So I would have been the only one able to say ... I went down shooting. But I didn't."
Lynch said it may have been one of her fellow soldiers, Pvt. Lori Piestewa, who fought to her death.
"That may have been her, but it wasn't me, and I'm not taking credit for it," Lynch said.
Lynch told Sawyer that she would like to get a college degree and become a kindergarten teacher. But first she wants to complete physical therapy for her injuries.
She said she still has no feeling in her left foot and walks with crutches, and she continues to have kidney and bowel problems stemming from an injury to her spine.
"I just want to keep adding, you know, just steps every day, just so eventually I can throw away the crutches and ... just start walking on my own," she said. "That's my goal. I just want to be able to walk again."
CNN's Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.
Iraqi doctors dispute Lynch rape claim
Friday, November 7, 2003
NASIRIYAH, Iraq (AP) — Iraqi doctors who treated former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch dismissed on Friday claims made in her biography that she was raped by her Iraqi captors.
Although Lynch said she has no memory of the sexual assault, medical records cited in "I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" indicate that she was raped and sodomized by her Iraqi captors, according to U.S. media who said they had advance copies.
The book — due to be released Tuesday — covers Lynch's experience between March 23 when her 507th Maintenance Company convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah and April 1 when she was evacuated from a hospital by U.S. commandos. It was unclear if the book cites American or Iraqi records.
A family spokesman, Stephen Goodwin, confirmed the book alleges Lynch was raped.
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Lynch suffered broken bones to her right arm, right leg and thighs and ankle and received a head injury when her Humvee utility vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and crashed into another vehicle. Eleven soldiers were killed in the attack.
On ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday, host Diane Sawyer gave details of the contents of Lynch's book. Sawyer's interview with Lynch will appear on ABC on Tuesday.
"The book does indeed cite some intelligence reports that she was treated brutally and a medical record which says, in the book, that she was a victim of a sodomozing rape," Sawyer said.
Dr. Mahdi Khafazji, an orthopedic surgeon at Nasiriyah's main hospital performed surgery on Lynch to repair a fractured femur and said he found no signs that she was raped or sodomized.
Khafazji, speaking at his private clinic in Nasiriyah, said he examined her extensively and would have detected signs of sexual assault. He said the examination turned up no trace of semen.
Dr. Jamal al-Saeidi, a brigadier general and head of the orthopedic department at the now disbanded Military Hospital, said he remembers seeing Jessica's motionless body on a bed in the crowded lobby of his hospital. He said a police van parked outside appeared to have brought her to the hospital.
"When she was brought there she was fighting for her life," said Dr. al-Saeidi at his private clinic. "She was in shock because of the severity of her injury."
He said Lynch was fully clothed with her field jacket buttoned up. "Her clothes were not torn, buttons had not come off, her pants were zipped up," al-Saeidi said.
Al-Saeidi said he found no signs of rape during an examination although he acknowledged he was not looking for signs of sexual assault.
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In her interview with Sawyer, Lynch said she has no recollection of a rape. "Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she said.
Lynch told Sawyer she doesn't remember being slapped or mistreated at the hospital, and she recalled one nurse sang to her.
She also told Sawyer that she believes the U.S. military overdramatized the story of her rescue in Iraq.
Responding to questions that the military may have exaggerated the danger of her nighttime rescue by U.S. commandos, she said, "Yeah, I don't think it happened quite like that."
© 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. |
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Friday, 7 November, 2003
Jessica Lynch condemns Pentagon
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A US woman soldier who shot to fame after being taken prisoner during the Iraq war has accused the military of using her for propaganda purposes.
A video of US commandos carrying a badly injured Private Jessica Lynch from a Nasiriya hospital was released at the height of the conflict.
But the 20-year-old criticised the release of false information about her capture by Iraqi forces.
She also said there was no reason for her rescue to be filmed.
In her first interview about what happened to her, the former prisoner-of-war told ABC television that medical reports indicated that she had been raped.
She said she had no recollection of the attack. "Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she told interviewer Diane Sawyer.
Miss Lynch, who was serving as an Army supply clerk, suffered broken bones and other injuries when her convoy was ambushed after taking a wrong turn near the Iraqi town of Nasiriya on 23 March.
The Pentagon initially put out the story that Private Lynch — a slight woman who was just 19 at the time — had been wounded by Iraqi gunfire but had kept fighting until her ammunition ran out.
But she told Sawyer that she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that her gun had jammed during the chaos.
"I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do," she said.
"I did not shoot — not a round, nothing. I went down praying to my knees — that's the last thing I remember."
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Initial reports also suggested that Miss Lynch had been abused after she came round in the hospital. She says that again was untrue — there was no mistreatment, and one nurse used to sing to her.
She said she was grateful to the American special forces team which rescued her but, asked whether the Pentagon's subsequent portrayal of her rescue bothered her, she said: "Yes, it does. They used me as a way to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong."
Injuries
Miss Lynch was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Prisoner of War medals while still in hospital in Washington DC.
Months later, she is receiving treatment for her extensive injuries.
Earlier this week, it emerged that medical evidence suggested that Miss Lynch had been raped during her capture.
The assault was revealed in extracts from Miss Lynch's authorised biography — I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story — to be released by publisher Alfred A Knopf on Tuesday.
Thursday, 15 May, 2003
Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'
Private Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war, and the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict.
But her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived.
Private Lynch, a 19-year-old army clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was captured when her company took a wrong turning just outside Nasiriya and was ambushed.
Nine of her comrades were killed and Private Lynch was taken to the local hospital, which at the time was swarming with Fedayeen. Eight days later US special forces stormed the hospital, capturing the "dramatic" events on a night vision camera.
They were said to have come under fire from inside and outside the building, but they made it to Lynch and whisked her away by helicopter.
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Reports claimed that she had stab and bullet wounds and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated.
But Iraqi doctors in Nasiriya say they provided the best treatment they could for the soldier in the midst of war. She was assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital and one of only two nurses on the floor.
"I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle," said Dr Harith a-Houssona, who looked after her.
Jessica amnesia
"There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound — only road traffic accident. They want to distort the picture. I don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury."
Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.
"We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital," said Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital.
"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital — action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."
There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance.
But as the ambulance, with Private Lynch inside, approached a checkpoint American troops opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.
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When footage of the rescue was released, General Vincent Brooks, US spokesman in Doha, said: "Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen, loyal to a creed that they know that they'll never leave a fallen comrade."
The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves.
The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer.
Bruckheimer advised the Pentagon on the primetime television series "Profiles from the Front Line", that followed US forces in Afghanistan in 2001. That approached was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq.
As for Private Lynch, her status as cult hero is stronger than ever. Internet auction sites list Jessica Lynch items, from an oil painting with an opening bid of $200 to a $5 "America Loves Jessica Lynch" fridge magnet.
But doctors now say she has no recollection of the whole episode and probably never will.
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War Spin
This script was made from audio tape — any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible
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John Kampfner: Jessica Lynch — an all American icon of the war. Captured by the Iraqis. Saved for the nation in a daring helicopter rescue.
This was a script made for Hollywood. Made by the Pentagon.
General Vincent Brooks: Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen. Loyal to a creed that they know; that they’ll never leave a fallen comrade.
John Kampfner: But the Jessica Lynch story was not all it seemed.
Dr Anmar Uday: When they enter they say: ‘Go! Go! Go! Wait, wait, wait, wait! Just like Hollywood movies. Just like Hollywood films.’
John Kampfner: Tonight we look at how the allies used the media to spread their message — that the war in Iraq was worth fighting and was fought well.
