by Iamwhomiam » Sat Jan 08, 2011 11:14 am
I admire your work in compiling your comment stickdog, but your reading much too much into the 2004 article that was not written. I can't better your reading comprehension and I wasn't being rude to suggest you re-read the New Yorker article.
So yes, please do follow along... First, I believe we both agree that the toppling was an orchestrated event. I believe both articles infer this was psyops in action; you do not agree with this; you believe only the 2004 article clearly states this and that the New Yorker article was itself psyops, an exercise in revisionist history, with which I disagree.
Is this correct so far?
to continue...You wrote: "LOL. "These were the first words in Arabic that the Iraqis had heard from their occupiers, and the Iraqis were indeed cheering." The article is a 100% US military public relations press release Orwellianly disguised as some sort of expose."
I disagree. You've conveniently taken my quote out of its full context. As I said, both articles indicate a psyops unit was involved, as the sentence immediately preceding that you quoted indicates: "Many of the Iraqis had moved into the street and gathered around the Humvee that carried Staff Sergeant Plesich and his psychological-operations team, because loudspeakers on Plesich’s Humvee were broadcasting in Arabic.
I doubt a psyops unit was broadcasting Arabian Rap. Undoubtedly, it was broadcasting propaganda favorable to the US cause, wouldn't you agree? Generally, this in and of itself would be called psyops.
You asked:
"Where does the writer emphasize that the PSYOPS team bragged about its responsibility in producing this widely disseminated photo op? Produce the text."
I never suggested any such thing. Please do not again attempt to put words into my mouth that I had never spoken or written. Here's what I wrote: first this: "The New Yorker article does mention Psyops being involved. We can surmise they were involved, but to what extent can only be imagined." and later, this:
"The article clearly intends to convey the event was psyops." and that the media were involved, not the least of which entailed rewriting reporters filed stories. You disagree.
I ask: "Where else in any past psyops operation do they (psyops operatives) at the moment "brag" about it having had been a psyops operation? Where is it ever even mentioned? Never. Wouldn't doing so defeat their entire purpose? Had they announced it was all psyops they would have been court-martialed for blowing the operation."
So in response you pull up an earlier story about this same incident. Long after the fact; this, the Nation article you linked to, as re-published in its entirety in the LA Times:
[url-http://articles.latimes.com/print/2004/jul/03/nation/na-statue3]Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue[/url]
THE NATION
July 03, 2004|David Zucchino
The Army's internal study of the war in Iraq criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion.
As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel -- not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images -- who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.
After the colonel -- who was not named in the report -- selected the statue as a "target of opportunity," the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member.
But Marines had draped an American flag over the statue's face.
"God bless them, but we were thinking ... that this was just bad news," the member of the psychological unit said. "We didn't want to look like an occupation force, and some of the Iraqis were saying, 'No, we want an Iraqi flag!' "
Someone produced an Iraqi flag, and a sergeant in the psychological operations unit quickly replaced the American flag.
Ultimately, a Marine recovery vehicle toppled the statue with a chain, but the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the psychological team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children.
David Zucchino
...which indicates that the psyops unit involved acted upon "one spur-of-the-moment effort" and further it states "... it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking." Neither of these statements indicate a long established plan, but rather a relatively brief period of time from its conception to fruition. And the LA Times article expresses nothing more about the psyops unit's involvement other than a quick thinking sergeant's act to replace the American flag with an Iraqi flag. If you believe there's more psyops involvement mentioned within that article, please point it out for me because I must have missed it.
You even ask and answer your own question: "Do we know for sure whether this was a completely staged INC crowd? No." I agree. We do not know who comprised the crowd, though it's safe to believe some Iraqis were there as well as dozens of reporters from around the world, Marines, Commanders and a single psyops unit..
I challenged you to find one incident in history where a psyops operative outed a psyops operation as it was occurring and furthermore stated you couldn't. Please do try. It would be a first report of a psyops operation announcing their operation while in progress, at least to my knowledge.
Here's the New Yorker reference to a psyops unit being present in the square:
"Staff Sergeant Brian Plesich, the leader of an Army psychological-operations team, arrived at Firdos after the sledgehammer-and-rope phase had begun. He saw the American flag go up and had the same reaction as Kuhlman: get an Iraqi flag up. Plesich, whom I interviewed last year, told his interpreter to find an Iraqi flag. The interpreter waded into the crowd, and soon an Iraqi flag was raised.
