Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

This gives me hope for future wars and the use of state power. Access to the truth can dispel ignorance and propaganda.

`Real-time’ TV coverage a real headache for Bush: U.S. spin doctors can’t control media message Morale-destroying images weren’t part of the plan:

On the weekend, these weren’t supposed to be the television images of Operation Iraqi Freedom: frightened U.S. prisoners-of-war being held in Iraq; a grainy still of slain American soldiers lying on a floor; reporters explaining friendly fire incidents like the downing of a British warplane; and the stark image of a 101st Airborne soldier on the ground, taken prisoner by his own troops after grenades were tossed into officers’ tents in Kuwait with deadly results.

The new team — Office of Global Communications — continues to work with Hughes, as well as key people in the White House, Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council. They work around-the-clock, stuffing each 24-hour news cycle, at home and abroad, with a message of the day, designed to fill every information void and ensure the people stay on that message.

“The idea is to present their view of what is happening, and make it the only view,” says William Lutz, a Rutgers University English professor and expert on “doublespeak.”

“They cloak it with authority … It is the Pope speaking …

“People think, `Hey, the government has more information than I do, their view must be more informed than mine.'”

Hughes, a longtime Bush confidante, has been brought back to Washington to advise Bush. But her $15,000 monthly fee is actually paid by the Republican National Committee.

“This is a grey area,” Charles Lewis, executive director of the Centre for Public Integrity, told the Washington Post.

But, in many cases the government may not be as informed. Decisions are often made by people with a disregard for history.

Okay, in the first place it’s damn cheesy that the Pentagon has euphemisticaly called this war ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. In fact, it’s incredibly tacky. The bigger problem is: the Iraqis do not want to be ‘liberated’ by the Americans. If this be a ‘liberation’ at all it’s a forced liberation and certainly, if anything, a liberation of Iraqi oil resources. I was reviewing this slideshow at the NY Times website and it showed a large assemblage of Iraqis looking for a downed American pilot along the Euphrates river. The funny thing is the caption said: “Iraqi soldiers search for an American or British pilot that eyewitnesses claimed to have seen dropping into the Tigris River by parachute.” EVERYONE was looking for the pilot. In fact, in that photo I didn’t see one soldier. The Iraqis do not want us there. This could be the next Vietnam.

UPI: A ‘Tough Fight’ Indeed:

Yet the war on Iraq was not sold to the American people as a tough fight. It was sold to them as a combination of a walk in the park, an essential operation to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and, most of all, as a crusade to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of President Saddam Hussein.

The curious thing is, almost none of them appear to be want to be saved.

For the past year and a half, the civilian war hawks running the Department of Defense have repeatedly and, according to Pentagon sources, even contemptuously overridden the concerns of regular senior Army and Marine officers about the difficulty of conquering Iraq by relying upon the flood of intelligence provided to them by Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. For Chalabi and the INC had assured them that Iraq was straining at the seams and ready to bust apart acclaiming U.S. forces as liberators as soon as they walked in.

As UPI has repeatedly reported and noted, so highly did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz think of this intelligence that they repeatedly injected it into the proceedings of Principals’ and Deputies’ Committees meetings that coordinated the highest policymaking of the United States government without filtering it past the CIA, the State Department or any other organ of government first.

Yet now the drive into Iraq is well underway, what are U.S. policymakers — and their brave, embattled troops in the field finding?

First, the Shiite Muslim majority of Iraqis have not risen up in the south to rally around their American liberators. They have not risen up at all. And they are not raising a finger to oppose Saddam or help the United States.

Instead, as we noted on Saturday, Mohammed Baqir Hakim, head of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Shiite opposition movement in Iraq issued a statement quite specifically telling the Shiites not to aid the United States in any way. And his admonition, broadcast on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network, is being heeded.

Getting Ahead of the Pentagon:

Separately, the Pentagon sent news organizations a memo requesting that they “not air or publish recognizable images or audio recordings that identify POWs. Additionally, we request you not use their names, first or last, or their unit, until next-of-kin notification is complete.” The memo made the same request for the deceased soldiers, citing “respect for the families” and “the principles of the Geneva Conventions.”