NBC Reporter: We got rockets coming in on us. Tom, we’re under attack right now!
John Kampfner: How much of that message stood up to scrutiny?
Michael Wolff: At the end of your stay in Doha you would know absolutely nothing.
General Tommy Franks: This platform is not a platform for propaganda. This is a platform for truth.
WAR SPIN
Jim Wilkinson Us Military Spokesman, Centcom: I stayed up all night. I got a call that this was happening, I knew it was going to happen in advance and we had a
situation where there was a lot of hot news, the President had been briefed, as had the Secretary of Defence.
PAUL HUNTER Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: I first heard about Jessica Lynch when my phone rang at three in the morning.
Jim Wilkinson: We alerted the press to get here for an announcement. They didn’t know what was coming.
Paul Hunter: We thought they’d caught Saddam Hussein or something like that.
General Vincent Brooks: Coalition forces have conducted a successful rescue mission of a US Army prisoner of war held captive in Iraq.
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John Kampfner: Jessica is a nineteen year old clerk taken prisoner when her maintenance team took a wrong turning and was ambushed. Nine of her comrades were killed.
With Jessica’s life in peril a snatch squad was sent in to take her from her hospital bed in Nasariyah.
They took fire on their way in and out of the building, a military video team capturing every step in the action.
These pictures were rushed out for breakfast shows in America just when the news was bad and the talk was of a long hard campaign.
News reader: Saving Private Lynch. The dramatic rescue of a POW.
General VINCENT BROOKS US Army: It was a classic joint operation, done by some of our nation’s finest warriors who are dedicated to never leaving a comrade behind. At this point she is safe. She’s been retrieved. I asked her who was holding her — the regime was holding her.
John Kampfner: The story was a gift to a grateful media. There was barely a mention of Jessica’s fallen comrades whose bodies had been retrieved from shallow graves during the same mission. A bad story had become a good one.
Bill Whitaker: There are reports in the Washington Post today that Private Lynch fought valiantly, that she shot until she ran out of ammunition, shot several Iraqi soldiers even though she herself had been wounded.
Mitchell Catlin: Yes Natalie, Private Ryan will be treated in Germany after being in the hands of the Iraqi regime for ten days.
John Kampfner: Did he say Private Ryan?
Private Lynch’s brother: Oh Ma'am, I never, never questioned that she was never alive. I knew she was alive and well the whole time.
Private Lynch’s mother: Oh it’s just unbelievable what I really, really want to say to her. She’s been missed and loved.
John Kampfner: Now we’re told she had stab and bullet wounds. An Iraqi witness had told the Americans he had seen Jessica slapped in the hospital.
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DONALD RUMSFELD US Defence Secretary: Good afternoon. We are certainly grateful for the brilliant and courageous rescue of Sergeant, correction PFC Jessica Lynch who was being held by Iraqi forces in, in what they called a hospital.
John Kampfner: That’s the story as seen through American eyes.
Two weeks ago we visited the scene of Jessica’s rescue. Although Iraqi forces had occupied part of it, this was a hospital like any other.
Dr HARITH AL-HOUSSONA Iraqi doctor: At the beginning I received her in the casualty department from the Iraqi security department, which referred from the military hospital.
John Kampfner: This is one of the doctors who treated Jessica when she was brought here, still unconscious by Iraqi soldiers. They put her in the only specialist bed they had.
Dr Harith Al-Houssona Subtitles: I examine her, I see she has a broken arm… and broken thigh, with a dislocated ankle. Then we do another examination. There is no shooting, no bullet inside her body… no stab wound, no other thing, merely RTA. Only road traffic accident.
John Kampfner: One story, two versions of the truth. The doctors say they operated on her to reset her plaster. The best treatment they could provide in the midst of war.
Dr Harith Al-Houssona Subtitlesn: We give her three bottles of blood...two of them from medical staff...because there is no blood at this time.
Dr ANMAR UDAY Iraqi doctor Subtitles: We consider Jessica as one of our injured patients... one of our Iraqi women injured in the war.
John Kampfner: She was assigned one of only two nurses on the floor.
Nurse Voice over: She herself was asked about her treatment. I was like a mother to her and she my daughter. We treated her well.
John Kampfner: The doctors told us that the day before the Special Forces swooped on the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Did the Americans know this?
We found a man who saw an advance party land in the town. He says he was questioned by the team’s translator.
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HASSAM HAMOUD Voice over: He said; ‘where is Saddam Hospital?’ I said, ‘in that direction’. He said; ‘are there any Fedayeen over there?’ I said; ‘no, there aren’t any, there is no forces in there or anything.’
John Kampfner: All the same America’s finest warriors descended on the building.
Dr Anmar Uday Subtitles: We heard the noise of the helicopter, the sound of the helicopter… and I think the helicopter landed here on the grass.
Dr Harith Al-Houssona Subtitles: Like a film of Hollywood, they cry, ‘Go, go, go!’... and shout, ‘Go, go, go!’, with guns and blanks, without bullets. Blanks and the sound of explosions, and break the door. We are very scared.
Dr Anmar Uday Subtitles: We are surprised at this time. Why do this? There is no military, no soldiers in the hospital.
John Kampfner: But the Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to this bed frame.
Dr Harith Al-Houssona Subtitles: I don’t know why they tie him. Why tie him? He cannot move. Why the American army tied him?
John Kampfner: There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived the doctor had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance.
Dr Harith Al-Houssona Subtitles:
Every time, ‘I want to go home, I want to go home.’ We told her, I secretly between us, I and she, I told her... I will try to escape you to the American Army... but I will do this very secretly because I lose my life. We put her in the ambulance with the driver... and walk out of the hospital. We told him go to the American checkpoint. When he was near the American checkpoint... he was shot by the Americans.
John Kampfner: So a tense encounter but no Iraqi troops. The Americans almost killing their prize catch by mistake. But the story had already passed into folklore.
Dr Harith Al-Houssona Subtitles: They make a show for the American attack for the hospital. Action moves like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan...with jumping and shouting, breaking the door... with the photos, with the photos..
John Kampfner: We asked the Pentagon to release the full videotape of the rescue rather than its five-minute edited version to clear up any discrepancies. It declined.
Was there any resistance as the forces were going in?
Bryan Whitman: I think that I will leave that story to be told in great detail when the time is right.
John Kampfner: What injuries did she sustain?
BRYAN WHITMAN US Dep Assistant Secretary of Defence: Well I’m not going to get into the specific injuries that she received. That’s up to her and her doctors to discuss at
the appropriate time.
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John Kampfner: Doctors now say she has no memory of the whole episode and probably never will.
Bryan Whitman: I understand that there’s some conflicting information out there and in due time the full story will be told, I’m sure.
John Kampfner: There are facts and there is a message. George Bush and Tony Blair knew how vital it was to get the message right, to present the war and the case for war. This is how it worked — talk up the dangers.
US President George Bush, 29th January, 2003: The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.
John Kampfner: Dismiss the doubters. Appeal to the hearts and minds. Trust us.
Tony Blair, 15th March, 2003: I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership.
John Kampfner: Months of preparation over, the war media strategy was ready. The most important part of the plan was to embed six hundred journalists with the military. It was a huge gamble. The idea was that star correspondents would live every minute with the troops as they advanced across the desert. New technology would allow the TV crews to beam the pictures and their observations back home live.
Reporter Koppel: Wreak havoc and unleash the dogs of war. And there they start moving into Iraq.
Walt Rogers: John, I don’t think any of us have ever seen anything like this, live, real time pictures of an army moving forward in
a, in a, in a battle zone.