Plesich assumed that the Iraqi flag had got there because of his initiative, and in 2004 the Army published a report crediting him. The report was picked up by the news media (“ARMY STAGE-MANAGED FALL OF HUSSEIN STATUE,” the headline in the Los Angeles Times read) and circulated widely on the Web, fuelling the conspiracy notion that a psyops team masterminded not only the Iraqi flag but the entire toppling. Yet it was Kuhlman who was responsible for the flag. Plesich’s impact at Firdos was limited to using the loudspeakers on his Humvee to tell the crowd, once the statue had been rigged to fall, that until everyone moved back to a safe distance the main event would not take place."
A few comments relating to your response to Elephant:
You asked why Maass never asks the obvious, "...who were the handful of celebrating Iraqis, where did they come from and why were they on the square along with all the journalists? Who were these Iraqis surrounding the US soldiers that the soldiers felt perfectly safe to wrap Hussein's head in an American flag? Who was in the Army psyop team who claimed credit for this?"
Seems none of the other authors of the stories you linked to did either, but I think it's fair to say that no one knows who they were, though Maass attempted to: “It’s one thing if you don’t want a photographer in the picture and there’s one photographer in a crowd of a thousand,” Gary Knight, who now directs the Program for Narrative and Documentary Studies, at Tufts University, told me. “But when you’ve got three hundred journalists sitting on vehicles, sitting on tanks, it’s really important contextually to include that information. Most of the imagery that was published didn’t have that context, and so it was misleading." (Oh, the glare of the "whitewash" shines forth)
"Among the handful of studies of Firdos Square, the most incisive was George Washington University’s, led by Sean Aday, an associate professor of media and public affairs. It concluded that the coverage had “profound implications for both international policy and the domestic political landscape in America.” According to the study, the saturation coverage of Firdos Square fuelled the perception that the war had been won, and diverted attention from Iraq at precisely the moment that more attention was needed, not less. “Whereas battle stories imply a war is going on, statues falling—especially when placed in the context of truly climactic images from recent history—imply the war is over,” the study noted." (Not psyops?)
And to link to Sunderland's interview with Reverend Watson for support is foolish because he didn't know either:
"ALAN SUNDERLAND: Reverend Watson, welcome to Insight. You were in Baghdad right through the bombing, the arrival of the coalition troops. So tell me, what are we to make of the scenes of Iraqi jubilation on the streets that we've been seeing here?"
"NEVILLE WATSON, PEACE ACTIVIST: Well, there certainly was some jubilation, but I certainly wouldn't go along with that presented by television. The one that I've seen a lot of since I've been back is the toppling of the statue of Saddam and I can hardly believe it was the same one that I saw, because it happened at only about 300m 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. In other words, it was a rent-a-crowd. Now, that piece of television has been played over and over again, but I've seen nothing of the pieces of television, for example, what happened in Mosul the other day, where the Americans opened fire on a crowd killing 10 and injuring 100 when it became anti-American. So I think the scenes of jubilation have to be balanced against the other side of the picture."
That's what you offer us as proof of who the people in the square were? Pretty pathetic "proof", and that coming from someone 1,000 feet away, no less.
And no one in the psyops unit took credit for the event. The 2004 army report assigned responsibility to a Colonel, and the New Yorker article, Maass, reports this man to be Colonel Hummer, who ordered Colonel McCoy "to take it down" though it could be argued that Sergeant Lambert instigated the event or that Captain Lewis did, by prompting McCoy to seek authorization from Hummer. If you believe otherwise please share with us the source of your surety.
Now let's go back to the LA Times article for a moment...
You also asked: "This article, which was published in 2004, clearly intends to convey the event was psyops. Compare the two articles to each other and tell me which one clearly intended to convey the event was psyops and which one instead focused on the fact that the whole event had little to do with the military outside of the understandable and spontaneous actions of a few otherwise totally innocent actors."
I believe I've mentioned already that neither article says any more about the involvement of the psyops unit other than seeing that the American flag was replaced with an Iraqi flag.
Lastly, it seems you failed to mention that regal member of the USG's disinformation team, ProPublica, you know those extremest far-right propagandists. (The New Yorker) "...story was written with support from ProPublica, an independent nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism."
That was the 10 cent argument. You think you're up to engaging in another at the 25 cent level? Go for it, if you do. Oh I almost forgot... LOL!
