Pentagon staged statue's fall
By Heather Cottin
One of the "most memorable images of the war"
in Iraq was the footage and photographs showing a crowd of
Iraqi people pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein in
Fardus Square in Baghdad on April 9, after U.S. armed forces
invaded the capital.
The BBC hailed the photos and video as recording a
"momentous event," with the media "a witness to history." Bush
declared it "a historic moment." For Donald Rums feld, these
images were "breathtaking."
This image was staged.
The spin-doctors of the U.S. media and the Pentagon produced
a close-action video of the destruction of the statue that was
supposed to be proof of a massive civilian uprising against the
Iraqi government.
A Reuters photojournalist exposed this media event as a sham in
the revealing photograph above: The Marines had cleared out the
area and ringed Fardus Square with tanks. A hand-picked group
of Iraqis, with some Marines, were allowed into the sealed-off
area. It was a Pentagon vehicle that pulled down the
statue.
Fardus Square is located across the street from the
Palestine Hotel, where many international journalists covering
the war were staying. Just the day before the faked
"spontaneous event" in Fardus Square, a U.S. tank had fired an
artillery shell into the hotel, killing two members of the
media and injuring four others.
The Pentagon wants embedded journalists, drafted to
publicize the Pentagon's rationale for the war. They want these
reporters to sell this occupation as "liberation" to people in
the U.S. and around the world.
The United States Armed Forces psychological operations mo
tto boasts: "Win the mind, win the day!"
The wrecking of the statue of Hussein was part of this
psy-ops media campaign.
Reprinted from the April 24, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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