UPDATED. EMBEDDEDCOVER THE WAR ON IRAQ HOW THE TO MEDIA FAILED . WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTIONDANNY SCHECHTER NEWS DISSECTOR / MEDIACHANNEL.ORG ColdType WHAT THE CRITICS SAID This is the best book to date about how the media covered the second Gulf War or maybe miscovered the second war. Mr. Schecchter on a day to day basis analysed media coverage. He found the most arresting, interesting , controversial, stupid reports and has got them all in this book for an excellent assessment of the media performance of this war. He is very negative about the media coverage and you read this book and you see why he is so negative about it. I recommend it." – Peter Arnett “In this compelling inquiry, Danny Schechter vividly captures two wars: the one observed by embedded journalists and some who chose not to follow that path, and the “carefully planned, tightly controlled and brilliantly executed media war that was fought alongside it,” a war that was scarcely covered or explained, he rightly reminds us. That crucial failure is addressed with great skill and insight in this careful and comprehensive study, which teaches lessons we ignore at our peril.” – Noam Chomsky. “Once again, Danny Schechter, has the goods on the Powers The Be. This time, he’s caught America’s press puppies in delecto, “embed” with the Pentagon. Schechter tells the tawdry tale of the affair between officialdom and the news boys – who, instead of covering the war, covered it up. How was it that in the reporting on the ‘liberation’ of the people of Iraq, we saw the liberatees only from the gunhole of a moving Abrams tank? Schechter explains this later, lubricious twist, in the creation of the frightening new Military-Entertainment Complex.” – Greg Palast, BBC reporter and author, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” "I'm your biggest fan in Iraq. Your book is amazing. Amazing. I started reading it last night and I haven't been able to stop reading. I spent the night sitting up in front of the computer, reading page after page. I only stopped when the electricity went off and then I tried sleeping- but sleep wouldn't come because I kept thinking of some of the things you had written – especially about the embedded journalists. ... I hope it sells 3 million copies and that it becomes required reading everywhere. Not for your sake, for our sake and the sake of all the ignorant people out there. I don't know how many fans you have- or how many you will eventually have but I mean every single word. I lived through that incredible lie." – "Rivervend", an Iraqi woman blogger who writes "Baghdad Blogging" EMBEDDED BOOKS BYDANNYSCHECHTER Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror, Rowman & Littlefield, USA 2003. Inovatio Books, Bonn, Germany 2002. The More You Watch The Less You Know, Seven Stories Press, l997, l999. News Dissector: Passions Pieces and Polemics 2000, Akashic Books (2000), Electronbooks.com (l999) Falun Gong’s Challenge to China, Akashic Books, 1999, 2000. Hail to the Thief, How the Media "Stole" the 2000 Presidential Election (Ed. with Roland Schatz), Inovatio, 2000, Germany, Electronpress.com. U.S.A. EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OFMASS DISTRACTION HOW THE MEDIA FAILED TO COVER THE WAR ON IRAQ DANNY SCHECHTER NEWS DISSECTOR / MEDIACHANNEL.ORG WEAPONS OFMASS DECEPTION Published in Canada by COLDTYPE.NET, a division of News Design Associates Inc. 10469 Sixth Line, RR#3,Georgetown, Ontario L7G 4S6, Canada Tel: (905) 702-8600 / (905) 702-8526 / Fax: (905) 702-8527 Email: [email protected] Web site: http://www.coldtype.net In association with MEDIACHANNEL.ORG 575 Eighth Avenue, New York, New York l0018 USA Tel: (212) 246-0202 x3006 Email: [email protected] All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrievable system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise except for reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Copyright ©2003 Danny Schechter DEDICATION To all who fought and the many who died to penetrate the "fog" of war in search of truths hidden in the sands of Iraq, the files of government agencies and the studios of media companies. And to my colleagues at Globalvision and Mediachannel.org for giving me a platform for these dissections. And to Tony Sutton of ColdType.net for believing that others should have access to them. And, as in all my earlier books, to my daughter Sarah Debs Schechter who knew that there was something horribly flawed in what she was seeing, hearing and reading about this "war." Hopefully, this work will help her understand why and how. CONTENTS BOOKS BY DANNY SCHECHTER . 2 OF GERALDO . 145 DEDICATION . 4 WORDS OF THE WISE . 161 PROLOGUE TO A POST LOG . 9 CHAPTER SEVEN: WAR KILLS JOURNALISTS INTRODUCTION JOURNALISTS BECOME THE STORY; BLOGGING THE WAR AWAY . 15 WAR PRIORITIES SHIFT; NOAM CHOMSKY’S VIEW; RIP; KELLY AND BLOOM . 