The "Elimination" of Zarqawi: A New Episode of the Media War---
By Danny Schechter
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 09 June 2006

Timing is everything. To the managers of the Iraq War, perception has
always trumped reality. From the beginning it was a war of media stunts -
the attempt to assassinate Saddam with 50 cruise missiles before the
invasion, the Shock and Awe, the bringing down of the statues, Jessica
Lynch, Saddam in the hole, the purple-fingered Iraqi voters and many other
events staged for media consumption.

The essence of information/media warfare is to seize the advantage,
frame the story, and capture the audience's imagination. Its been a key
part of modern warfare from the set-up flags of Iwo Jima in World War II
to that not-so-safe house in Baquba in Iraq.

And now we have the bloodied head of the feared Zarqawi displayed on TV
by the very military that will not allow us to see the American dead
coming home. He was brought down by not one but two 500 pound bombs, in an
operation that CNN tells us cost $500,000 and has been under way for
months.

What a coup! What a show! And what an event for Iraqi "leaders" to show
off, using terms like he has been "eliminated." Within hours, the more
polished US military spinmeisters were showing the airstrikes at a press
conference, declaring a "major victory" and pronouncing another "turning
point."

Think also of the timing. Yes, they think about timing all the time.
Timing is, as I have said, everything. A day earlier, the NY Times had the
defeat of the CIA-backed warlords in Somalia on page one. The day and week
before, it was All the Haditha, All the Time, with many commentators like
Paul Rodgers, to cite one example, arguing that responsibility for the
crimes and the cover-up goes way up the chain of command.

At the Pentagon, this was seen as Not Good. Not good at all. In fact, a
very public opinion-conscious administration was aware, had to be aware,
that a new AP poll was coming out reporting that well over 50% of the
American public was sick of the war.

"The poll, taken Monday through Wednesday before news broke that U.S.
forces had killed al-Zarqawi, found that 59 percent of adults say the
United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq - the highest level
yet in AP-Ipsos polling."

How do you get those folks back on the proverbial reservation? How do
you turn around such a public relations disaster?

The answer: Feed the public a very public miracle, something to wave
the flag about again.

What better time to pull a rabbit out of the hat and dominate the news
cycle by burying the bad news with spectacular good news right out of
Mission Impossible. It's time to trot out the oldest of PR formulas,
called "change the subject."

Yesterday morning, they changed it, with AP reporting: "With al-Zarqawi
out of the way and the new government in place, some Sunni Arab leaders
may be emboldened to resume a dialogue they started last fall - exchanges
sunk by al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq."

According to Raw Story, the hunt for Zarqawi had been under way for a
long time - a fact, of course, disclosed way after the fact.

According to military and intelligence sources, five of Zarqawi's men
were picked up in early May by an already ongoing effort by an elite US
special ops force, known by some as Gray Fox and by others as Task Force
145, which had been scouring Iraq for Zarqawi since the insurgency began.
HMMMM ... Isn't "Gray Fox" a perfect name in the age of Fox News?

So the military likely knew where he was in early May. ("Vee have ways
of getting you to talk!") But rather then reeling him in then, they waited
for a more opportune moment inorder to maximize the impact ... A more
opportune time like June 8!

Significantly, the "good guys" moved just as a trifecta of bad news
stories was souring the public on the War on Terror

Their new message of the day quickly became "Gotcha," recalling L. Paul
Bremer's announcement of the capture of Saddam with an upbeat, "We got
him."

Will the Tide Turn?

The implication, of course, echoed on every major media outlet, is that
now the tide will turn.

No one remembered or mentioned an NBC story aired on March 2, 2004,
that reported the administration had three opportunities to kill Zarqawi
and didn't. NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski revealed back
then:

NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had
several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill
Zarqawi himself - but never pulled the trigger.
Hmmmmm ...

The unquestioned assumption in the mainstream is that Zarqawi is Al
Qaeda and since, everyone hates Al Qaeda, with him out of the way peace is
at hand, the insurgency will be history and Iraqi Freedom will arrive at
last.

Not so fast.

