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"War On Terrorism" Requires Disinformation As Part Of Strategy
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| Rumsfeld: "Sometimes, the truth … must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies." |
Report by IOL Washington
Bureau
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (IslamOnline) - Just one week before the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began October 7th, 2001, a Washington Post article quoted an unnamed military officer as saying that the then-imminent "war on terrorism" was going to require disinformation as part of its strategy.
"This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine… We're going to lie about things,'' the U.S. military officer said in the article. "If it is an information war, certainly the bad guys will lie.''
But Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, himself pledged during a September 25th Pentagon briefing that he would not lie to the press or to the American public.
"I don't recall that I've ever lied to the press," said Rumsfeld. "I don't intend to, and it seems to me that there will not be reason for it."
"Sometimes, the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies," he added, quoting -- "for the sake of background" -- former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.
"There are dozens of ways to avoid having to put yourself in a position where you're lying," Rumsfeld said during the briefing.
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Victoria Clarke, echoed Rumsfeld's pledge during a forum Wednesday, saying: "It is inappropriate for anyone to lie, especially someone in my position or in a government position."
Yet among many, the perception persists that the government is withholding information from the American press and people.
Michael Getler, ombudsman and a seasoned former reporter for the Washington Post, said there was a sense that the current "administration is dedicated to having a close hold on information." Reporters, he said, were "doing good in trying to piece together information from sources other than Rumsfeld."
Getler and Clarke were speaking among other media experts at the Brookings Institute on Wednesday, during a forum discussion on "Press Coverage and the War on Terrorism: Assessing the Media and the Government."
Panelists discussed the relationship between the media and the government, with Clarke speaking for the Department of Defense and Getler, along with former Voice of America director, Sanford Ungar, senior Brookings fellow, Stephen Hess, and CNN panelist, Bernard Kalb, responding with press concerns and opinions.
Getler expressed concern that because of the distance between the media's concerns about war reporting and the public's concerns, the government is less accountable and the gap between the media and the military is widening.
"The public wants the enemy defeated, and they're really not concerned about press concerns, about access concerns or secrecy concerns," he said. "The White House can do whatever they want to do [and have] no real cost to pay with the public."
He said this was creating "further and further distancing between what American forces do on the battlefield and what the press is able to see and say about it."
For the part of the press, Ungar admitted that there was an element of "reporting on the home football team" in the media's treatment of the U.S. military, but he said that compared with the 1991 Gulf War, "access is so much greater this time."
"In general, the public is much more honestly familiar with what's going on," he said.
Getler disagreed, saying that during the Gulf War, the media had greater access to military units, although the military took control of the filing of their stories.
He criticized the lack of access during the current conflict, despite Clarke's insistence on the "unusual" practice of "embedding" reporters with Special Forces.
"Early on, there could have been an effort to put reporters [at] a Special Forces headquarters," Getler said. "You need to stay with troops to get to know what they do."
Hess also addressed his concern about the degree to which major news comes out of the Pentagon. "Most people get most of their news from the Pentagon about the war," he said.
But Clarke claimed that the Pentagon put out as much information as it could without compromising the campaign itself. "I, for one, believe that the American people need to hear from their leaders," he said.
Clarke disagreed with a statement by Kalb that the military's view of the press as responsible for the collapse of the U.S. effort in the Vietnam War still carried through today.
She said there was a "healthy tension" between the media and military, centered on the common interest of keeping people honestly informed.
"If we agreed on everything… we'd probably be living in the Soviet Union," she said.
In terms of information provision, however, the panelists pegged logistical obstacles as responsible for the lack of information on civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
Although there has not yet been an attempt by the government at a full accounting of both civilian and enemy deaths in Afghanistan, Clarke told IslamOnline, "When we have information about civilian casualties… when we have hard information, we put it out there."
Over the course of the bombing campaign, Rumsfeld has often countered Taliban reports of casualties by dismissing them as lies, and media reports have consistently claimed while publishing reports of casualties that "the claims could not be independently verified."
Clarke and other panelists denied that by a lack of reporting on Afghan casualties, the media were advancing public support for the war effort, but Getler admitted to IslamOnline that it was a "fair question."
He cited a number of stories that illustrated bombing casualties, but said, "it's very hard to get to these places [as] the military is pursuing the military objective."
"It's a very tough question, it's an emotional one," he told IslamOnline, adding that he had not seen any reluctance to report such stories. But he acknowledged that despite such attempts, there has not been a focus on the cost of this war to Afghanistan itself.
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