Juliet Bremner: The battle for Basra is still raging along this road.
Walt Rogers: We got rockets coming in on us. Tom, we’re under attack right now.
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Gavin Hewitt: There are substantial American forces close to the Iraqi capital.
Bryan Whitman: Well I think pictures do a lot to help tell the story and we embedded nearly one hundred cameras across the battlefield and, because I think images are important. I think they’re even more important in certain parts of the world where language can be a barrier.
John Kampfner: Bryan Whitman was in charge of the Pentagon’s media planning. His strategy paper puts shaping world opinion as priority number one.
Voice over: ‘This holds true for the US public...and publics in countries where we conduct operations, whose perceptions of us can affect the cost and duration of our involvement.’
John Kampfner: Present the words and pictures properly, use journalists effectively and victory will come more quickly.
Bryan Whitman: To the extent that the media are being, are able to inform the world about what’s going on. To the extent that having an accurate representation of the facts that exist on the battlefield, if that causes an enemy to capitulate sooner then that’s good.
John Kampfner: He provides hints for getting the best pictures.
Voice over: ‘Use of lipstick and helmet-mounted cameras on combat sorties is approved and encouraged to the greatest extent possible.’
Soldier: We gotta get this cargo up front. The sooner we get it to the grunts, the sooner they can kill some of these people that need killing and the sooner we can go home.
WALT ROGERS, CNN: I was assigned to be the television embed with the US Army’s Third Squadron Seventh cavalry.
Everything hints to a change in focus coming in the coming days and weeks on Baghdad. Baghdad will be the end game.
That was fun, it was, it was a good assignment travelling with a unit which was the tip of the, tip of the spear. There was a real sense of awe watching this military sweep unfold before you and you knew that there was nothing that the other side could put in your path which would stop you.
Clive Myrie, BBC News: It seems the gunfire has been coming from the police station down here and there are reports of gunmen positioned on some of the roof tops.
We happened to be with the unit Forty Commando who actually had something to do. And it meant we had some very, very productive periods with a lot of great action footage because he put us right at the front and the work that, the work that we produced is some of the stuff that some people say is the best of the war.
John Kampfner: The picture on the left is the war against Iraq, the real war. The picture on the right is 'Black Hawk Down'; a patriotic action movie about US soldiers in Somalia rescuing their own and emerging victorious.
Hollywood and the Pentagon working in perfect symmetry. In 2001 the man behind 'Black Hawk Down', Jerry Bruckheimer, visited the Pentagon to pitch an idea with his co-producer.
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Soldier 1: You all right? You okay?
Soldier 2: Yeah, I can hear the bells ringing.
BERTRAM VAN MUNSTER Jerry Bruckheimer’s partner: He just did 'Black Hawk Down', so he's very interested in the subject. He's also a patriot. Of course Jerry does all the big movies and I do reality television and I've done this for many many many years, long before even anybody knew what reality was.
John Kampfner: The pair came up with 'Profiles from the Frontline'; a primetime series following US forces in Afghanistan, made with the support of Donald Rumsfeld.
They were after human stories told through the eyes of the soldiers. Great reality TV. The Pentagon approved.
BRYAN WHITMAN US Dep Assistant Secretary of Defence: What 'Profiles' does is again it provides a very human look at the challenges that are presented when you're, when you’re dealing in these very difficult situations.
Gunfire
Soldier: Good morning republican guard from the United States marines. Hoorah!
John Kampfner: 'Profiles from the Frontline' was aired in the US on the eve of war in Iraq. Its popularity with viewers suggested to the Pentagon that a similar approach would go down well once the real fighting began, as long as the embedded reporters played their part.
Reporter: A call came in from an artillery battery about six hundred metres that way that they were under attack from Iraqi soldiers on foot. These marines have moved into position and these Cobra helicopters are firing Gatling guns and rockets at the Iraqi soldiers.
ABC News Australia
Bertram Van Munster Creator, ‘Profiles From the Front Line’: You can only get accepted by chemistry. You know if you get a good bond with somebody, only then will they let you in. What these guys are doing out there, men and women, is just absolutely extraordinary. If you are a cheerleader of our perspective that we should, that we deserve peace and that we deserve human dignity, these guys are really going out on a limb and risk their own lives. Clive Myrie: You've obviously got to be constantly aware of the fact that they, the unit that you are with, is going to be giving you the line that makes them look the best, look good in the eyes of the public. As long as you are aware of that then you can begin to try and tell whatever story you're trying to tell in as objective way as you can, bearing in mind the fact that the unit that you are with is feeding you, clothing you, protecting you, whatever. When I would approach someone high up in the unit for information on casualties, or whether it was friendly fire or not, they would volunteer the information. But they never handed anything to me like that on a plate. Walt Rogers: Do I think we got too close to them? No. I have seen reporters who cover the White House over the years sleep with women in this President's White House and that President's White House. That's incestuous, that's too close. That didn't happen with the army. ITV News Bill Neely: On board the helicopter an electric atmosphere. These men pumped up by Iraq's Scud attacks in the desert and by news of intense fighting. They were ready to hit back hard. We have just this second crossed over the border into Iraq. We'll be landing at our target in about ten minute's time. Into Iraq and the smell... John Kampfner: Some wore uniforms. Some didn't. Walt Rogers: It's a very symbolic little statement I was making, but it did say, I'm not a soldier. Some of my colleagues didn't do that and I think they crossed a line there. Bryan Whitman: I think it's difficult not to be enthusiastic about what you're doing if you're out there with our soldiers. Soldier: We bomb 'em. You know it's cool to me that like explosions and stuff like that but like I don't get to see the actual explosion and that's what I want to see, but I guess when we get closer to Baghdad we'll get to see more of that stuff, so… |
John Kampfner: Embeds and their protectors agreed a set of rules. Not giving away battle positions or unit strengths in return for access. Sometimes when things got rough journalists came under pressure to help out.
Clive Myrie: I was pretty scared at this stage and we get to the bridge and there are bullets flying all over the place, and I can see the tension in the face of the troops, the, the marines we are with, I can see the tension in the face as we get to the bridge. A rocket-propelled grenade just misses us.
BBC News — Gunfire
Clive Myrie: There was bullets flying everywhere. We get out of the, out of the Land Rover and we hide in a ditch. One of the marines said; why don't you make yourself useful? And he's throwing these flares at me. And he's throwing the flares at me and I'm throwing them at the guy who's got to light them and send them off into the sky, and I'm thinking, why, what am I doing here? John Kampfner: Tension was particularly high on the eve of war. Some journalists assembling with the British forces in Kuwait were ordered not to report what they saw. CRAIG COPETAS, Bloomberg: We were not allowed to take any pictures or describe British soldiers carrying guns. I was told that there was a, a decision made by Downing Street that the military minders of the journalists down there were to go to any lengths to, to not portray British, the British fighting man and women as fighters. They wanted them there to have them there as nation-builders, that they weren't going to be killing people. The media minders would get very very upset with you very fast and threats were levelled you that you would be disembedded. ABC News Australia — Gunfire John Kampfner: Sometimes embedded reporters did send dispatches that put their military hosts in a bad light. This Australian report is of a jumpy US patrol killing three civilians after mistakenly thinking they'd come under military fire. When they needed to send out more positive images they shot footage themselves and handed it to the networks. Iraqi soldiers surrendering. Message — the regime is crumbling. A friendly football match with the troops in Basra — ordinary Iraqis are warming to us. A parachute drop in the North, militarily insignificant but good TV. Message — the advance is not bogged down. So stage one of the media campaign was to get up close and personal. Maximum imagery, minimum insight. Stage two, Centcom, a shed in the desert. This was where the big picture was to be provided. Presenter: Oh I hear them arguing. It’s said both ways, Harry... John Kampfner: This was supposed to be the stage for the context, the explanation, the sifting of facts. Presenter: The President says today is the moment of truth for the UN, his strongest indication yet that war may be just a few days away. John Kampfner: More than seven hundred journalists arrive at Central Command, a series of pre-fabricated huts just past an industrial estate in Doha, capital of the Gulf state of Qatar. Michael Wolff: It had this moon feeling to it. In effect everybody spent twelve or fourteen or sixteen hours a day in a warehouse. John Kampfner: Their job is to report every word of the US and UK military, even though they're hundreds of miles away from the action. They're here to be drip-fed information. They're supposed to get the inside track, to help make sense of the reports the embeds send in from the frontline. In reality they spend their long days catching the news off TV like viewers back home. |
MICHAEL WOLFF New York magazine: The only window that you had into actually what was going on in the war were that, were that there were a set of television monitors in front of the coffee bar, and you could lean against the coffee bar and look up at the monitors and, and see at least what Fox was telling you was gong on in the war.