Professor Juan Cole, who knows more about Iraq than any ten TV
journalists, was quick to point out:

There is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in
Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited
everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along
over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always
easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than
local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don't expect the guerrilla war to
subside any time soon.
The key words again: "just a sort of branding," just another way of
saying that show biz has infiltrated news biz with Zarqawi playing the
role of the evil pirate that everyone can blame for any crimes they want.
In fact as Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Middle East Human right activist points out,
the press has distorted his relationship to the resistance:

Zarqawi was not a leader of the Iraqi resistance/insurgency. In fact, the
leadership of the Iraqi resistance condemned Zarqawi and company. US
intelligence itself believes that most of the resistance is home grown and
not linked to Zarqawi/Al-Qaeda. This was intentionally obfuscated in the
media parroting of government triumphalist PR.
The Nation's David Corn also argues the resistance will fight on:

His death - brought about by a US air strike that was apparently ordered
after a captured Zarqawi lieutenant disclosed Zarqawi's favorite hiding
places - may not mean much in terms of bringing peace, democracy and
stability to Iraq. His Al Qaeda in Iraq - which was estimated to number no
more than several hundred fighters - made up the smallest slice of the
insurgency. His departure will not have much impact on the forces fueling
the fighting and chaos in Iraq.
On the right, the news rapidly became grist for talking points in the
ditto head echo chamber. Here's a smirking comment in a blog called Red
State:

My guess is that he is not going to find those 72 virgins either. He may
find a bunch of disgruntled suicide bombers who didn't get their virgins!
My impression is that there aren't a lot of sweet virgins in hell. Abu is
going to burn in hell for some time, perphaps forever!

Furthermore, he was killed because of a tip from an Iraqi citizen. This
morning, Dan Seanor [sic], former coalition spokesman, said that tips are
coming in from all over Iraq.
Tipping Point?

What about the Tipping point argument, Malcolm Kendal Smith in England
writes:

The anti-war movement will not feel sorry in any way over Zarqawi's
death. While we have always defended the right of Iraqis under
international law to resist the US and British occupation of their
country, we have never supported the use of tactics which target innocent
Iraqi civilians, of the kidnapping of aid workers such as Margaret Hassan,
or the murder of journalists who have died in record numbers trying to
report therealities of life in Iraq since the war in 2003.

Zarqawi and his terrorism were a consequence of the illegal invasion of
Iraq. As were the 1,400 deaths by violent means recorded in May 2006 by
Baghdad's central morgue alone. As were the numerous atrocities committed
by the US military, the names of which are engraved forever in history:
Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Tal Afar, Haditha and many more ...

Zaqawi's death will no more be a turning point for Iraq than any of the
"new beginnings" proclaimed by Bush and Blair, because the chaos,
destruction and slaughter in Iraq can only end when their source is
removed - i.e., when all the occupying troops leave Iraq and Iraqis are
free to decide for themselves how they want their country to be governed.
Not everyone on the left in the UK feels this way. Jonathan Steele of
the Guardian believes that "The death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi offers
Iraq's government a chance, long term, to fix the mess created by the U.S.
and Britain."

What About the Rest of Us?

These events and the continuing horrors there may not mobilize a
war-weary country, as Bob Herbert noted in the New York Times:

For the smug, comfortable, well-off Americans, it doesn't seem to matter
how long the war in Iraq goes on - as long as the agony is endured by
others. If the network coverage gets too grim, viewers can always switch
to the E! channel (one hand on the remote, the other burrowing into a bag
of chips) to follow the hilarious antics of Paris, Britney, Brangelina et
al.
And no facts, no revelations, no exposes will dislodge the hard core
pro-war ideologues for whom no crime cannot be excused or ignored. Here's
Gordon Sawyer writing on a web site in Georgia excusing the atrocities in
Haditha:

Let me ask you: does it make you sick in the pit of your stomach to read
or hear about our GIs being investigated for possible criminal charges
because they shot someone in the heat of battle? These are our brightest
and best who volunteered to defend our freedom, and here they are in
Haditha, Iraq, doing the job we-the-people asked them to do. And what do
we know about the situation last November 19 in which some Iraqis were
killed. First we know Haditha is a hotbed for the bad guys ...

This could have happened to any one of the military people we have in
Iraq ... any one of the soldiers of Charlie Company (My Lai?), or any of
the young Marines from our area.
Gordon is no doubt happy today with Zarqawi the Horrible out of the
way.

Unfortunately, whether he likes it or not, the bloodshed and the war
will continue, and those who committed crimes there, on all sides, will
eventually, Jesus, Moses and Allah willing, be brought to justice.

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News Dissector Danny Schechter is the blogger in chief at
Mediachannel.org. His latest book is "When News Lies" about the war and
media coverage. See www.wmdthefilm.com. Comments to
Dissector@mediachannel.org

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