Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War

Rating:
Summary: A must read before the start of the second Gulf war
Review: A kinder, gentler nation? A compassionate country? Sounds like repeat season. Propaganda indeed, Mr. Bush! Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: It took guts...
Review: And that's a lot more than the press had in its coverage of Gulf War I: The Prequel. For those of us old enough to have survived the Vietnam Era, we can recollect that some military and intelligence types blamed the loss of that police action on the media. (Even in that era, I found the media to be pretty wishy washy, but they got much worse.) Volumes have been released--some even by the Pentagon--that dispute that claim, but it was popular among Establishment types who argued that the US can do no wrong.

Then there was Granada. That I recall because it was so transparently censored--while US medical students in Granada, the ones whose parents could afford to send them there after they'd been rejected by US med schools, were praising the military's arrival just in time, an obvious placement of the right message at the right time. I thought things couldn't get any worse than this. But then there was Panama...

Up to the present, Gulf War II, following the subject matter of the book, we've evolved to "embedded" journalists, i.e., media personnel accompanying the brave military in staged events to make Cecil B. DeMille jealous. The process and material of this "war" was provided by PR professionals!

This book documents a mid point in that process. And I remember it because I was frequently furious during Desert Storm that every local VFW chapter was called upon to comment while even major newspapers abstained from printing letters critical of the event!

There's a lot in this spectacular volume. The author begins with explaining how the media plan was designed, the "pooling" of journalists covering it, to the objection of few! There is a chapter on the dubious dead babies story (covered in some detail by "Weapons of Mass Deception" in which I heard of this book). The author distinguishes between the journalistic and business voices of the major media. There is even a chapter on Vietnam, to document some of the history to which I've already referred. And one appropriately entitles "Desert Muzzle," a pseudonym to which the author frequently returns.

There's a lot in the book. And be prepared to stay awake if you read it in bed. Lots will make you extremely mad, particularly the absolute gutlessness of some of the "journalists" on whom we rely for the limited information we receive and are allowed to process.

The bottom line is that, if we are to maintain any sense of "democracy," we need information provided by true journalists, not media personalities more intent on getting generals' autographs and invitations to expensive White House dinners than on one-sided, gutless coverage provided by Pentagon PR specialists. And that's all we have now. It's pathetic but true. This book documents it all. Read it and weep.

The book ends with a valuable observation: in the early 90s, just after the "liberation" of our wonderful ally, Kuwait, that little emirate ranked second, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), in its incarceration and torture of journalists. Second to China, which is only slightly more populous than Kuwait... Tough to be liberated.

If you want to begin to ponder where changes are needed, i.e., where honesty and integrity in media, prevail, this is a place to start.

Rating:
Summary: An angry writer
Review: During the Gulf War, I was an elementary schooler who eagerly bought the propaganda the government. my school district, and hometown were promoting in the name of patrotism.

I earnestly snapped up everything and anything having to do with the millitary, American Flags or Yellow Ribbons convinced that our side was the right side--and unlike the war in Vietnam, the reasoning for deployment was universally accepted by the American people. Although I now realize there were people voicing conciencious objection to war with Iraq (because among other reasons, we had once supported Saddam Hussein's rise to power including oulfiting his troops with weapons when it suited our international interests and did not seriously care what would happen to the people of Iraq afterwards), if given any coverage in the national news at all, they were riddiculouslsy marginalized as outcasts who were living in a gigantic timewarp and did not understand that this was the 1990's.

My parents, having lived through Vietnam, were more cynical about the millitary opperation--but did not challenge the advertising marketed towards their daughter for fear of being perceived as unsupportive of America's objectives. Because they realized that the Gulf War was fought partly over US Petroleum interests, support was actually a more complex issue than I was receiving from media, institutional, and peer socialization.

MacArthur and Bagdikian provide a wealth of information for anybody who wants to revisit this time in international/American history and uncover the truth that all too quickly disappeared and was ommitted in the name of national unity. The so-called "liberal-media" defered to government preferences and reporting angles in it's coverage of the Persian Gulf, reducing 20 years of profoundly complex relations in this region of the world to a binary presentation of "good guys v. bad guys". The ultimate loosers in this scenario of course are the American people who never get to see the full justifications of their leaders, policy makers and public officials.

Although we think of information suppression as something that was supposed to be eliminated with post-Vietnam millitary oversight procedures and policies, they continued during this event---in an albeit more subtle way. In the world of public policy, just because you cannot see something does not mean that it is non-existent.