The issue sparked a disagreement when ABC anchor Charles Gibson told viewers it was “simply disrespectful” to show the dead bodies. “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel said from Iraq that he had earlier shown pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers in a way that they could not be identified.

Because the media are “ginning up patriotic feelings” before a war, Koppel said, “I feel we do have an obligation to remind people in the most graphic way that war is a dreadful thing. . . . Young Americans are dying. Young Iraqis are dying. To turn our faces away from that is a mistake. . . . To sanitize it too much is a dreadful mistake.”

The US military is discovering that their billions of dollars in high-tech weaponry is vulnerable to ingenuity, guerrilla tactics, and the intelligent application of very low-tech and antiquated technology. Not only that, but many of the precious and hugely expensive weapons systems bought from corrupt defense contractors are fraught with their own problems and have caused many embarrassing situations in the short five days of Bush’s Iraq takeover.

Consider the US missiles hitting Turkey and Iran, or the British plane destroyed by Patriot missiles. Then there’s the ingenious tactics the Iraqis and Iraqi partisans have used. Using cheap rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire to bring down two Apaches helicopters worth more than most Americans (not to mention Iraqis!) will make in a life time (you can see jubilant Iraqis assembled on the helicopter here). The other 30 or so odd Apaches were forced to retreat. The Iraqis have also successfully used portable mortar fire to cause confusion to the US military, captured supply line units, and have downed other planes. There is some evidence that the Iraqis have acquired those Aviaconversia GPS jammers, night-vision goggles, and RPG’s from Russian arms dealers about which the US has whined and complained that this violates the UN sanctions. Since when has the US cared about international law? It doesn’t seem as if the US is ready for any kind of fair fight. They expected the Iraqi people to roll over. On the news yesterday, I heard that over half of all US flights have been to support ground troops by suppressing fire and enemy units. It’s impressive what the Iraqis have done with no air support of their own.

Additionally, the so-called psyops campaign by the US has largely failed. The 5-10 million propaganda leaflets dropped by the military have been an utter failure. While some deserters and a few thousand troops have surrendered to the US invasion force it has not been in the numbers the Pentagon had hoped for. In fact, the Iraqi people appear to be fairly united against this invasion. I would hope we Americans would act the same way should Russian or Chinese troops attempt to invade our cities and rural towns. If anything, this only shows what a bad idea this war is. I hope the Bush administration comes to its senses, but I doubt it. Which reminds me, chemical weapons, the public justification for this war, have yet to be found or used.

Related:

1. Resistance raises fears for the endgame
2. U.S. Losses Expose Risks, Raise Doubts About Strategy
3. US protests at Russian arms sales to Baghdad: High-tech weaponry vulnerable. The Bush administration reserved its highest-level efforts for halting the delivery of the jamming devices, which officials said sell for thousands of dollars apiece and can interfere with global positioning equipment important to aircraft navigation and ground forces.
4. CNN: Russia hits back in shipments row: The Washington Post identified two of the companies as Aviaconversiya, which allegedly supplied jamming equipment, and KBP Tula, an optics company.

   But the Russian official countered the allegations, saying: “On numerous occasions Moscow gave a detailed account of all of this to the American government starting with October of last year.

   “If you ask me why this news appeared lately, my only response would be that it’s just to distract public attention from an illegitimate military operation by the United States government against Iraq and to distract attention from the fact that this war turned out not to be a picnic.”

This is what happens when you launch an illegal war.

US accuses Russians of aiding Iraqi defence:

The United States believes Russian technicians are helping Iraq jam crucial satellite signals needed to guide bombs and military aircraft as US, British and Australian troops advance on Baghdad, a senior US official said.

The official says Washington has evidence personnel from a Russian firm are in Iraq attempting to help set up and operate a sophisticated system that interferes with the US global positioning technology.

