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Secrets and LiesThe DoD's disgraceful plot to plant rosy stories in the Iraqi press.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Dec. 5, 2005, at 1:27 PM ET

This time, someone really does have to be fired. The revelation that Defense Department money, not even authorized by Congress for the purpose, has been outsourced to private interests and then used to plant stories in the Iraqi press is much more of a disgrace and a scandal than anyone seems so far to have said.

  1. It helps discredit free media in Iraq at a time when that profession is very new and very hazardous (and one of the unarguable moral gains of the original intervention). In a situation already dominated by rumor and conspiracy-mongering, and in a country rife with death squads, it exposes every honest Iraqi reporter to the charge that he or she is an agent of a foreign power. Who at the Pentagon could possibly have needed to have this explained to them?

  2. It comes on the heels of a credible report about a threat, from President George W. Bush, to bomb the Qatari headquarters of Al Jazeera. The British government, from whose inner circle the relevant memo has been leaked, might have taken credit—in that Tony Blair appears to have dissuaded Bush from this course of criminal insanity—but instead has threatened to use the Official Secrets Act against the newspaper that published it, thus somewhat strengthening the supposition that the story is true. Since certain people and places associated with Al Jazeera have been hit in the past, it appears more plausible than ever in retrospect that some deliberate "targeting" may have been involved.

  3. It follows the deaths, at the hands of American soldiers, of several Iraqi journalists in "friendly fire." I wrote about this for Slate in July and pointed out that a British general had warned American commanders that these tactics might be quite an easy way of losing the war.

  4. It is not just a matter of lying to the Iraqis and to neighboring countries, bad as that would be. The feedback must also have been intended to deceive the American taxpayers whose money was used for the fraud in the first place.

You may say: Why strain at this gnat while a huge controversy about more consequential "lies" is in progress? Stupidity and propaganda are inseparable from even the noblest war, but this consideration cannot be allowed to excuse everything. One expects that commanders at home and in the field will talk up their successes, play down crimes and errors on the ground that such information is useful to the enemy, do black propaganda in the enemy camp, and try to get their own version into the public record. But sometimes a whole new line is crossed and "propaganda" corrupts the whole process by becoming a covert operation against one's "own" side. The worst violation so far has been the spreading of a falsified story about the death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. Not only was he slain by "friendly fire" instead of by the foe—which is a tragedy in far more ways than just as a setback for recruitment—but the family and friends of this all-American hero were purposely deceived about what had really happened. It would be trivial to add that they were also pointlessly deceived (how long do the geniuses at DoD imagine that such a thing can be kept quiet?) except that it greatly added to the callousness of the thing, and except that this same pointlessness and moral idiocy are now apparent in the "good news" scandal in Iraq.

I remember reading, decades ago, of a moment when Richard Nixon had made some desperate speech from his bunker and had then arranged for telegrams of support to be sent to the White House. And I wondered—did he eagerly tear them open and turn moistly to his aides, saying, "See: You can always count on the horse sense of the American people"? Was he, in other words, utterly and happily insulated and yet alarmingly insane?

More cartoons by Signe Wilkinson

I mean, just picture the scene for a moment. An Iraqi family living in, say, Anbar Province, picks its way down the stoop to collect the newly delivered newspaper. This everyday operation is hazardous, but less so than going down to the corner to pick it up, because there are mad people around who do not believe that anything should be in print, save the Quran, not to mention nasty local potentates who do not like to read criticism of themselves. Further, the streets are often dark and littered with risky debris. The lead story, however, reports that all is well in the Anbar region; indeed, things are going so well that there is even a slight chance that they will one day get better. Who is supposed to be fooled by this? The immediate target is, one supposes, the long-suffering people of Iraq. But over time, the printing and dissemination of cheery reportage must have been intended to be picked up and replayed back into the American electorate. If done from state coffers, that is probably not even legal.

It is, anyway, not so much a matter of fooling people as of insulting them. The prostitute journalist is a familiar and well-understood figure in the Middle East, and Saddam Hussein's regime made lavish use of the buyability of the regional press. Now we, too, have hired that clapped-out old floozy, Miss Rosie Scenario, and sent her whoring through the streets. If there was one single thing that gave a certain grandeur to the change of regime in Baghdad, it was the reopening of the free press (with the Communist Party's paper the first one back on the streets just after the statue fell) and the profusion of satellite dishes, radio stations, and TV programs. There were some crass exceptions—Paul Bremer's decision to close Muqtada Sadr's paper being one of the stupidest and most calamitous decisions—but in general it was something to be proud of. Now any fool is entitled to say that a free Iraqi paper is a mouthpiece, and any killer is licensed to allege that a free Iraqi reporter is a mercenary. A fine day's work. Someone should be fired for it.

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Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
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Remarks from the Fray:

There's an old joke about the rationalizations ad agencies make about the utter bullshit they spew: "It's not lying," the account exec sputters, "it's truth management."

I'm amazed Hitchens has only now discovered his outrage in the face of this cataract of mendacity, equivocation and duplicity known as the Bush administration, for whom the truth is the only resource they have any interest in conserving. I suppose when the deceit is only to a nation by its "elected" leadership that's nothing much to worry about. But when it pollutes the press, that otherwise simon-pure bastion of candor—well, I guess it's time to get your knickers in a twist, eh, Colonel?

--rob_said_that

(To reply, click here)


You take issue with perhaps the LEAST objectionable thing the Coalition is doing in Iraq.

Hitchens might have had a point if these stories were false [that's indefensible], but the guts of them were true. I imagine they espoused some of the same points about the "insurgency" that he's written about.

PR initiatives serve to dominate some news stories in THIS country- a free press is free to be bought and paid for by outside interests. No one foisted these stories upon them.

And, given that [as Hitch points out] much of the Iraqi media is "Al Jazeerad" up and anti-American [a free press is "free" to despise us] I must say that I give props for the public affairs staff at the DOD and the Lincoln Group for this op.

Bravo- add a hostile media in this country into the mix and I must say that this is "thinking outside the box" and it's good to know that the military has realized that propaganda is as important as battlefield victories.

Just so I am clear on this- Hitchens supports [very eloquently and steadfastly I might add] urban warfare, house-to-house fighting where innocents are indeed regrettably caught in the crossfire. But not the shepherding of the reasoning as to why this is necessary into the media in order to frame the issue properly?

We can't allow the Al Sadr media, Al Jazeera and their co-thinkers to be the only ones doing the talking.

--Geoff14

(To reply, click here)


This is a magnificent piece by a magnificent writer who has spent most of the past three years attacking liberals, often personally, for criticizing the invasion of Iraq. Hitchens has consistently failed to understand that the invasion of Iraq was never HIS invasion. It has always been under the full control of George W. Bush and his minions.

And no one who understands anything about the Bushies, surely including Hitchens, will find the buying of journalists in Iraq a bit surprising. It is a matter of indisputable record that Bush's people paid journalists HERE to push his programs. Why on Earth wouldn't he pay them in Iraq? Bush has made no secret of his contempt for the media, so for Hitchens to expect him to suddenly value its integrity is silly…

--the_slasher14

(To reply, click here)

(12/5)