The Unseen War
By Michael Massing
1.
The Coalition Media Center, at the Saliyah military base in Doha, Qatar, seems designed to be as annoying and inconvenient as possible for reporters. To get there from the center of town, you have to take a half-hour ride through a baking, barren expanse of desert. At the gate, you have to submit your electronic equipment to a K-9 search, your bags to inspection, and your body to an X-ray scan. You then have to wait under the scorching sun for a military escort, who, after checking your credentials, takes you to the press bus. When the bus is full, you're driven the two hundred yards to the media center. The bus lets you off in a concrete courtyard surrounded by a seven-foot-high wall topped by barbed wire. If you stand on a ledge and look out, you'll see two rows of identical warehouse-like buildings?the offices of General Tommy Franks and the US Central Command.

Journalists, though, never get inside these buildings, for they're restricted to the windowless media center, which is sixty feet long, brightly lit, and heavily air-conditioned. Inside the front door is a large space with long counters at which reporters for second-tier news organizations work. Extending out from this area are three corridors housing the offices of the TV networks, wire services, and major newspapers. Along the back wall is the door to the UK press office. Knock on it and moments later an officer in fatigues will appear and field your request. By contrast, the door to the US office, to the right of the main entrance, opens onto an empty corridor, and if you knock on it no one will answer. Instead, you have to phone the office and leave your request with the officer on duty. If you're lucky, someone will come out and speak with you.


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During the war, many of the reporters crammed into the center would dial the US number, seeking to check facts, get some background information, or ferret out a bit of news. Usually, they'd be disappointed. Getting confirmation for even the most basic facts filed by reporters in the field would often prove difficult. Occasionally, a senior press officer would emerge to speak with a reporter, and within minutes a ravenous mob would surround him, desperately seeking to shake loose something even remotely newsworthy.

The daily briefings were even less helpful. Held in a large conference hall with the now-famous $250,000 stage set, the briefings were normally conducted by Vincent Brooks, a tall, erect, one-star general who is impeccably polite, unflappable, and remarkably uninformative. Each briefing would begin with a few choice videos ?black-and-white clips of "precision-guided" missiles unfailingly hitting their targets, and color shots of American troops distributing aid to grateful Iraqis. No matter what was taking place inside Iraq, Brooks would insist that the coalition remained "on plan" and that morale remained "sky high." Sometimes the general offered outright misinformation. When, for instance, the Palestine Hotel was hit by a US tank shell, which killed two journalists and wounded several others, Brooks asserted that US forces had come under fire from the hotel. This was denied by the journalists on the scene, and the commander of the unit that fired the shell, in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, made no mention of being fired on from the hotel. Still, Colin Powell, citing no evidence, later repeated the claim that "our forces responded to hos-tile fire, appearing to come from" the hotel.

The Coalition Media Center is managed by Jim Wilkinson, a fresh-faced, thirty-two-year-old Texan and a protégé of Bush's adviser Karen Hughes. Wilkinson made his mark during the 2000 presidential election when he spoke on behalf of GOP activists protesting the Florida ballot recount. To run the media center in Doha, Wilkinson, a member of the naval reserve, appeared in the same beige fatigues as the career officers working under him. Nonetheless, the center had all the earmarks of a political campaign, with press officers always "on message." Many journalists, accustomed to the smoothly purring Bush political machine, were struck by the heavy-handedness of the Doha operation. A week into the war, journalists began writing their own "media pieces," as they called them, com-paring the briefings to the infamous "Five O'Clock Follies" of the Vietnam War.

Rarely, though, did those stories examine how well the press, radio, and television themselves were doing, and that was unfortunate. For, with more than seven hundred registered journalists, the Coalition Media Center offered a superb opportunity for observing how reporters of different nations approached the war, and for understanding the many shortcomings in their coverage.

2.
So stingy is Centcom with information that, at the daily briefings, the questions asked were often more revealing than the answers given. Those posed by European and Arab journalists tended to be more pointed and probing than those from the Americans. The Europeans and Arabs would ask about the accuracy of US missiles, the use of weapons containing depleted uranium, the extent of civilian casualties. The Americans would ask questions such as: "Why hasn't Iraqi broadcasting been taken out?" "Is Iraq using weapons prohibited by the UN?" "Can you offer more details on the rescue of Jessica Lynch?" One US network correspondent told me that she was worried that, if she pushed too hard at the briefings, she would no longer be called on. Jim Wilkinson was known to rebuke reporters whose copy he deemed insufficiently supportive of the war; he darkly warned one correspondent that he was on a "list" along with two other reporters at his paper.

After each briefing, correspondents for the major satellite networks would stand up in back and give a live report before a camera. Sometimes I took a seat nearby and listened. The British correspondents invariably included some analysis in their reports. After one briefing, for instance, James Forlong of Sky News observed that Tommy Franks had left the briefing to his "fourth in command" (i.e., Brooks), and that "very little detail had been provided." Referring to a question about a friendly-fire incident, Forlong noted that Brooks had little to say other than that the incident was "under investigation." CNN's Tom Mintier, by contrast, would faithfully recite Brooks's main points, often with signs of approval. "They showed some amazing footage of a raid on a palace," he said when introducing a clip that had been shown at the briefing, one of many that CNN aired.