John Kampfner: The main event is the two p.m. press conference, officially the Freedom Briefing, time for breakfast shows back in the US. Each day begins with a film and slide show presented by General Vincent Brooks, a man destined to become a household face.
Every day the war is on track, successes are dwelt on, setbacks glossed over.
General Vincent Brooks: The coalition is up to the challenge and more than ever the outcome is not in doubt. I’m ready for your questions?
John Kampfner: This is mainly an American show. The favoured US networks receive the best seats, allies next, then the rest. The spin-doctors watch from the sidelines.
On the left, Jim Wilkinson, the man from the White House. Next to him in civvies Simon Wren on a mission from Downing Street. Brits and Americans fighting the real battle and the media battle shoulder to shoulder. At least that's the plan.
General Vincent Brooks: I don't have anything else that I can give you in detail on that and I appreciate the question...
JIM WILKINSON US Military Spokesman, Centcom: There's a daily conference call that has Torie Clarke, at the office of the Secretary of Defence. You have the State Department, Number Ten, the Foreign Office, the UN, the White House, Qatar and others on there, and the United Kingdom is on that call, and so there's any number of mechanisms, and we found that you know if you're talking often you never let the press come between you, which is important.
The machine must be fed. Rolling news channels are hungry all the time. The idea is to co-ordinate the message across all time zones.
Jim Wilkinson: It's a twenty-four hour news cycle, so you start with the strategy of if you're on the air they're not.
John Kampfner: The genial frontman for the British journalists is Al Lockwood.
He begins his day at the early morning briefing where raw intelligence and overnight news are discussed. His job is to select what is useful. He's already had his fingers burnt.
Woman: First day...
Al Lockwood: First day...
Woman: First day he learnt very quickly, the first day, the first American interview he was asked...
Group Captain AL LOCKWOOD UK Military Spokesman:
He said to me off camera, afterwards, how long do you reckon it's going to last? I said, well I'm not a betting man, and I made a glib remark, about three or four days, being, I was being flippant about, and bang, by the time I got back to the office, UK spokesman says, war will not last longer than three to four days, and I went, oh dear.
Anyway I went down to the Headquarters, confessed to Air-Marshall Burridge, said I've just made a stupid mistake, I thought something was being, you know, should have been, which was meant to be jest was taken as otherwise. So, he said, you've learnt on day one.
John Kampfner: Journalists and briefers together.
Rule number one of spin: Keep off certain issues.
In the British back office a list of troublesome subjects; what they quaintly call 'poo traps'.
Beware questions on faulty kit. Beware DU, depleted uranium.
Rule number two: Hone the message and stick to it.
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Group Captain Al Lockwood: We are not interested in Saddam Hussain per se. People are making a little too much of Saddam Hussein.
Group Captain Al Lockwood: Saddam Hussein is just one member of the regime.
PAUL HUNTER Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: At the end of the day, when you try to make a news story out of whatever happens here, you still have to use their message track. The one thing they're gonna to answer to every single question, and it has gone on every single day.
Group Captain Al Lockwoodr: It's not Saddam Hussain who is the, the key target to end the war in Iraq.
You've got an upstart woman there who wants to make a bloody name for herself within the television community by grilling an easy victim, which is a military officer. I refuse to be an easy victim.
John Kampfner: It takes little over a week for reporters to realise Centcom is not the plum posting that was promised. Facts and context are in short supply. Questions are rationed, follow-ups are frowned on, full answers are not forthcoming.
American Spokesman: No, I can’t confirm that and won't confirm that. I think it would be unfair to speculate anything more than that.
General Vincent Brooks: No one can ever predict exactly how a battle will unfold.
It's too early to be able to say exactly what happened at that site.
We've seen a number of things that tell us that what we saw...
GEORGE CURRY Journalist: What's going on is you're not even getting basic information that you need. And that is, I've said, you know, they're not talking to us, they're talking to audience beyond us and we're just conduits. Audience is in TV Land, and we're in Never Never Land.
Michael Wolf: Every day, every hour, whatever you knew had begun to degrade and so you knew less and less and at somewhere at the end of your stay in Doha you would know absolutely nothing.
John Kampfner: Real information, what there is of it, is usually given away from the podium and away from the cameras. Behind this pack of British reporters Number Ten's Simon Wren is briefing a line. Other non-attributable lines during the war found their way into newspapers as fact.
Saddam Hussein is dead. Tariq Aziz has defected. Military successes were briefed, even before they happened.
Fiona Bruce, 22nd March 2003: Coalition troops push deeper into Iraq. They say they're now half way to Baghdad. Iraq's second city Basra is reported secured, but after fierce fighting...
In fact Basra fell seventeen days later. As for Um Quasa that seemed to fall every day.
Huw Edwards, 20th March 2003: In the past half-hour we've heard British and American troops have captured the Iraqi border town of Um Quasa.
Ben Brown: Cobra helicopter gunships hovered menacingly in the air, but their advance was slower than they had been hoping for.
Donald Rumsfeld, 21st March 2003:
Coalition forces did capture it, and do control the port of Um Quasa.
Ben Brown, 23rd March 2003: The Americans claim to have taken this town on Friday, yet three days later they were still facing fierce resistance here.
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BBC News
American Spokesman, 25th March 2003: I want to make note of the UK forces today for their rapid progress in establishing security in the town of Um Quasa. John Kampfner: After five days Um Quasa was finally taken. Were stories like these wishful thinking? Overeager commanders? Overeager journalists? Or more than that? When Basra refused to fall the British told the world of an uprising. There's a cycle. It starts as raw information on the ground. RICHARD GAISFORD With the British forces, Basra: My reports have been coming from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards battle group headquarters and there they have reported this uprising. They reported an uprising amongst public there that was being put down by Iraqi troops actually in the city centre. John Kampfner: This is then given credence by spokesmen at Centcom. British Spokesman: And of course this is just the sort of encouraging indication that we have been looking for. John Kampfner: By the evening news the story has hardened further. BBC News Ben Brown: Gunners from the Royal Horse Artillery have been firing in support of a popular uprising here. John Kampfner: The story dovetailed with a propaganda leaflet campaign on the ground, and this appeal to the Iraqis from the Prime Minister. Tony Blair, 25th March 2003 : And my message to them today is that this time we will not let you down. Saddam and his regime will be removed. John Kampfner: Two objectives for the price of one. Back home public opinion is rallied. In Iraq a domino effect is created. Paul Hunter: So if word comes out of Centcom that there is an uprising against Saddam's regime will certainly they can be thinking, planning, hoping that that information will be then picked up on and it will be, then the local people will build on that and, and, and the idea will become reality, even if it never existed in the first place. RICHARD SAMBROOK Head of BBC News: I think actually most people will have known that Um Quasa didn't fall when it was first suggested it had and would have known that there wasn't an uprising in Basra. So I think actually over, over a course of time the way that people watch and listen and gather their information they will have discovered what was true and what wasn't. Group Captain AL LOCKWOOD UK Military Spokesman: Basra uprising I believe still at this stage that something happened there, but it was seen as an uprising. We briefed it that there had been civil disturbance, it could have been an uprising, and were very hesitant about it. ITV News Terry Lloyd: We passed burnt out cars and the clothes left behind by Iraqi soldiers who had either fled the battlefield or surrendered. John Kampfner: With embedded journalists seeing the battle in microcosm, with reliable information hard to come by at Centcom, the truth was proving elusive. There were a few journalists trying to find out for themselves what was really going on, but theirs was a dangerous game. |
TERRY LLOYD ITV News: This was until a few hours ago was an Iraqi frontline stronghold. Nothing much to see just a couple of portacabins where the Iraqi flag still flies.
