In
war, you deny information, spread lies and use
psychological warfare. An expert on military information
operations explains how Bush has mastered this technique
-- and used it against the American people.
By Sam Gardiner
09/22/04 "Salon.com"
-- On Thursday, Iraq's interim prime minister,
Iyad Allawi,
will speak before a joint meeting of Congress, and from
what he said in London on his way to the United States,
it looks like Americans are going to be getting more of
the strategic information operations that have been
crucial to Bush's policy on Iraq from the beginning.
On Monday, Allawi said at a press conference:
"Terrorists are coming and pouring into
Iraq
to try to undermine the situation in
Iraq
... And God forbid, if
Iraq
is broken or the will of
Iraq
is broken, then
London
will be a target,
Washington
will be a target." In those sentences, Allawi employed
the basic doctrine of strategic information operations:
Influence emotions, motive and objective reasoning. Use
repetition to create a collective memory in the target
audience. And the recurrent message of both Allawi and
the Bush administration is:
Iraq
= terrorists = 9/11.
The Army Field Manual describes information operations
as the use of strategies such as information denial,
deception and psychological warfare to influence
decision making. The notion is as old as war itself.
With information operations, one seeks to gain and
maintain information superiority -- control information
and you control the battlefield. And in the information
age, it has become even more imperative to influence
adversaries.
But with the
Iraq
war, information operations have gone seriously off
track, moving beyond influencing adversaries on the
battlefield to influencing the decision making of
friendly nations and, even more important, American
public opinion. In information denial, one attempts to
deceive one's adversary. Since the declared end of
combat operations, the Bush administration has
orchestrated a number of deceptions about
Iraq
. But who is its adversary?
In August 2003, the administration's message was that
everything in
Iraq
was improving. The White House led the information
effort and even published a paper on the successes of
the
first 100 days
of the occupation. By October the message had shifted:
Things were going well in
Iraq
, but the media was telling the wrong story.
Then, toward the end of 2003, the message was that the
whole problem in
Iraq
was "dead-enders" and "foreign fighters." If it weren't
for them, the situation would be fine. Then, after
Saddam Hussein was captured in December, the message
shifted again: The coalition had discovered along with
the former dictator documents revealing the insurgent
network, which now would be broken. Once again,
everything would be fine.
At the approach of the hand-over to
Iraq
's interim government in late June, the administration
said the event represented the worst fears of the
insurgents, who did not want any movement toward
democracy. The White House warned that there would be
increased violence as the insurgents tried to prevent
the interim government from assuming its proper role in
running the country. In fact, violence did increase
before the transfer, but there was even more violence
afterward. But the administration's information about
the situation in
Iraq
sharply declined.
Denying information to adversaries is one way of
maintaining information dominance. (According to the
Army Field Manual, this dimension involves "withholding
information that adversaries need for effective
decision-making.") In the case of
Iraq
, this has meant eliminating press releases and press
briefings. Since the hand-over of power, the U.S.
Embassy in
Iraq
has issued only six releases, including one on the new
Iraqi environment minister's visit to a landfill
project. The most recent press release, on Aug. 12, was
about a boxer on
Iraq
's Olympics team. The last press briefing by the
Multi-National Force
in
Iraq
was June 25. The interim Iraqi government does not hold
press conferences.
The White House Web site also reflects the strategy of
withholding information. It used to actively provide
content
on Operation Iraqi Freedom (or as the Web site now says,
"Renewal in
Iraq
"), but the last new entry is dated Aug. 5.
The effect of the White House's control of information
has been dramatic. The chart shows how English-language
press coverage of
Iraq
has fallen off since July. Early in July, it was typical
to find almost 250,000 articles each day mentioning
Iraq
. That number has dropped to 150,000. The goal of
denying the adversary access to information is being
realized. But, again, who is the adversary?
Before, during and immediately after the war, the White
House orchestrated an intensive program of press
briefings and releases to saturate media time and space,
stay on message, keep ahead of the news cycle and manage
expectations. The White House conference call set the
daily message. The press briefings from the Central
Command headquarters in
Doha
,
Qatar
, were designed to dominate the morning and afternoon
press coverage, while the afternoon press briefing by
the Pentagon was intended for the evening news.
The White House is also using psychological warfare --
conveying selected information to organizations and
individuals to influence their emotions, motives,
objective reasoning and ultimately behavior -- to spread
its version of the war. And the administration's message
is obviously central to the process. From the very
beginning, that message, delivered both directly and
subtly, has been constant and consistent:
Iraq
= terrorists = 9/11.
The president tells us that we are fighting terrorists
in
Iraq
so we don't have to fight them here in the
United States
. But I know of no one with a respectable knowledge of
the events in
Iraq
who shares that view. My contacts in the intelligence
community say the opposite -- that
U.S.
policies in fact are creating more terrorism.
Still, the administration has made its case for the 9/11
terrorism and
Iraq
connection with some sophistication. For example, on
March 25, 2003, the
United States
renamed the Iraqi fighters in civilian clothes known as
the Fedayeen Saddam. Either the Office of the Secretary
of Defense or the White House (I have been told it was
both) directed that they now be called "terrorist death
squads" -- promoting the overarching message:
Iraq
= terrorists = 9/11.