Such differences in style were apparent in the broadcasts themselves. Switching stations in my hotel, I often found myself drawn to the BBC. With two hundred reporters, producers, and technicians in the field, its largest deployment ever, the network offered no-nonsense anchors, tenacious correspondents, perceptive features, and a host of commentators steeped in knowledge of the Middle East, in contrast to the retired generals and colonels we saw on American TV. Reporters were not afraid to challenge the coalition's claims. When an anchor asked Paul Adams, a BBC defense correspondent, whether Iraqi fighters were using "quasi-terrorist tactics"?a common Centcom charge?he said it was more appropriate to speak of "asymmetrical warfare," i.e., the use of unconventional tactics by forces that were badly outgunned. At the same time, the BBC presented many stories about the horrors of Saddam's rule. In one chilling piece, it had an interview with an Iraqi woman in London whose family members had been murdered, raped, or tortured by the regime.


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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16293

Offcourse they do. And Iraq had thousands of tons of biological weapons and hundreds of robots with nuclear warheads.

Try to find some independent source of news or move out off USA. Than you will see all the lies you are being told by your government :thumbsup

Uh.. you are aware that Kim Jong Il admitted (not so much admitted as boasted in fact) to having a nuke a couple of months ago?

They also made it clear they've reactivated a previously shut down reactor which produces weapons grade plutonium.

I just hope Kim has the balls to use it when the US decides to invade.

Who fucking cares.

Kisses,

SexySarah

All they admitted was starting up reactors that could produce plutonium for warheads. But according toi N. Korea they only did this because they need energy after USA stoped oil delivery.
I am not saying they are not producing weapons but who knows? Definitely not Bush :1orglaugh

Funny how the US didn't seem to mind when a US company (with Donald Rumsfeld on the board of directors) got the contract to build the reactor in the first place, knowing full well that it could be used to produce weapons grade plutonium.

Place a large enough pile of cash in front of a politician, and there's a lot of things they don't seem to mind...

Found any WMD's in Iraq yet? :1orglaugh

Kisses,

SexySarah

And offcourse they knew everything about Iraqs weapons of mass destruction! Rumsfeld still have all receipts :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Did anyone see the segment on North Korea on 60 Minutes a few months back? The North Koreans are starving to death. They said that mothers there poison their children rather than have them die a slow painful death by starvation. The only thing they have in great quantities is cheap rot gut liquor that keeps the masses happy. They said all the North Koreans love their leader cuz it's been drummed into their heads that he is a good guy looking out for their best interests. I know everyone here doesn't believe a word put out by the U.S. press, but I thought I would just throw this into the mix.

Nuclear Weapons Program
Current Status, Updated 4/24/03
In a roundtable discussion with the United States and China in Beijing on April 24, 2003, North Korean officials admitted for the first time that they possessed nuclear weapons. Furthermore, North Korean officials claim to have reprocessed spent fuel rods and have threatened to begin exporting nuclear materials unless the United States agrees to one-on-one talks with North Korea.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html


North Korea admits nuclear arsenal


N Korea missile technology has alarmed neighbours

North Korea has said for the first time that it has nuclear weapons.
A commentary broadcast on state radio said North Korea had developed "powerful military counter-measures, including nuclear weapons" to cope with what it called mounting nuclear threats from the United States.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2485829.stm

You are now dismissed.

50 megatons

http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/common_p...-explosion.jpg

Dubya ???

quote:
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Originally posted by Gutterboy


Uh.. you are aware that Kim Jong Il admitted (not so much admitted as boasted in fact) to having a nuke a couple of months ago?

They also made it clear they've reactivated a previously shut down reactor which produces weapons grade plutonium.

I just hope Kim has the balls to use it when the US decides to invade.
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All they admitted was starting up reactors that could produce plutonium for warheads. But according toi N. Korea they only did this because they need energy after USA stoped oil delivery.
I am not saying they are not producing weapons but who knows? Definitely not Bush



Have you read it...learned it...and now know it Donnie?

Sadly, mistaken. Proponents of the missle defense shield always say stuff like that, but the truth is a bomb can be floated into any port city very easily.

All the more reason to take them out, Pakistan and Iran, too.

That sounds like a sensible, well thought out plan.

Well done.

Give that man a cookie.

Kisses,

SexySarah

Of course they have them and are pursuing creation of more and so what if they are part of the "axis of evil" and hmm..perhaps that comment caused them and Iran to accelerate their weapons programs.

Why should they fear us having nukes?..so what if we are the only country that's ever used nuclear weapons during wartime.

Why should they worry about "W" - afterall, we did find WMD's in Iraq..didn't we?

N Korea is obviously a war monger...I mean..they've been involved in one war in the past 50 years.

Sure I don't want N Korea to have nukes- their leader is a freaking looney, but I can hardly blame them for pursuing a weapons program - who the hell wouldn't with "W" breathing down your neck? :BangBang:

-joe

I was speaking about militarily...though I did not specifically say so in my sentence.