Daniel Demoustier ITV News cameraman: We were a roving team. That means a team that is not embedded but works independently. Our task was to go for the human interest story, you know, try to find Iraqi people, talk to them, try to find out from them what is going on.
There was a team decision, based on the information we had that we would go, try to go direction Basra.
John Kampfner: They were only on that road because they'd heard the reports that their original destination Um Quasa had fallen, reports that turned out to be false.
Daniel Demoustier: Firing started from exactly that position, coming from the American tanks. The front window went straight away, and that same moment, I, I don’t know, I don't know how I did it, but I went with my head under the steering wheel. I can't even do it now, but I went in there, it's probably why I got the blue eye.
So I protected myself and I kept on driving, and I looked to the right and Terry's gone.
John Kampfner: Terry Lloyd was one of ten journalists killed in action; two of his colleagues are still missing.
Richard Sambrook: Editorially and objectively I would much sooner have been able to operate independently to a greater extent than we did but on safety grounds it simply wasn't possible.
John Kampfner: What was the role then of the unilaterals?
Jim Wilkinson: Er, they were a pain in our rear a lot of times. Many of them were wounded, some killed. They would show up on the battle space despite our warnings.
John Kampfner: Coping with bad news stories is the toughest test of all. A street market in the Sha’ab district of Baghdad, unexplained explosions kill fourteen. People blamed the Americans, not the sort of image Downing Street and the Pentagon had in mind.
Journalists here had Iraqi minders and were outside the control of Coalition media managers.
Rageh Omaar, BBC News: What's impossible to say now is what could possibly have been a military target in such a populated area?
John Kampfner: The story emerging on the ground points to a stray American missile attack on a day when sandstorms could have interfered with targeting. Many of the dead were working on cars in workshops. Survivors told us how they saw a plane and two impacts on either side of the road consistent with an allied attack.
MOHAMMAD AL ZUBEDDY Garage owner Voiceover: When the two rockets fell near here someone who was working under his car was crushed and burned. And then there were four others they died as well when their cars caught fire.
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ROBERT FISK The Independent: Several people talked of hearing the aircraft. I'd heard a plane shortly before this and there was no doubt in my mind that the piece of shrapnel, the equidistant craters, it was clearly an American or British aircraft, which fired missiles into what is in effect a marketplace.
John Kampfner: An awkward moment for Centcom. It's on the defensive. It reacts slowly at first.
Reporter 1: Iraq is reporting today that there was a missile attack on a residential section of Baghdad that killed fourteen civilians. Can you confirm that, and tell us what went wrong?
General Vincent Brooks: Well first I'm not aware, I've heard this report that you're saying. It's in the media right now. We don't have a report that corroborates that and so I can't confirm it.
John Kampfner: Then a blanket denial. The allies are not killing civilians.
Another look at that British list of traps shows bombing accuracy and the market bombings at numbers five and seven.
Reporter 2: Many hundred of civilians, Iraqi, have been killed by coalition bombs. Do you think it will help Iraqi people to believe you and to trust you, to believe that you are coming to emancipate them?
General VINCENT BROOKS US Army: Well thank you for the question. Firstly I don't accept the premise of the question, which says that the civilians have been killed by coalition bombs. I just don't accept that.
John Kampfner: Some reporters at Centcom don’t buy this line.
Reporter 3: When will you show us pictures of what happens when precision bombs don't go where they're supposed to, when they fail to hit their designated targets, or if they fail to go off at all. And if you don’t doesn't that expose you to the charge that this is more propaganda than truth?
John Kampfner: Next day Brooks goes on the offensive. He co-ordinates a new message with London and Washington. It was the Iraqis who did it.
General Vincent Brooks: They're also using very old stocks, we've discovered and those stocks are not reliable and missiles are going up and coming down. So we think it's entirely possible that this may have been in fact an Iraqi missile that either went up and came down or given the behaviour of the regime lately it may have been inside of town.
John Kampfner: 3rd April 2003
The allies still deny causing the deaths but awkward questions about this and a second market bombing two days later from where US missile parts were recovered are left unanswered.
The British government casts doubt on the reliability of the journalists. It says any information that isn't official should be treated with suspicion.
GEOFF HOON MP Defence Secretary:
What is important about this is all of us should look very sceptically at these kinds of reports, relying only on known and agreed facts.
John Kampfner: End of story. The lack of hard facts prompts some journalists to leave Centcom, and one to rebel.
MICHAEL WOLFF New York magazine:
My final question, after which I was not allowed to ask any more questions, was the question that every reporter was asking, not just every day, but literally every minute, which was...
Why should we stay? What's the value to us for what we learn at this million-dollar press centre?
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General Vincent Brooks — Applause:
Well sir. I've gotten applause already. That's wonderful. I appreciate that. First I would say it's your choice. We
want to provide information that's truthful from the operational headquarters that's running this war.
Michael Wolff:
I was approached by this guy, Wilkinson. He was sort of the uber-civilian. Also he was wearing a uniform. I said, you know, which was odd, and I said, aren't you a civilian, and he said, yes, but I'm in the reserves. I said, but you're not here in the reserves. Right, he said, right, right. So I said, actually I said, so you're a kind of a paramilitary. So we got immediately off to the wrong the wrong foot. If we were, if we had not already been on completely on the wrong foot now we were.
Jim Wilkinson: I'm a big boy. As they say in Texas this ain't my first rodeo. And when reporters start signing my cheques then great. But you know what General Franks signs my cheque and I make news based on his terms.
Michael Wolff: He said, this is war, (bleep) hole. He said, don't (bleep) around with things you don't understand. And then finally it was; no more questions for you, why don't you just go home?
John Kampfner: Snapshots from the frontline. Media management at Central Command. This twin track was especially important to the coalition in its search for weapons of mass destruction. Any evidence would do, especially for Tony Blair, who time and again cited Saddam's arsenal as the main reason for going to war.
Tony Blair, 2nd September 2002: The history of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction is not American or British propaganda. The history and the present threat are real.
John Kampfner:
Journalists at Centcom are given vague lines about chemical weapons on an almost daily basis without any sign of a smoking gun.
General Vincent Brooks: While it hasn't been found, we're reminded that because we haven't found it it's still there.
Reporter 1: Wouldn't it have happened by now? And since it hasn't happened, wouldn't it be reasonable for some people to conclude that they didn't have them or weren't willing to use them.