Recently, the purported terrorist connection was
reinforced by another change in terminology. When
coalition forces bomb a house in
Fallujah,
the Multi-National Force press releases now announce
that they bombed a "safe house." But Marines don't come
to that phrase naturally. Marines hit enemy positions.
They strike targets. The implication is fairly obvious.
Since terrorists use "safe houses," the insurgents in
Fallujah must be terrorists. And some of us thus come to
believe that we are in
Iraq
to fight the "global war on terrorism."
Appealing to the emotions aroused by 9/11 is classic
psychological warfare. And repetition of the terrorist
argument is utterly consistent with the theory that one
can develop collective memory in a population through
repetition.
Images are also essential in psychological warfare, so
negative images must be defeated as quickly as possible.
That's why the images of the contractors killed in
Fallujah were so worrisome to the administration.
Government intelligence sources told me there was fear
they would have an impact like the images of dead U.S.
Army Rangers being dragged through the streets in
Somalia
did in 1993, causing rapid erosion in support for that
war.
Although we don't know all the facts yet, it's almost
certain that the White House or the Pentagon ordered the
Marine attack on Fallujah to fight those negative
images. Five
U.S.
soldiers were killed on the same day as the private
contractors when their Bradley fighting vehicle was
destroyed. But there was almost no official reaction to
their deaths, no pictures; their deaths did not pose an
image problem.
Now, the New York Times reports that military operations
to open up the no-go areas in
Iraq
will not occur until November or December. The official
line is that the administration wants to wait until
Iraqi security forces are better trained.
My military mind only hurts when I hear this argument.
The
United States
has been trying to train the Iraqis to take over for
almost two years now. The effort began with the training
camp in
Hungary
before the war, but that program failed. The robust
training program that began in the early stages of the
occupation was declared a failure with the onset of the
insurgents' offensive in April. The administration has
not been able to staff the headquarters tasked to direct
the training. Nor is it even certain who among those
being trained are on our side. The Marines around
Fallujah joke that after they take a member of the Iraqi
National Guard to the firing range for practice, the
sniper who shoots at them that night shows a remarkable
improvement in his aim.
It's clear the Americans will bear the major brunt of
the attack on Fallujah. What could possibly be behind
the administration's decision to wait until November or
December to launch it? There's certainly no commander in
the field saying, "Let's give the bad guys another 60
days to operate freely inside their sanctuaries before
we attack." Such a decision would be particularly
bizarre when attacks against coalition forces are more
frequent than ever, attacks on oil pipelines are on the
rise, and the
United States
is suffering increased casualties.
Any military officer would say that you have to take the
fight to the enemy. So what can we conclude about this
decision? There is only one conceivable answer -- the
White House is delaying military operations until after
the Nov. 2 election for political reasons. In the
meantime, information-denial operations must be
ratcheted up to control the story. But that is becoming
more difficult.
During the early part of the war, there was
more deception than truth
in the comments and press briefings of the secretary of
defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Among the fabricated stories was the early surrender of
the commander and the entire 51st Iraqi mechanized
division. We were told of an uprising in
Basra
-- it did not happen. We were told Iraqis had stolen
U.S.
uniforms to commit atrocities -- this was not true. We
were told on White House and State Department Web sites
that the Iraqi military had formed units of children to
attack the coalition -- untrue. We were told of a whole
range of agreements between the French and
Iraq
before the war over weapons -- false. We were told
Saddam had marked a red line around
Baghdad
and that when we crossed it
Iraq
would use chemical weapons -- completely fabricated.
We were told of an elaborate scheme by Saddam's forces
to ambush U.S. Marines on March 23 as they fought toward
Baghdad
. The president mentioned this incident many times. It
turns out what really happened that day is that the
Marines were repeatedly attacked by a U.S. Air Force
A-10. It was a friendly-fire incident, not an Iraqi
ruse. But building on the theme of Iraqi evil was more
important than the truth.
Military intelligence officials' prewar assertion when
no WMD were found that
Iraq
had moved its weapons to
Syria
is another example of information denial. But although
the Iraq Survey Group report to be released at the end
of this month will announce once and for all that Iraq
did not have WMD, the WMD argument already served its
purpose in garnering support for the invasion. The
important message now remains:
Iraq
= terrorists = 9/11.
The fog of war has not yet lifted. But when the strategy
is to hide the war from the American people, rather than
to get them to approve its instigation, fabrication is
more difficult to sustain.
Karl von Clausewitz, the Prussian theorist of war,
wrote, "War is an extension of politics by other means."
When I taught Clausewitz to students at various military
war colleges, I told them that he meant international
politics. But I may have been wrong -- I fear war has
become an extension of domestic politics, moving beyond
influencing adversaries on the battlefield to
influencing the decision making of friendly nations and,
even more important, American public opinion. Why have
the American people become the adversary?
About the writer
Sam Gardiner is a retired Air Force colonel who has
taught strategy and military operations at the
National War College
,
Air War College
and
Naval War College
.
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