On Official War News, Caveat Emptor

By Cernig

Across the pond, today, news that the Ministry of Defense lied to the British public about the reason for a crashed Hercules military transport plane is causing a stir.

The Ministry of Defence covered up the full truth about the destruction of an RAF Hercules aircraft by Iraqi insurgents to stop the enemy claiming a high-profile propaganda victory, a new report discloses.

The C-130J transport aircraft was struck by two bombs planted by militants as it landed on a temporary runway in Maysan Province in south-eastern Iraq on February 12 last year.

All 64 people on board escaped to safety but the Hercules was so badly damaged it had to be destroyed by coalition explosives experts.

At the time the MoD said the aircraft had been involved in an "incident on landing", telling some journalists there were no immediate signs of enemy action.

But a formal Board of Inquiry report, published on the MoD's website, makes it clear that planted improvised explosive devices were suspected within an hour of the blasts.

The report praises senior defence officials' "sound and well-reasoned approach" to releasing information about the incident.

It notes that this resulted in "minimal media interest" and "denied the enemy the opportunity to exploit the situation for the benefit of their IO (information operations) campaign".

Britain has no statute such as that in the US preventing the military, government or intelligence agencies conducting domestic psyops and disinformation campaigns on their own populace. But it may as well be the case that the US doesn't either. In the modern information age, a lie can travel around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

There's no statute against the military or the administration conducting psyops campaigns in Iraq - and if the media then decides to take that information as gospel for reporting in the US then that's their lookout. There's no law against using shills like Phil Sherwell at the Telegraph or Sarah Baxter at the Times to publish "anonymous US sources" saying all kinds of stuff - and if rightwing internet pundits then decide to link that report as gospel truth then that's no fault of the US governments. There's no law - technically - preventing the pentagon from keeping a stable of pet military analysts in the loop on its preferred talking points - and if those analysts then choose not to reveal their insider status when using those talking points, then that's hardly the Pentagon's fault, is it? There's no law against a military flack in Iraq sending an email to a blogger to push a preferrred narrative - the internet is international and the sender is in a foreign country where US psyops are allowed. There's no law against pressuring intelligence analysts into giving your politically-preferred answers then pushing those answers as the consensus findings of the intelligence community. There's no law against publishing to the press "information" gained from offshore torture without revealing the methods used to gain that information. In other words , there are loopholes in the US statute you could drive a tank through - and the Bush administration have, repeatedly.

Thus Pat Tilman, the whole WMD-in-Iraq fable, umpteen tales in the British press of US administration "sources" telling reporters about the perfidy of various members of the "Axis of Evil" that later turned out to be untrue, the various lurid "confrontations" with Iranian speedboats in the Gulf, the evolving tale of those "EFP's from Iran", cover-ups of friendly fire incidents and cover-ups of the military's lack of action in preventing such incidents...

There are those who will argue that giving up the psyops/disinformation weapon in the War on Terror would hamstring those fighting against barbarism. there are those who would argue the counter that if democratic, supposedly-open, nations use such tactics then we are willingly giving up one of the most important things we are supposed to be fighting for. That's an important debate and we should have it, but it remains true that the current British and American administrations have already made their decision to mislead their publics by indirect psyops - they may well feel they're doing it for the best of reasons and motives but they are doing it nonetheless - and that therefore any information from official sources about events in foreign lands are prima facie exactly as reliable and credible as the versions presented by Al Qaeda, the sadrist movement, Iran or any other "enemy". We should always mistrust and verify where we can.

Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware.