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FROM THE FOREIGN PRESS
The Fourth Reich
BY IGNACIO RAMONET
—taken from La Voz de Galicia—
ALL
modern warfare has two fronts: that of the military
and that of the media. The latter, in our
hyper-informed societies, is almost more important
than the first. Because it moves events, suggests
ideas, evokes myths, creates consciousness. And
because human beings will always have an
irresistible passion for symbols.
The
long “war against international terrorism” that
President George W. Bush has launched began with a
tremendous symbolic defeat of the United States. The
monstrous attacks of that September 11, 2001,
translated into images (the aircraft-bombs
destroying the World Trade Center) of a profound
humiliation. The symbol of U.S. economic power
erased by a spectacular terrorist operation.
Since then, Washington has been searching like a
wounded lion for the authors of that infinite crime,
but also for an media image that will cause the
other one – that of the Twin Towers drowning in a
chaos of dust, blood and terror – to be forgotten.
With
that purpose Donald Rumsfeld has created in the
Pentagon a communications cell specialized in the
production of scenes whose purpose is to cause an
impact favorable to the United States on public
opinion. Its members were the ones who had the idea
last March of incorporating journalists “embedded”
in the heart of the invasion forces.
Later, when the invaders conquered Baghdad, they
came up with idea of felling the giant statue of
Saddam Hussein. They also dreamt up the big fraud of
soldier Jessica Lynch. Lastly, they staged the
announcement of the end of hostilities by President
Bush, dressed as a “Top Gun”-style war pilot, on
board an aircraft carrier and making the triumphant
affirmation: “Mission accomplished.”
But
none of those scenes had the symbolic force that was
sought. And, in addition, since the resistance has
intensified, the counter-images of helicopters shot
down and despondent soldiers has brought into doubt
the effectiveness of the official propaganda.
That
is why a total image was sought after, and bets were
placed on that of a captured Saddam Hussein.
Foreseeing this, the Pentagon studied the best way
of announcing the ex-dictator’s detention. They did
not wish to repeat the error committed at the time
of the death of Saddam’s sons.
The
Pentagon drafted an internal document, High value
target nº 1, analyzing the best way of making known
the eventual arrest of Saddam. Ex-journalist Gary
Thatcher was named to direct that announcement. He
contemplated two possibilities: Saddam dead or
Saddam alive. In the first case, a DNA
identification would be done immediately and in
Baghdad. In any case, the announcement should be
made by an Iraqi.
In
order not to make Saddam a martyr, the preferable
option was to trap him alive. To do that, once his
hideout was precisely located, gas was fed to him
through an air vent system, stunning him and
preventing him from using his weapon in defense or
to kill himself. Later, Gary Thatcher, with
particular care, envisaged the placing of images to
be circulated throughout the world.
Saddam was filmed, amateur video-style, without
sound, through an invisible mirror. The contrast was
accentuated between the ex-dictator – heavily
bearded, disheveled, dressed in black – and the
white, clinical background, with a bald, lightly
bearded doctor wearing a light-colored shirt. The
latter looms over the former and manipulates him,
delouses him and inspects his mouth wearing white
rubber gloves.
In
addition to being humiliating – and contrary to what
is established in the Geneva Convention – this
vision of a surrendered, docile, vulnerable Saddam,
with the look of an erratic, lice-ridden vagabond
(not a warlord), and being examined like a passive
patient, was aimed at Iraqi and Arab public opinion.
It is the image that kills the thousands of
narcissistic images that the ex-dictator, in his
delirious cult of personality, had exhibited in the
public spaces of Iraq.
But
it is one thing to destroy a symbol of tyranny, and
another to end the resistance.
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