The Lincoln Plawg

Wednesday, November 13, 2002 01:39 p.m.

New York Times and Washington Post back in Tonkin Gulf routine?

There is, as I mentioned before a large doubt about the paternity of the weekend's New York Times article on Iraq war strategy. But let's overlook that for the moment and proceed to the substance (such as it is) of that article and its Tweedledee in the Washington Post.

Most notable in both pieces is the particular tone often adopted by journos in retailing military information: an ill-fitting mask of gravitas is combined with a bubbly, Boy's Own Paper fascination with, and supposed expertise in, the minutiae of defence matters: the equivalent of that familiar TV image, the hack in army fatigues, talking a good war.

Do the Times and WaPo journos know what they're talking about? Or are they just happy to have a whole bunch of gee-whizzery under their byline?

The WaPo piece starts with a monumentally Pollyanna-ish assumption, which goes unchallenged in the text (are we meant to assume a sharp editorial intake of breath? Is mindreading an entry-level skill in consuming news prose these days?):

The Bush administration has settled on a plan for a possible invasion of Iraq that .....assumes that Saddam Hussein will probably fall from power before U.S. forces enter the capital.....

For an invading force to have this as its Plan A is laugh-out-loud ridiculous. But I detect no mocking tone in the Post.

"I think ultimately this is more of a revolution that's going to happen, rather than something brought about by U.S. military power," [an administration official] said.......

If Hussein were to fall quickly, U.S. ground forces wouldn't need to assault Baghdad. "The feeling is, they'll be successful in the first phase, and then the next phase won't be necessary, because the regime will fall and a new regime will take over," said a military planner. Indeed, the U.S. intelligence community has predicted that Hussein might even be ousted before a U.S. attack is launched, once it becomes clear in Iraq that such an attack is imminent.

Clearly, as the piece goes on to point out, there is a genuine political reason to pretend in public to be making such a rash assumption - as an official pointed out:

Discussing its broad outline would help inform the Arab world that the United States is making a determined effort to avoid attacking the Iraqi people.

But that's no reason for the Post to be complicit in the deception - in such a way as to cast doubt on its judgement in other war-related matters.

When they got onto the description of the plan itself, the journos are scarcely able to keep their linen dry. (British readers will be reminded of Peter Snow and his notorious Newsnight sandpit during the 1991 Gulf War.) No doubt, vast tracts of Iraqi desert will be undefended (if the Iraqis have learnt anything from the 1991 débâcle), and those mouth-watering sub-Alamein shots of Allied armour ploughing purposefully through sand will be available on all channels. It's the rest of the armchair campaign that gives one pause.

For instance,

In the south, British forces and the U.S. Marines likely would be assigned to seize airstrips and other key facilities in the heavily Shiite section around the port city of Basra, just north of Kuwait. This aspect of the plan "gives the Shiites a chance to get organized," said a former Central Command official. The Shiites adhere to a form of Islam that is different from that of Hussein and most of the people around him, who are Sunni Muslims.

A chance to get organized sounds as if we're expecting them to form a branch of the Rotary! Given their 1991 experience, the Shiites may well feel disinclined to risk themselves for a highly unreliable and slippery putative ally. Why isn't the Post mocking US naivety on the point?

And what is one to make of this, from a defense analyst?

This is looking more and more like a Panama-style takedown, a Special Operation writ large, but with significant follow-on forces . . . to pacify any bypassed pockets, prevent too many reprisal killings of the Baathists and reduce any holdouts,

He's comparing the conquest of Iraq with the walkover that was Panama with the gracious concession of significant follow-on forces - is that the military-industrial complex's estimation of the task ahead? (Again, no hint of a titter from the Post.)

The Post goes on to mention the earlier round of Pentagon rumours/disinformation, where Rumsfeld supposedly had his inside-out hissyfit. Evidently a Mutt and Jeff operation, to make the current plan - apparently endorsed by safe pair of hands Tommy Franks - appear robust in comparison.

(The Post does deign to mention that, whilst the maximum force contemplated for the conquest of Iraq is 250,000, the numbers deployed for the rather more limited military task of ejecting the Iraqis from Kuwait in 1991 was closer to 500,000.)

And the DOD view?

"I think it is a pretty audacious and bold plan," said the Defense official who was recently briefed on it.

Those familiar with the British TV series Yes, Minister may reflect that a government decision characterised as brave is one with the responsible minister's political death warrant sealed inside it. Audacious and bold seems like the military equivalent.

The Times (with more than a little help from AP) takes an equally farcically sanguine view.

The military plan calls for the quick capture of land within Iraq

it says. But, as Shakespeare has Hotspur repost [1], to Glendower's claim that he can call Spirits from the vastie Deepe,
Why so can I, or so can any man:
But will they come, when you doe call for them?
The comparison between the incompetence and vainglory of the rebels against Henry IV and of the US Administration against Saddam is not as fanciful as it should be!

Yet the Times - that supposed bastion of the anti-war movement - buts no buts.

The plan supposedly is

building on lessons learned in Afghanistan -

a completely different war, fought under different - and, for the US, much more favourable - conditions. Analogise at your peril!

They're contemplating

a "seamless transition" from attack to a military occupation of parts of the country

to not the faintest murmur of derision from the Times.

Meanwhile

Iraqi scientists and local military officials would be encouraged to reveal the location of hidden stores of weapons of mass destruction

And when he says encouraged, this is evidently not a euphemism for cattle-prod work! It gets much worse:

One senior official, drawing on comparisons with the American occupation of Japan in 1945, said, "Our message will be that the faster we find the weapons and arrest Saddam's guys, the faster they get some normalcy."

The analogy with the Japanese occupation is as lame as any of the cavalcade trotted out

to give tone to what would otherwise be a mere vulgar brawl.

Apart from the obvious (Hirohito continued as Emperor), the governmental infrastructure and local personnel available to Macarthur and his boys will - so far as I can see - be lacking in a post-Saddam Iraq. And the homogeneity of Japan, compared with Iraq; the lack of a colonial chip on the shoulder of the Japanese; the Japanese experience of a period of something approaching democracy after World War 1. Etc, etc.

It's a risible analogy. But is the Refuseniks' Friend laughing? Not that I can see.

There's a whole lot more Cloud Cuckoo Land stuff, which the Times lets through on the nod. Virtually ever paragraph stuffed with the tendentious or the absurd.

And no clear demarcation between

what the DOD and other sources are saying; and
the inferences being drawn by the Times.

Thus Because the United States wants to help transform Iraq quickly into a liberated nation, the air campaign would be carried out to avoid the major destruction of the gulf war.
Is that a Pentagon quote? Or the sage reflection of the Times's military masterminds?

It seems that these two great newspapers have somehow mislaid their journalistic faculties. The comparison with the Tonkin Gulf Incidents is instructive - both are cited in Hallin's book [2] for their reports of the retaliatory attacks launched by Lyndon Johnson after the second (and imaginary) Incident. Both gorging on the official military-speak as voraciously as their 2002 successors.

And, Hallin says [3],

...on virtually every important point, the reporting.....was either misleading or simply false.

1 Hen IV III i (First Folio ll1578-80)
DC Hallin The Uncensored War p15
Op cit p16