- Since The Beginning Of The War In Iraq, The US Has Sought
Not Just To Influence But To Control All Information, From Both Friend
And Foe
-
- "Information dominance" came of age during
the conflict in Iraq. It is a little discussed but highly significant part
of the US government strategy of "full spectrum dominance", integrating
propaganda and news media into the military command structure more fundamentally
than ever before.
-
- In the past, propaganda involved managing the media.
Information dominance, by contrast, sees little distinction between command
and control systems, propaganda and journalism. They are all types of "weaponized
information" to be deployed. As strategic expert Colonel Kenneth Allard
noted, the 2003 attack on Iraq "will be remembered as a conflict in
which information fully took its place as a weapon of war".
-
- Nor is information dominance something dreamt up by the
Bush White House. It is a mainstream US military doctrine that is also
embraced in the UK. According to US army intelligence there are already
15 information dominance centres in the US, Kuwait and Baghdad.
-
- Both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office in this country have staff assigned to "information operations".
In future conflicts, according to the MoD, "maintaining morale as
well as information dominance will rank as important as physical protection".
-
- Achieving information dominance according to American
military experts, involves two components: first, "building up and
protecting friendly information; and degrading information received by
your adversary". Seen in this context, embedding journalists in Iraq
was a clear means of building up "friendly" information. An MoD-commissioned
commercial analysis of the print output produced by embeds shows that 90%
of their reporting was either "positive or neutral".
-
- The second component is "the ability to deny, degrade,
destroy and/or effectively blind enemy capabilities". "Unfriendly"
information must be targeted. This is perhaps best illustrated by the attack
on al-Jazeera's office in Kabul in 2001, which the Pentagon justified by
claiming al-Qaida activity in the al-Jazeera office. As it turned out,
this referred to broadcast interviews with Taliban officials. The various
attacks on al-Jazeera in Kabul, Basra and Baghdad should also be seen in
this context.
-
- The evidence is that targeting of independent media and
critics of the US is widening. The Pentagon is reportedly coordinating
an "information operations road map", drafted by the Information
Operations Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to Captain Gerald
Mauer, the road map notes that information operations would be directed
against an "adversary".
-
- But when the paper got to the office of the undersecretary
of defence for policy, it was changed to say that information operations
would attempt to "disrupt, corrupt or usurp" adversarial decision-making.
"In other words," notes retired US army colonel Sam Gardiner,
"we will even go after friends if they are against what we are doing
or want to do."
-
- In the UK, according to Major Nigel Smith of the 15 Psychological
Operations Group, staffing is to be expanded and strategic information
operations "will take on a new importance" as a result of Iraq.
Targeting unfriendly information is central to the post-conflict phase
of reconstruction too. The collapse of distinctions between independent
news media and psychological operations is striking.
-
- The new TV service for Iraq was paid for by the Pentagon.
In keeping with the philosophy of information dominance it was supplied,
not by an independent news organisation, but by a defence contractor, Scientific
Applications International Corporation (Saic). Its expertise in the area
- according to its website - is in "information operations" and
"information dominance".
-
- The Saic effort ran into trouble. The Iraqi exile journalists
it employed for the Iraq Media Network (at a cost $20m over three months)
were too independent for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Within weeks,
occupying authority chief Paul Bremer introduced controls on the IMN. He
also closed down some Iraqi-run newspapers and radio and TV stations. According
to Index on Censorship, IMN managers were told to drop the readings from
the Koran, the vox-pops (usually critical of the US invasion) and even
to run their content past the wife of a US-friendly Iraqi Kurdish leader
for a pre-broadcast check. The station rejected the demands.
-
- But this did not stop Bremer, and further incidents culminated
in a nine-point list of "prohibited activity" issued in June
2003. Bremer would reserve the power to advise the IMN on any aspect of
its performance, including matters of content and the power to hire and
fire staff. Thus, as Index on Censorship notes: "The man in absolute
authority over the country's largest, richest and best-equipped media network
is also his own regulator and regulator of his rivals, with recourse to
the US Army to enforce his rulings."
-
- Attacks on al-Jazeera continue. In September 2003 the
Iraq governing council voted to ban reports from al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya
on the grounds that they incite violence. As evidence of this, one member
of the Iraqi National Congress who voted for the ban, noted that the TV
stations describe the opposition to the occupation as the resistance. "They're
not the resistance, they are thugs and criminals," he said.
-
- But the Iraqi people appear not to share this view of
al-Jazeera. Those with satellite access to al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya are
more likely to trust them over IMN. As the experience of IMN shows, achieving
dominance is not always a straightforward matter. This is precisely why
the strategy for "unfriendly information" is to "deny, degrade
and destroy".
-
- - David Miller is editor of Tell Me Lies: Propaganda
and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1118402,00.html
|