General Vincent Brooks: Well some might come to that conclusion. We don't.
ROBIN COOK MP Former Foreign Secretary: Well they were desperate to find something that they could hail as evidence of Saddam's intention to hit us with weapons of mass destruction. After all without that the whole justification of the war started to fall apart.
ABC reporter — ABC News: A paramilitary training facility...
John Kampfner: Embedded journalists meanwhile are led to any and every site that might contain suspicious substances. The allegation is instantly reported and beamed around the world.
What did it suggest to you that the coalition forces were trying to do in getting those stories out?
Dr HANS BLIX Chief UN Weapons Inspector: Well you know it could have been the journalists. They were embedded, as the term was, and they were eager to write a story, I suppose, and they were close to the events, so they would say well here maybe is something that's appetising. And when they looked at it more closely it turned out perhaps to be zero.
Robin Cook: Several weeks after the hostilities finished, after they had actually arrested the key players in Saddam's military apparatus they still have not provided a credible weapon of mass destruction, and it becomes increasingly hard to believe that they are going to be able to find such a capacity.
John Kampfner: Does it matter any more? Opinion polls in the US show the war was a success even if weapons of mass destruction aren't found. Tony Blair is benefiting from the so-called 'Baghdad bounce'. Those responsible for the media campaign are reflecting on a battle well fought.
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JIM WILKINSON US Military Spokesman, Centcom: If some people didn't like the way we handled it I think it was one part of just a plain case of too bad, and a second part of probably a little envy by some that they didn't get embedded because the real superstars of this war were those media journalists who were embeds.
John Kampfner: The Brits at least tried to get on with the journalists. They might be satisfied with the overall presentation of the war, but they're furious about the Doha operation.
So much so that Simon Wren, Number Ten's man in Doha, has written a confidential note to Alistair Campbell complaining that the American briefers weren't up to the job.
He described the Jessica Lynch presentation as embarrassing. He complained that for the first three days of the war the Americans locked themselves in their offices.
Group Captain AL LOCKWOOD UK Military Spokesman: Having lost the first skirmish they pretty much lost the war when it came to media support. And albeit things have got better and everything came to a conclusion quite rapidly. To my feelings is that they lost their initial part of the campaign and they never got on the front foot again.
The media advisor here was an expert in his field. His counterpart on the US side was evasive, was not around as much as he should have been when it came to talking to the media, and in reality what happened was you had two different styles of news media management and I feel fortunate to be, have been part of the UK one.
Jim Wilkinson: Qatar was never designed to be the font of all news. The font of all news was designed to be the frontline with our embeds. And it worked out we couldn't be happier.
John Kampfner: Such wounds will heal. Washington and London now have a plan for future wars. As the Pentagon made clear, the perception of war affects its cost and duration. Now the media have their designated positions, close up in the front for action shots, or tied up in the rear for the not-so-big picture.
RICHARD SAMBROOK Head of BBC News: I think embeds are undoubtedly are the future. There's no question from the military point of view that they provided them with you know a kind of, a, a, a level and quantity of picture which was overall advantageous to them.
DANIEL DEMOUSTIER ITV News cameraman: You don't get anything else in that. You only get their view on the situation and at least the independents can try to report on what really is going on, talk to the people.
John Kampfner: Are you worried that embeds are the future?
Richard Sambrook: I think if, I think if we got to the position where embeds were the only form of conflict coverage that was possible then it would be very one-sided, and you wouldn't get the full picture of what was happening, and that obviously worries me journalistically, yes.
Daniel Demoustier: Let them do it. Let the army do it, you know. Just put a colonel there and give soldier a camera and he can say what's happening.
BBC CORRESPONDENT 18th May 2003
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State-Sponsored Terror: British and American Black Ops in Iraq
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by Andrew G. Marshall
Global Research, June 25, 2008
What’s The Difference Between Lehman Shining Light on the "Black World"
In January of 2002, the Washington Post ran a story detailing a CIA plan put forward to President Bush shortly after 9/11 by CIA Director George Tenet titled, "Worldwide Attack Matrix," which was "outlining a clandestine anti-terror campaign in 80 countries around the world.
What he was ready to propose represented a striking and risky departure for U.S. policy and would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history."
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The plan entailed CIA and Special Forces:
"Covert operations across the globe."
And at:
"The heart of the proposal was a recommendation that the president give the CIA what Tenet labeled "exceptional authorities" to attack and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the rest of the world."
Tenet cited the need for such authority:
"To allow the agency to operate without restraint — and he wanted encouragement from the president to take risks."
Among the many authorities recommended was the use of "deadly force."
Further:
"Another proposal was that the CIA increase liaison work with key foreign intelligence services."
As:
"Using such intelligence services as surrogates could triple or quadruple the CIA's effectiveness."
Western Governments Worldwide Matrix
The Worldwide Attack Matrix:
"Described covert operations in 80 countries that were either underway or that he was now recommending.
The actions ranged from routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks."
as well as:
"In some countries, CIA teams would break into facilities to obtain information." [1]
Washington to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people — your family, your friends, your lovers, you — in order to further their geopolitical ambitions
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In 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted a:
"Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism."
Portions of which were leaked to the Federation of American Scientists.
According to the document, the "War on Terror" constitutes a:
"Committed, resourceful and globally dispersed adversary with strategic reach."
Which will require the US to engage in a:
"Long, at times violent, and borderless war."
As the Asia Times described it, this document lays out a blueprint for the US to "fight fire with fire."
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Many of the "proposals appear to push the military into territory that traditionally has been the domain of the CIA, raising questions about whether such missions would be subject to the same legal restraints imposed on CIA activities."
According to the Chairman of the DSB:
"The CIA executes the plans but they use Department of Defense assets."
Specifically, the plan:
"Recommends the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception.
For example, the Pentagon and CIA would work together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT) forward/operational presence and to deploy new clandestine technical capabilities."
The purpose of P2OG would be in:
"‘Stimulating reactions’ among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces." [2]
In other words, commit terror to incite terror, in order to react to terror.
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The Los Angeles Times reported in 2002 that:
"The Defense Department is building up an elite secret army with resources stretching across the full spectrum of covert capabilities.
New organizations are being created.
The missions of existing units are being revised."
And quoted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as saying:
"Prevention and preemption are ... the only defense against terrorism."[3]
Chris Floyd bluntly described P2OG in CounterPunch, saying:
"The United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people.
Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people — your family, your friends, your lovers, you — in order to further their geopolitical ambitions."[4]
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British working alongside Special Air Service [SAS] and American Delta Force responsible for terror
On February 5, 2007, the Telegraph reported that:
"Deep inside the heart of the "Green Zone" [in Iraq], the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq.
It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG)."
The members of the JSG:
"Are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level.
Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents."
They have been:
"[W]orking alongside the Special Air Service [SAS] and the American Delta Force as part of the Baghdad-based counter-terrorist unit known as Task Force Black."
It was reported that:
"During the Troubles [in Northern Ireland], the JSG operated under the cover name of the Force Research Unit (FRU), which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA.
By targeting and then "turning" members of the paramilitary organisation with a variety of "inducements" ranging from blackmail to bribes, the FRU operators developed agents at virtually every command level within the IRA."
Further:
"The unit was renamed following the Stevens Inquiry into allegations of collusion between the security forces and protestant paramilitary groups, and, until relatively recently continued to work exclusively in Northern Ireland." [5]
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Intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland
Considering that this group had been renamed after revelations of collusion with terrorists, perhaps it is important to take a look at what exactly this "collusion" consisted of.
