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Seattlepi.com OPINION

Friday, May 30, 2003

Lights, camera, rescue
By STEVE LUDWIG
GUEST COLUMNIST

Contentious at its inception, confusing in its execution and devastating in its effect, the invasion of Iraq reeked of impending disaster. Iraqis resisted, sandstorms slowed the advance, "smart" weapons hit markets and residences and U.S. soldiers were taken prisoner. An impending humanitarian crisis loomed, as Basra and later Baghdad were deprived of water and electricity.

Then the miracle occurred. The damsel-in-distress was rescued (Pvt. Jessica Lynch) and the evil tyrant was pulled down and beheaded while joyous Iraqis celebrated (Saddam Hussein's statue at Baghdad's Firdos Square). It was a feel-good ending to an otherwise disturbing script.

The press raved: "This story is 'Mission: Impossible,' but it's real" ... (an NBC official commenting on the Lynch rescue in reference to a possible made-for-TV movie on the affair). "After Saddam's tumble, Americans could finally gaze enthusiastically at their TV screens," (Post-Intelligencer columnist Joe Copeland).

We do want to feel good, to believe that we are good. We want to be seen as virtuous liberators, not conquerors. Yet these two signature stories from the invasion of Iraq are, in fact, too good to be true.

Shortly after the world was wowed by TV coverage of the toppling of Saddam's statue, doubts were raised. A Reuters photo of the square was circulated showing a much smaller crowd than the close-up TV footage implied. Eyewitness accounts belied the news coverage of a "jubilant" crowd: " ... it happened at only about 300 meters from where I was, and it was a very small crowd. The rest of the square was almost empty, and when we inquired as to where the crowd came from, it was from Saddam City (a poor neighborhood some distance away). In other words, it was a rent-a-crowd" (Rev. Neville Watson, interviewed on SBS-TV, Australia).

British columnist Robert Fisk, writing from Baghdad on April 11 for The Independent, described the statue episode as " ... the most staged photo opportunity since Iwo Jima." And this from David Robie, senior lecturer at Auckland University of Technology: "I watched BBC World in the lead-up to the toppling. The square was largely empty except for three strategically positioned U.S. Abrams tanks and an armored personnel carrier plus a small paltry crowd of 100 or so, many of then apparently journalists. A BBC World news presenter kept asking, 'Where is everybody?' "

As for Jessica Lynch, her "heroic" rescue seems also to have been a sham staged for the media. "It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'Go, go, go,' with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show -- an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors," said Iraqi Dr. Anmar Uday when interviewed by the BBC. Apparently the hospital staff even tried to deliver Lynch to the Americans prior to her "rescue," but their ambulance was repelled by gunfire from a U.S. checkpoint (available from the BBC online and reported in the May 17 P-I).

Truth and objectivity suffered other blows in this conflict but if these two "

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US Intel 'Simply Wrong' on Chemical Attack-General

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence was "simply wrong" in leading military
commanders to believe their troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons in
the Iraq war, the top U.S. Marine general there said on Friday.

But Lt. Gen. James Conway said in a teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon that it
was too early to say whether the United States also was wrong in charging that Iraq had
chemical and biological arms when the invasion began 2-1/2 months ago.

"We were simply wrong," he said of the assessment that chemical shells or other weapons
were ready in southern Iraq and likely to be used against invaders by deposed Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein's forces.

"Whether or not we are wrong at the national level I think still very much remains to be
seen. ... 'Intelligence failure,' I think, is still too strong a word to use at this point," added
the commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force who was speaking from Hilla, 62
miles south of Baghdad.

U.S. forces have been scouring Iraq -- thus far unsuccessfully -- for chemical and
biological weapons. The United States cited the need to rid Iraq of such weapons of mass
destruction as a key reason for the war.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials have
expressed confidence that such arms will be found, although Rumsfeld this week conceded
that Iraq may have decided to destroy them ahead of the invasion.

Conway said he was convinced when U.S. and British troops swept into Iraq from Kuwait
that they would come under chemical or biological attack before they reached Baghdad.

But such shells have not been found even in ammunition storage sites, he told reporters.

"It was a surprise to me then. It remains a surprise to me now that we have not uncovered
weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," said Conway.

"Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been through virtually every ammunition
supply site between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad. But they're simply not there."

U.S. and British troops carried chemical masks and protective outfits into Iraq during the
invasion and donned them frequently early in the war in anticipation of possible attack.

"What the regime was intending to do ... in terms of its use of weapons we thought we
understood," the general said.

"We certainly had our best guess -- our most dangerous, our most likely courses of action
-- that the intelligence folks were giving us."

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