Granted, looking at a gritter past may be hard, but this action is neccesary to fully understand how media and politics work together in times of war--and not necessarily for the benefit of the citizens at large. The timelieness of this scholarship is wholly appreciated and badly needed.

Rating:
Summary: A must read before the start of the second Gulf war
Review: For anyone who still believes that we have a free, open, and unbiased press in this country, read this book. Before we go to war again against Iraq and start getting the government's highly censored version of events, it will be helpful to understand what we were told last time and why.

Rating:
Summary: Piece of junk...
Review: Having to read this book as part of a club for discussion is the only reason I would even spend my time for reading this piece of rubbish. The author is obviously putting his own political leftist views into his view of the war. The author simply spews out outrageous claims with no factual data to back it up. I, being a centrist and not left/right leaning, found this book to be a biased attempt by a leftwing author to denegrate the accomplishments of the US in their attempts to solve problems in this complex world. Based on the authors views the US is responsible for the world's problems. Total BS coming from a guy who probably benefits from the global policies of the country he denounces so readily. The most amazing part of the book is that if he really believes the crap he writes he should get the heck out of here and move to an eastern block or middle eastern country.

Rating:
Summary: Fifth Column
Review: I believe it was Dorthy Parker who once said "This book should not be tossed aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force." This book should be given a Parker-like heave-ho. Stealing a page from the play-book of the mendacious Cambodian Holocaust whitewasher Noam Chomsky, MacArthur disguise his shameless Iraqi Conquest crypto-propaganda as "media criticism".

The chapter "debunking" the Kuwaiti baby incubators story is a case in point. Shortly after Saddam invaded the "19th province of Iraq" ( a.k.a. the sovereign state of Kuwait to the rest of most of the world - including the United States and the United Nations ) reports of Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floors of Kuwaiti hospitals began to emerge from the occupied territory.

On September 5, 1990, The London Daily Telegraph, reported the claim by the exiled Kuwaiti housing minister, Yahya al-Sumait, that "babies in the premature unit of one hospital had been removed from their incubators so that these, too, could be carried off." [p.54] Throughout the controversy, this initial testimony never received a direct refutation. MacArthur offers no point refutation.

On September 7, 1990, the Los Angeles Times published a Reuters story about the atrocity accounts of two Americans identified as Cindy and Rudy who had been evacuated from occupied Kuwait. "Iraqis are . . . taking hospital equipment babies out of incubators. Life-support systems are turned off." [p.54] MacArthur discounts the report by chastising the Reuters reporter for failing to provide a last name. The name of the reporter? MacArthur doesn't say - doesn't even provide a footnote. By a parity of reasoning, we should discard MacArthur. Does MacArthur attempt to verify the report? Of course not, he's too busy writing a book on the topic.

On September 30, 1990, the Seattle Times published an interview with a Palestinian physician contradicting the incubator allegations. [p67] This should be unsurprising. Kuwait has several hospitals. If one eyewitness at one hospital didn't see incubator theft, that doesn't mean that others elsewhere didn't . I personally have never seen Halley's Comet, that doesn't it isn't out there.

On October 10, 1990, the congressional Human Rights Caucus provided an opportunity for Amnesty International to present their evidence against Iraq on Capitol Hill. Nayirah, the quasi-anonymous daughter of Kuwait's Ambassador to the US gave her eyewitness testimony.[pp.57-9] MacArthur discounts this testimony through her underdisclosed association with the Kuwaiti government. A fallacy - like saying that 2 + 2 = 4 is wrong because Heisenberg said so and he was a Nazi. MacArthur fulminates because Nayirah wasn't under oath. Whatever. Neither is MacArthur. MacArthur froths because the room in which the Human Rights Caucus gathered its evidence was bought and paid for by a Kuwaiti PR firm, Hill and Knowlton. This is worse than arguing that MacArthur has it all wrong because Hill and Wang published his book, a company bought and paid for by a major multinational publishing conglomerate.

On November 27, 1990, the U. N. Security Council heard Dr. "Issah Ibrahim," who explained that buried babies after the Iraqis took over he. After the war, the doctor, whose real name is actually Ibrahim Behbhani, recanted. MacArthur uses this to discredit the whole story - guilt by association.

On December 10, USA Today reported: "A doctor just out of Kuwait challenges assertions by President Bush and Kuwait exiles that invading Iraqi soldiers had dumped babies out of incubators. 'Babies are dying in hospitals because Iraq's invasion has driven away staff who could save their lives,' says Icelander Gisll Sigurdsson, who left Kuwait three weeks ago. 'That news was not true,' Sigurdsson said in Amman, Jordan. 'However there were lots of babies who died because of lack of staff over the last few weeks.' [p67] Again, this is the Halley's Comet effect. If one or more people didn't see it, that doesn't mean that others didn't .

