PROPAGANDA WAR MISFIRES
One of the leading analysts of war propaganda posing as journalism, Philip Knightly (author of "The First Casualty") writes in the Guardian today that the "coalition’s" propaganda war is a mess. "Iraq is winning the propaganda war against the coalition. The British government admits it. David Blunkett, the home secretary, says we are regarded as the villains. The government's spin specialist Alastair Campbell has called for a media shake-up, and in Kuwait the coalition's Psychological Operations Tactical Group for Special Ground Forces Command (Psyops) is working on an emergency plan to regain the propaganda initiative.
"Everything has gone wrong on the propaganda front. The widespread coverage of the deaths of British servicemen at the hands of their US allies, the shooting by US troops of Iraqi women and children, horrific TV footage from al-Jazeera of Iraqi civilians killed in bombing raids on Baghdad, the contradictory statements from the military briefers, and the failure of Iraqis to turn out to welcome their "liberators" …
"But the most devastating assessment of the coalition's propaganda failure came in a recent Russian-intercepted secret Psyops report analyzing the effectiveness of the coalition's campaign to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Using Iraqi TV broadcasts, intercepted radio communications, interrogations of Iraqi POWs and summaries of British and US media coverage, Psyops concluded that Iraqis were more stable and confident than they were in the last days before the war. The report said that the coalition had little time to change this attitude before what Psyops people call "a resistance ideology" developed, making an eventual coalition victory even more difficult.
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