Well, according to a new story in today’s Washington Post, less than we’ve been led to believe:
BAGHDAD — Before 8,500 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers methodically swept through Tall Afar two months ago in the year’s largest counterinsurgency offensive, commanders described the northern city as a logistics hub for fighters, including foreigners entering the country from Syria, 65 miles to the west.
“They come across the border and use Tall Afar as a base to launch attacks across northern Iraq,” Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which led the assault, said in a briefing the day before it began.
When the air and ground operation wound down in mid-September, nearly 200 insurgents had been killed and close to 1,000 detained, the military said at the time. But interrogations and other analyses carried out in recent weeks showed that none of those captured was from outside Iraq. According to McMaster’s staff, the 3rd Armored Cavalry last detained a foreign fighter in June.
Strange, don’t you think? Our military launches a major offensive against insurgents in a province bordering Syria, yet fails to capture a single foreign fighter. You remember Syria, don’t you? The place from which all the non-Iraqi Jihadists are being allowed to enter Iraq to kill and maim our soldiers and innocent civilians. Or at least that’s what the Bush administration has been alleging for the last year or so, as evidenced by recent statements made by Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice here:
SECRETARY RICE: Well, on Syria, Syria has an obligation to keep the people who are killing Iraqis from coming across the border to kill innocent Iraqis and all states are saying that to Syria now. And I hope Syria will, in fact, try and be a good neighbor and try to cut off the flow of insurgents and close down training camps that are in Syria.
and here:
Addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said both Syria and Iran were allowing fighters and military assistance to reach insurgents in Iraq.
“Syria and Iran must decide whether they wish to side with the cause of war or with the cause of peace,” Rice said at a hearing called to discuss U.S. strategy in Iraq, where more than 150,000 American troops are struggling to end an insurgency.
So, if the reason we are engaging in operations along the Syrian border with Iraq is to stop foreign fighters from entering to fuel the insurgency, why didn’t we find any “foreign fighters” in this latest offensive? And why doesn’t the number of foreign fighters our troops are finding match Secretary Rice’s (and other administration officials’) rhetoric regarding Syria? Well, the aforementioned Washington Post story has a few possible answers:
The relative importance of the foreign component of Iraq’s two-year-old insurgency, estimated at between 4 and 10 percent of all guerrillas, has been a matter of growing debate in military and intelligence circles, U.S. and Iraqi officials and American commanders said. Top U.S. military officials here have long emphasized the influence of groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent network led by a Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi. But analysts say the focus on foreign elements is also an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the insurgency in the eyes of Iraqis, by portraying it as terrorism foisted on the country by outsiders.
“Both Iraqis and coalition people often exaggerate the role of foreign infiltrators and downplay the role of Iraqi resentment in the insurgency,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who is writing a book about the Iraqi insurgency.
“It makes the government’s counterinsurgency efforts seem more legitimate, and it links what’s going on in Iraq to the war on terrorism,” he continued. “When people go out into battle, they often characterize enemies in the most negative way possible. Obviously there are all kinds of interacting political prejudices they can bring out by blaming outsiders.”
In other words: lies are being told, or if you prefer, half-truths. Are some foreign Jihadists reaching Iraq from Syria? More than likely, but it also seems clear that, as time passes, the reports coming from the Bush administration, and the Department of Defense, regarding the number of foreign fighters in Iraq are greatly exaggerated. It’s not like we haven’t seen this type of thing before: reporters in Iraq, limited in their ability to move independently about the country without risking serious injury, death or kidnapping rely more and more on what military briefers tell them. A good example of this is described a bit further on in the Post’s story:
In weekly briefings for reporters in Baghdad, Maj. Gen Rick Lynch regularly displays slides showing the face of Zarqawi, whose organization has asserted responsibility for many high-profile attacks. Mug shots of the Jordanian adorn virtually every barracks and checkpoint in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.
“We do believe that the major players are in Zarqawi’s network, and that’s why we’re focusing our operations against him,” Lynch said in a recent interview. “We believe that the most lethal piece of the insurgency here is the terrorist and foreign fighters. And it’s because of the level of violence they’re willing to go to accomplish their objective, which is to derail the democratic process and discredit the Iraqi government.”
Weekly briefings that hammer relentlessly on the single name and picture of Zarqawi? Mug shots of him everywhere? Sounds like they’re disseminating propaganda rather than useful information about military plans and operations. But why should that surprise us. We’ve known for some time that our military in Iraq, and the Bush administration back in the US, have been conducting a disinformation campaign regarding the Iraq War:
The success of the military’s PSYOPS campaign can be measured by recent articles in The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor, writes Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner.
By Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, Ret.
MediaChannel.orgARLINGTON, Virginia, Dec 19, 2003 — We are seeing an orchestrated media campaign by the administration and a psychological operation aimed at the insurgents in Iraq. The success of this campaign can be measured by recent articles in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.
Looking at the nearly 100 other press reports in the five days since Saddam’s capture, one theme is clear: Saddam Hussein was captured, and the United States is on the verge of breaking the Iraqi insurgency.
But is it really?
As a former instructor at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College, I am familiar with the pattern of using the press to conduct psychological operations against internal audiences in Iraq. The technique is straightforward: plant stories or persuade media outlets to slant the news in a way that debilitates your enemy. And so far, media reports on the intelligence significance of Saddam’s capture have followed that pattern to the letter.
You can find more about Sam Gardiner’s work on this topic here, here and his detailed report on the web here.
Frankly, based on what WaPo is reporting, it seems little has changed since Col. Gardiner prepared his initial study of how Bush and the DoD have used disinformation to mislead the American Public regarding both the run-up to and the Iraq War and it’s aftermath.
So assuming this is part of a calculated disinformation campaign, what are it’s goals? While I respect the analysis, given by Anthony H. Cordesman (quoted in the Post’s story above), that such efforts are intended to build support for the Iraqi regime and link Iraq more closely to the “War on Terror,” it seems clear to me that he is omitting one glaringly obvious possibility for these claims of masses of foreign fighters coming across the Syrian border to fight our troops in Iraq. To be blunt, this could very well be another psy-ops campaign to prepare the American public for the expansion of the Iraq war into Syria.
One would have to by deaf, dumb and blind not to recognize that the level of aggressive and militaristic talk toward Syria has been ratcheted up by Bush administration officials and Military spokespersons over the last year. Speculative reports in the blogosphere, as well in many “reputable” publications, have bruited about for months the possibility of Bush’s plans to attack Syria and effect regime change. It seems only logical to suspect that these reports, constantly playing up the role of foreign fighters, and Syrian support (or tolerance) of them, is part and parcel of a larger scheme to effect regime change in Syria through the use of military force, if deemed necessary.
Let’s hope that this time the media and the public don’t buy into the Bush/Cheney disinformation campaign for more war in the Middle east.