After October 14, 1990, Aziz Abu-Hamad, an investigator for Middle East Watch, looked into allegations by Dr. Ahmed al-Shatti, who related stories of Iraqi torture at a press conference in Jiddah. The doctor was unable to document his claims, but other physicians gave similar reports. A Kuwaiti physician, Dr. Ali al-Hawil, said that between 60 to 70 babies had died in the Kuwait City maternity hospital after soldiers dismantled the premature-babies unit. He claimed that he and his colleagues buried 50 babies on August 20. [p61] MacArthur writes, "for every supposed eyewitness, Abu-Hamad found another doctor who provided conflicting evidence or outright refutation." The names of these eyewitnesses? MacArthur doesn't say - which, as you recall from our encounter with Rudy and Cindy, is a big no-no. The transparent double standard in Macarthur's work reveals that he is doing more than "media criticism" - he is positively engaged in Iraqi propaganda. At the end of the chapter on "Selling Babies" MacArthur reports, without criticism, an account of dead Iraqi babies due to Allied bombing. MacArthur's source for this uncorroborated story is - Iraq!

On December 19, 1990, Amnesty International published an 84-page report on the Human Rights violations in occupied Kuwait. The report stated, "In addition, over 300 premature babies were reported to have died after Iraqi soldiers removed them from incubators, which were then looted."[p66] Amnesty later issued a qualified retraction. The prospect that Amnesty's overzealous preoccupation with a "human rights foreign policy" may have precipitated the war goes unexplored.

After the war, on March 15, in Kuwait City, John Martin of ABC News interviewed Dr. Mohammed Matar, director of Kuwait's primary health care system and his wife Dr. Fayeza Youssef, chief of obstetrics at the maternity hospital there. "No, [the Iraqis] didn't take [the babies] away from their incubator ... to tell the truth ... No nurses to take care of these babies and that's why they died," said Youssef. Martin asked a follow-up. " But, I mean, this is very specific, 'Iraqi soldiers took them out of the incubators and put them on the floor to die.' " "I think this is something just for propaganda," replied Dr. Matar. People, including babies did die, Martin reported, "when large numbers of Kuwait's doctors and nurses stopped working or fled the country in terror." Once again, we have the Halley's Comet effect. MacArthur, pace Martin, paints Dr. Matar and Dr. Youssef as all-seeing, all-knowing. If Dr. Matar / God didn't see it happen - it didn't.

All of this is reminiscent of the mendacious duo Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman's whitewash of the Cambodian Holocaust in "After the Cataclysm". In that book, Chomsky and Herman point to the testimony of one eyewitness who traveled across Cambodia during the period of the worst atrocities by the Khmer Rouge. The trans-countryside traveler claimed that he didn't see any atrocities. Chomsky and Herman use this to cast doubt on the severity of the autogenocide in that country - a Holocaust that eventually claimed the lives of around 2 million in that small country - in a maneuver the simultaneously exculpates the Khmer Rouge and defames the testimony of scores of other Cambodian refugees. A line of "media criticism" that, to this day, Chomsky alarmingly claims is still "on target." (zmag archive, online)

Of course, we now know that Iraqi soldiers did indeed steal incubators and endanger if not manslaughter Kuwaiti babies. The government of Kuwait commissioned a study by Kroll Associates. The investigation, which included interviews with 250 people in country, witnesses and others privy to the facts, concluded, "there is no question that Iraqi misconduct during the occupations resulted in infant deaths by numerous causes, including removal of babies from incubators." The Senate also held Hearings on the issue that produced similar evidence. Critics, no doubt, will remain unsatisfied. The genetic fallacy will abound. All 250 people interviewed by Kroll will be Kuwaiti mouthpieces. All who testified at the Senate Hearing will be American running dogs. Will MacArthur et al. hold Iraqi reports - such as Iraqi child deaths due to the embargo - to the same impossible standards and dismiss them as propaganda as well? Don't hold you breath.

Fans of Chomsky will find nothing in this book that will challenge their worldview. The rest of us can read it for the kicks.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book!
Review: I wish the author of this book had gotten more media coverage prior to Gulf War Redux. It is a fascinating look at the inner workings of the so-called free press, and the difficult and dysfunctional relationship a journalist has with the DOD, Pentagon...all those governmental "powers that be"....Check it out. Definately.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book.
Review: Ignore the crypto-fascists who were unable to put down their copies of MEIN KAMPF long enough to actually read this book. Very original and thought provoking.