“The system is complex and there is evidence that they (Russian technicians) have been trying to bring this system online and help the Iraqis operate it,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“We are extremely upset and have raised this at very senior levels with the Russians.”

The official stressed there is no indication the Russian Government was involved in the efforts but said Moscow had been “extremely unhelpful” in addressing the US concerns.

The official confirmed a report in The Washington Post newspaper that said complaints about the sales of the jamming devices by the Moscow-based firm, Aviaconversiya, began in June 2002.

At the time, the official said, the Russians denied the company even existed despite the fact it maintained an Internet site and was the subject of extensive media coverage in Russia.

I had trouble finding a link to them, but, of course, Yellowtimes.org put them up. I feel bad for these people.

It looks like the US might be making some backroom deal with France to get Saddam into exile to avoid a disasterous war of attrition with Iraq. This would let the US ‘win’ satisfying the pro-war, flag-waving crowd domestically while preventing severe US military and political embarrassment and mounting casualties to US troops buffetted by sandstorms and shifting political/military chaos. If this is the case, France will work some deal with the US to maintain its oil interests in post-Saddam Iraq and will claim a last minute ‘diplomatic victory’ and will save their own amount of embarrassment. This solution quickly ends the war and the growing chaos, Saddam gets to keep his billions and his life, the Bush administration gets to appear victorious and justified in using force, France claims moral high ground and diplomatic victory, and Iraq becomes the wholesale property of transnational corporations. See? It’s not impossible to imagine. I thought something to this effect when I saw the speculation about the tape not being Saddam. I figured either a. he was fleeing and leaving taped decoys to make time b. he was dead (not likely) or c. someone was helping him escape. It now appears possible the US is working on some deal to avoid embarrassment. Even if it’s not true this whole ‘war’ is strictly for public consumption. I feel for the families that lose their loved ones because of the games globalists play.

I read this very interesting analysis at Stratfor.com:

The March 20 attempt to decapitate the Iraqi government appears to have failed. The U.S. government now seems to be acknowledging that Hussein survived the attacks. Indeed, he may not have been at the target to begin with. It appears likely that CIA Director Geoge Tenet had some intelligence, realized that the price of missing was relatively low, the value of success high, and took the shot.

But there appears to be more to the story than this. Defense Department officials announced that the “shock and awe” campaign had been postponed, pending developments within the Iraqi leadership. That means that something is still going on in Baghdad. It might be that Hussein is considering leaving. It might be that there is the possibility of a coup. It might be that the United States is simply doing psychological operations to undermine confidence in Baghdad. It is impossible to know. What we do know is that the massive air campaign that had been forecast and certainly was within the U.S. capability to deliver is at least partially on hold, pending something.

Reports from the battlefield indicate odd fits and starts, particularly in the air war. Reports from the navy are that missions were laid on and then aborted at the last minute. There appeared to be a certain tentativeness in the ground war as well. Now, there are excellent reasons for cautious entry into battle. But there also might be something still unfolding in Baghdad.

And, then there’s this bombshell. Let’s see how they spin it:

Since December, ABCNEWS has learned, an emissary from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been in the middle of the secret offer of exile. American officials say the French go-between, Pierre Delval, an expert on counterfeiting, has repeatedly traveled to Baghdad to persuade Saddam to accept exile in Mauritania. A former French colony, Mauritania is an Islamic republic said to have warm ties with Iraq. Officials in Mauritania said they knew nothing of any exile offer to Saddam Hussein or his sons. U.S. officials say details of the exile were being negotiated through lawyers in Jordan who work for Saddam’s son Qusai, also seen in the tape released today.

Already, the Bush regime is deemphasizing Hussein’s importance, Saddam ‘not a key war aim’. This is in stark contrast to the rhetoric spewed for the past several years:

“The way we’re undertaking this military operation would not be changed irrespective of the location or the life of this one man and that’s why we talk about the regime,” said General Franks. “It would not surprise any of us whether Saddam Hussein is alive or dead. It is not about that one personality, it is about this regime.”