The Stevens Inquiry’s report:
"Contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland during the 1980s."
It was:
"A state policy sanctioned at the highest level."
The Inquiry:
"Highlighted collusion, the willful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence, and the extreme of agents being involved in murder."
And acknowledged:
"That innocent people had died because of the collusion."
These particular:
"Charges relate to activities of a British Army intelligence outfit known as the Force Research Unit (FRU) and former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers." [6]
In 2002, the Sunday Herald reported on the allegations made by a former British intelligence agent, Kevin Fulton, who stated that:
"He was told by his military handlers that his collusion with paramilitaries was sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher herself."
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Fulton worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), and had infiltrated the IRA, always while on the pay roll of the military.
Fulton tells of how in 1992, he told his FRU and MI5 intelligence handlers that his IRA superior was planning to launch a mortar attack on the police, yet his handlers did nothing and the attack went forward, killing a policewoman.
Fulton stated:
"I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that.
They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it.
If everything I touched turned to shit then I would have been dead.
The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy." [7]
Worst single terrorist atrocity one of the terrorists was a British agent
In 1998, Northern Ireland experienced its:
"Worst single terrorist atrocity."
As described by the BBC, in which a car bomb went off, killing 29 people and injuring 300. [8]
According to a Sunday Herald piece in 2001:
"Security forces didn't intercept the Real IRA's Omagh bombing team because one of the terrorists was a British double-agent whose cover would have been blown as an informer if the operation was uncovered."
Kevin Fulton had even:
"Phoned a warning to his RUC handlers 48 hours before the Omagh bombing that the Real IRA was planning an attack and gave details of one of the bombing team and his car registration."
Further:
"The man thought to be the agent is a senior member of the [IRA] organization." [9]
In 2002, it was revealed that:
"One of the most feared men inside the Provisional IRA," John Joe Magee, head of the IRA’s "internal security unit," commonly known as the IRA’s "torturer- in-chief," was actually "one of the UK's most elite soldiers," who "was trained as a member of Britain's special forces."
The Sunday Herald stated that:
"Magee led the IRA's internal security unit for more than a decade up to the mid-90s — most of those he investigated were usually executed."
And that:
"Magee's unit was tasked to hunt down, interrogate and execute suspected British agents within the IRA." [10]
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Two British agents central to bombings of three army border installations in 1990
In 2006, the Guardian reported that:
"Two British agents were central to the bombings of three army border installations in 1990."
The claims included tactics known as the ‘human bomb’, which:
"Involved forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with explosives into army checkpoints."
This tactic:
"Was the brainchild of British intelligence." [11]
In 2006, it was also revealed that:
"A former British Army mole in the IRA has claimed that MI5 arranged a weapons-buying trip to America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to murder soldiers and police officers."
And:
"British intelligence co-operated with the FBI to ensure his trip to New York in the 1990s went ahead without incident so that his cover would not be blown."
Further:
"The technology he obtained has been used in Northern Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have killed British troops." [12]
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Considering all these revelations of British collusion with IRA terrorists and complicity in terrorist acts in Northern Ireland through the FRU, what evidence is there that these same tactics are not being deployed in Iraq under the renamed Joint Support Group (JSG)?
The recruits to the JSG in Iraq are trained extensively and those:
"Who eventually pass the course can expect to be posted to Baghdad, Basra and Afghanistan." [13]
P2OG in Action — Iraq’s most sacred Shiite mosque blown up
In September of 2003, months after the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraq’s most sacred Shiite mosque was blown up, killing between 80 and 120 people, including a popular Shiite cleric, and the event was blamed by Iraqis on the American forces. [14]
On April 20, 2004, American journalist in Iraq, Dahr Jamail, reported in the New Standard that:
"The word on the street in Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that the CIA was behind them."
Jamail interviewed a doctor who stated that:
"The U.S. induces aggression.
If you don't attack me, I will never attack you.
The U.S. is stimulating the aggression of the Iraqi people!"
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This description goes very much in line with the aims outlined in the Pentagon’s P2OG document about "inciting terror," or "preempting terror attacks." [15]
Weeks after the initial incident involving the British SAS soldiers in Basra, in October of 2005, it was reported that Americans were:
"Captured in the act of setting off a car bomb in Baghdad."
As:
"A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday...
Residents of western Baghdad's al-Ghazaliyah district [said] the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon.
Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men before they could get away.
That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the... police."
However:
"The Iraq police arrived at approximately the same time as allied military forces — and the two men were removed from Iraq custody and whisked away before any questioning could take place." [16]
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It was reported that in May of 2005, an Iraqi man was arrested after witnessing a car bombing that took place in front of his home, as it was said he shot an Iraqi National Guardsman.
However:
"People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb.
Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion.
Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued.
He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it.
He was promptly taken away."
100 kilograms of explosives booby trapped by the Americans and intended for al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad
Further, another story was reported in the same month that took place in Baghdad when an Iraqi driver had his license and car confiscated at a checkpoint, after which he was instructed:
"To report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license."
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After being questioned for a short while, he was told to drive his car to an Iraqi police station, where his license had been forwarded, and that he should go quickly.
"The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him.
He stopped the car and inspected it carefully.
He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.
The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad.
The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated ‘hideous attack by foreign elements." [17]
On October 4, 2005, it was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald that:
"The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior US Government officials."
Further:
"The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a Falluja bomb factory last November and found a Texas-registered four-wheel-drive being prepared for a bombing mission.
Investigators said there were several other cases where vehicles evidently stolen in the US wound up in Syria or other Middle Eastern countries and ultimately in the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq." [18]
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In 2006, the Al-Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra was bombed and destroyed.
It was built in 944, was over 1,000 years old, and was one of the most important Shi’ite mosques in the world.
The great golden dome that covered it, which was built in 1904, was destroyed in the 2006 bombing, which was set off by men dressed as Iraqi Special Forces. [19]
Former 27-year CIA analyst who gave several presidents their daily CIA briefings, Ray McGovern, stated that he:
"Does not rule out Western involvement in this week's Askariya mosque bombing."
He was quoted as saying:
"The main question is Qui Bono?
Who benefits from this kind of thing?
You don't have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not only the Sunnis.
You know, the British officers were arrested, dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes on." [20]
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Death Squads for "Freedom"
In January of 2005, Newsweek reported on a Pentagon program termed the "Salvador Option" being discussed to be deployed in Iraq.
This strategy:
"Dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.
Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers."
Updating the strategy to Iraq:
"One Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions." [21]
The Times reported that:
"The Pentagon is considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago.
Under the so-called ‘El Salvador option’, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders."
It further stated:
"Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret."
As:
"The experience of the so-called "death squads" in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region."
Further:
"John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85." [22]
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Mass killings are when Police Commandos active
By June of 2005, mass executions were taking place in Iraq in the six months since January, and:
"What is particularly striking is that many of those killings have taken place since the Police Commandos became operationally active and often correspond with areas where they have been deployed." [23]
In May of 2007, an Iraqi who formerly collaborated with US forces in Iraq for two and a half years stated that:
"I was a soldier in the Iraqi army in the war of 1991 and during the withdrawal from Kuwait I decided to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia along with dozens of others like me.
That was how began the process whereby I was recruited into the American forces, for there were US military committees that chose a number of Iraqis who were willing to volunteer to join them and be transported to America.
I was one of those."
He spoke out about how after the 2003 invasion, he was returned to Iraq to:
"Carry out specific tasks assigned him by the US agencies."
Among those tasks, he was put:
"In charge of a group of a unit that carried out assassinations in the streets of Baghdad."
