WAR ON IRAK

Rense: Intelligence Report #2

PHILADELPHIA March 22, 2002, 19:10 pm - The war against Iraq is being conducted by the Anglo-American coalition in an atmosphere of complete information vacuum. Turn on the CNN, MSNBC, FOX or any other major news network and the picture is the same everywhere - no news.
Yesterday, I was flipping through the hundreds of channels offered by my satellite TV service in hopes of finding any new information about the war in Iraq. CNN was showing photos and headlines from some Kuwaiti newspaper. After talking for half-an-hour about this newspaper and looking at the print from every possible angle, the CNN "field reporter" pulled out one more Kuwaiti newspaper and talked about it for another fifteen minutes. That was pathetic even for the CNN.
The complete lock down by the coalition command on the flow of information is rather unusual. Normally, the military would at least actively use the media for disinformation purposes, as the US military did during the first Persian Gulf War and during the bombing of Yugoslavia (and during all those dozens of other armed conflicts in between). But a complete absence of any significant news makes one very suspicious: how are things really going in Iraq? Is Saddam really losing control of the country and of his troops? Are the Americans and Brits really in Basra and Umm Quasar? Did all the planes really return to their bases as the Pentagon officials in Washington say?

And then there are some very lame attempts at propaganda by the US military. Consider the false report about the entire Iraqi 51st Infantry Division surrendering to the coalition troops. An entire division surrendered, really? This must be huge news. There must be hundreds of videos all over the world's news networks showing hordes of demoralized and hungry Iraqi troops. There must be hundreds of interviews with the Iraqis themselves and much more footage of all the destroyed and abandoned armor and artillery numbering in hundreds.

Where in the hell is all this stuff? All we got was one or two lame staged videos shot by the military showing a few dozen Iraqis half of whom are not even wearing any uniforms. For all I know they may be civilians or not even Iraqis. There is no footage of any weapons - was the entire division unarmed? And then, of course, all the speculation fueled by official US government reports of a possible missile strike that might have killed Saddam. As Rumsfeld put it: "He [Saddam] is either dead or alive." Yeah, no shit.