165 CHAPTER ONE: WINNERS AND LOSERS ANOTHER WAR OF WORDS . 186 TRAINING THE MEDIA FOR WAR: A PENTAGON PRESS REPORT . 31 CHAPTER EIGHT: SO THIS IS VICTORY? REPORTS ON THE POST-WAR WAR: ASSESSING THE LOOTING OF BAGHDAD; WAS THIS EVEN THE AFTERMATH AS A WAY OF SEEING HOW A WAR? WERE JOURNALISTS MURDERED? WELL THE MEDIA PREPARED US FOR WAS BBC BIASED? . 191 THE OUTCOME . 33 THE STATUE SPECTACLE: WE WANTED IT TO BE CHAPTER TWO: PRODUCING THE WAR TRUE BUT IT WASN’T, BY TED RALL . 228 HOW A MEDIA-MILITARY MERGER PRODUCED CHAPTER NINE: REMEMBERING THE FALLEN THE WAR AND PREPARED US TO WANT TO SEE IT . 51 ALL FOR EDIA RIMES RIBUNAL WORDS FROM THE WISE . 73 C M C T ; COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS REPORT; CHAPTER THREE: COUNTDOWN TO WAR ROSTER OF THE DEAD AND THE MISSING . 233 DISCREDITING THE U.N.; DENIGRATING THE FACTS FROM FAIR . 237 INSPECTORS; PREACHING TO THE COUNTRY. 77 CHAPTER 10: WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT? CHAPTER FOUR: MOBILIZING OPINION A CALL FOR MEDIA ACTIVISM . 241 PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHES; RIGHTWING AFTERMATH: THE SUMMER OF SUMMING UP . 243 LIBERATION THEOLOGY; MEDIA DEBATES; PREPARING THE COVERAGE . 91 MANHUNTS AND MEDIA MYOPIA . 251 15 BUNGLED STORIES (EDITOR AND PUBLISHER) . 107 LETTER TO ED MURROW . 257 THE NETWORKS AND NEWS MANAGEMENT. 262 CHAPTER FIVE: BATTLEFIELD BLUES THE QUAGMIRE DEBATE; TV GENERALS DISSENT; CHAPTER 11: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES TALKING ENDLESSLY ABOUT “THE PLAN;” EMBEDS THE IRAQ WAR ON TV: A SPLIT REALITY ON PARADE; CENTCOM NEWS NETWORK . 111 (FROM MEDIA TENOR IN BONN) . 267 WAR AS ONE BIG JOKE . 141 LAST WORDS: DECEPTION AS POLICY . 279 CHAPTER SIX: SURROUNDING BAGHDAD CREDITS INVASION ENCOUNTERS RESISTANCE; THE FALL ABOUT THE AUTHOR: DANNY SCHECHTER . 283 AND RISE OF PETER ARNETT; THE DEBEDDING ABOUT COLDTYPE.NET . 284 7 PROLOGUE TO A POST LOG IT is safe to predict that the debate over the icy, the United States refused to release any fig- rationale for and effects of the 2003 war on ures or even estimates. The United Nations was Iraq will fester for decades to come. Why did tracking the problem. At the end of May, their the United States act as it did? Did Saddam agencies were guestimating that the toll may Hussein’s Iraq ever really represent a threat to surpass ten thousand, a stunningly large num- world security? Was Baghdad seriously violat- ber, considering all of the assurances given that ing United Nations restrictions on weapons of every effort would be made to limit damage to mass destruction? Did these weapons still the society and its long suffering civilian popu- exist when the war began? Did Washington’s lation. pre-emptive invasion, at a cost of $917,744, According to Ian Bruce in the Glasgow Her- 361.55, according to Pentagon accountants, ald: “The toll will exceed the 3500 civilians free Iraq’s long-suffering people? killed in the 1991 Gulf war and the 1800 to 2000 Other questions: what was the full and final innocent Afghans known to have perished dur- costs in lives, military and civilian, limbs, and ing the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban and destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, economy wipe out al Qaeda’s training camps.” Haidar and cultural treasures? Did that country’s peo- Taie, who runs the Red Crescent’s tracing ple really welcome the “liberation” promised to department in Baghdad, said: “We just don’t them in some 31,800,000 leaflets dropped on know for certain. But thousands are dead, their country along with an unknown amount thousands more injured or missing. It will take of deadly ordnance. (Newsweek estimated that time to reach a definitive count. It was certainly all of this paper could have been put to more a disaster for civilians caught in the fighting.” practical use in the form of 120,454 rolls of toi- “The War For Iraqi Freedom,” as the Penta- let paper.) gon and at least two networks branded it, went The war had its official statisticians just as on for 720 hours. It was well documented by sporting events do. They counted everything, the Pentagon, which transmitted 3,200 hours including the 423,988 members of U.S. military of video and took 42,000 pictures, most of units deployed (as opposed to less than 10 per- which the public did not, and may never, view. cent of that number in other forces, just 42,987 What we did see, and read about the Iraq War “foreign” troops rustled up into what was clum- is the subject of this book fashioned in the heat sily labeled a “coalition of the willing.” of the conflict. If journalism is a matter of course What was unaccounted for, at least by the considered the first draft of history, this is one of invaders and rarely shown in western media, the first book-length attempts to focus on the were the civilian casualties.