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Some job units of American government and other foreigner governments specialize in planting bombs and car bombs in neighborhoods and markets
He was quoted as saying:
"Our task was to carry out assassinations of individuals.
The US occupation army would supply us with their names, pictures, and maps of their daily movements to and from their place of residence and we were supposed to kill the Shi'i, for example, in the al-A'zamiyah, and kill the Sunni in the of 'Madinat as-Sadr’, and so on."
Further:
"Anyone in the unit who made a mistake was killed.
Three members of my team were killed by US occupation forces after they failed to assassinate Sunni political figures in Baghdad."
He revealed that this "dirty jobs" unit of Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners:
"Doesn’t only carry out assassinations, but some of them specialize in planting bombs and car bombs in neighborhoods and markets."
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Best-known and most famous among the US troops is placing a bomb inside cars as they are being searched at checkpoints
He elaborated in saying that:
"Operations of planting car bombs and blowing up explosives in markets are carried out in various ways, the best-known and most famous among the US troops is placing a bomb inside cars as they are being searched at checkpoints.
Another way is to put bombs in the cars during interrogations.
After the desired person is summoned to one of the US bases, a bomb is place in his car and he is asked to drive to a police station or a market for some purpose and there his car blows up." [24]
Divide and Conquer?
Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote in October of 2006, that:
"The evidence that the US directly contributed to the creation of the current civil war in Iraq by its own secretive security strategy is compelling.
Historically of course this is nothing new — divide and rule is a strategy for colonial powers that has stood the test of time.
Indeed, it was used in the previous British occupation of Iraq around 85 years ago.
However, maybe in the current scenario the US just over did it a bit, creating an unstoppable momentum that, while stalling the insurgency, has actually led to new problems of control and sustainability for Washington and London." [25]
Click here for notes
© Copyright 2005-2008 GlobalResearch.ca
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| IraqAlmost a million dead4 million displaced, scattered into other countriesUntold injuredHorror of US UK invasion continuing |
Basra, Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul... US created Iraq — devastated cities They are such liars |
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| Four energy giants — BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total — wrote own contracts |
Bush is trying to impose a classic colonial status on Iraq
US efforts to force Iraqis to swallow permanent vassal status and give up control of their oil echoes British imperial history Seumas Milne, Guardian
June 26, 2008
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Whatever the Iraq war was about, we were assured, it definitely wasn't about oil.
Tony Blair called the idea a "conspiracy theory".
It was about democracy and dictatorship, weapons of mass destruction and human rights, anything but oil.
Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, insisted the conflict had "literally nothing to do with oil".
When Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, wrote last autumn, "Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he was treated as if he were some senile old gent who'd embarrassingly lost the plot.
That argument is going to be a good deal harder to make from next week, when four of the western world's largest oil corporations are due to sign contracts for the renewed exploitation of Iraq's vast reserves.
Initially, these are to be two-year deals to boost production in Iraq's largest oilfields.
Four energy giants — BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total — wrote own contracts
But not only did the four energy giants — BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total — write their own contracts with the Iraqi government, an unheard-of practice: they have also reportedly secured rights of first refusal on the far more lucrative 30-year production contracts expected once a new US-sponsored oil law is passed, allowing a wholesale western takeover.
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Big Oil is back with a vengeance.
It's a similar story when it comes to the future of the US occupation itself.
The last thing on anyone's mind, we were told when the tanks rolled in, was permanent US control, let alone the recolonisation of Iraq.
This was about the Iraqis finally getting a chance to run their own affairs in freedom.
But five years on, George Bush and Dick Cheney are putting the screws on their Green Zone government to sign a secret deal for indefinite military occupation, which would effectively reduce Iraq to a long-term vassal state.
In April, I was leaked a draft copy of this "strategic framework agreement", intended to replace the existing UN mandate at the end of the year.
Details of the document, which came from a source at the heart of the Iraqi government, were published in the Guardian — including indefinite authorisation for the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security".
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Since then, much more has emerged about the accompanying "status of forces agreement" the US administration wants to impose: including more than 50 US military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, legal immunity for US military and private security firms, and the right to conduct armed operations throughout the country without consulting the Iraqi government.
This goes far beyond other such agreements the US has around the world and would shackle Iraq with a permanent puppet status.
Not surprisingly, it has led to uproar in the country and opposition in the US, where congress will be denied a vote on the arrangement because the administration has chosen not to call it a treaty.
But it also evokes powerful memories in Iraq, which has been down this road before.
Britain imposed strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 — BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell were original partners in Iraq Petroleum Company
After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the first world war, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country's nominal independence.
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Just as in George Bush's version, Britain awarded itself military bases, the right to conduct military operations, and legal immunity for its forces — though the proposed new US powers and restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty go even further than in the pre-war colonial treaty.
To add to this sense of imperial revival, the four oil companies now preparing to return in triumph to Iraq were the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company, which Britain gave a free hand in the 1920s to dine off Iraq's wealth in a famously exploitative deal.
The Anglo-Iraqi treaty and those bitterly unjust oil concessions dominated Iraqi politics for decades, feeding riots, uprisings and coups until the monarchy was overthrown, the tables turned on the oil companies and the British were finally sent packing by the radical nationalist General Qasim in 1958.
The 50th anniversary of the 1958 revolution appropriately falls next month.
But Bush and Cheney seem increasingly determined to force through both their security agreement and the stalled law for the privatisation of Iraq's oil industry before the US election.
The signs are that, despite intense Iraqi opposition, a combination of strong-arm tactics, bribery and some watering down of the most extreme US demands may yet secure the full imperial package.
When Bush contradicted Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this month on the occupation deal and predicted: "If I were a betting man, we'll reach an agreement with the Iraqis," he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about — rather as he did when he explained a couple of weeks ago that he was "confident" Gordon Brown would not after all be cutting British troop numbers in Basra according to any fixed timetable.
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Meanwhile, Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, is suddenly sounding similarly confident about "progress" on the oil law because "the Americans are very keen".
Perhaps they are all coming to believe the Bush administration propaganda that the surge has succeeded and Iraq is starting to "fix itself" in time for the US election, as the Economist's cover story put it last week.
Much is still being made of the decline in US casualties and resistance attacks to 2004 levels, even though the factors behind that drop are widely acknowledged to be contingent and precarious.
Given the carnage of the past few days alone — including seven US soldiers killed since the weekend and a Baghdad car bomb that butchered 65 people — as well as this week's withering US Government Accountability Office report on the administration's claims of "progress" in Iraq, any other view would seem perverse.
What is certain is that, if Bush's blueprint for indefinite foreign rule in Iraq and the takeover of its oil is forced down the throats of the Iraqi people, resistance and bloodshed will increase.
Of course, it's true that the US and Britain didn't invade Iraq only for its oil.
It was a projection of American power in the world's most strategically sensitive region, with oil at its heart, which has brought catastrophe to Iraq and great danger to the Middle East and the wider world.
That's why the struggle to restore Iraq's independence matters far beyond its borders — it is a global necessity. |
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EndGame — Alex Jones, you have done the world a great favor
It has taken me until now to view this great masterpiece that chronicles the planet's true history
But I am glad for this delay as my awareness of reality, and the events that seemingly must unfold to educate humankind, have come from sentience off planet — now with this movie the circles merge
A movie par excellence, it will likely be considered the most significant in the downfall of the rich and powerful who control the world and rising politicians already in their pocket — the imprisonment of all those who seek to bring forth this horror, this enslavement of 'New World Order'
Kewe
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Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues...
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For archives, these articles are being stored on TheWE.biz website.The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. |
They used me as a way to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong
