Bush Bashing?

Bush Bashing?

Critics might charge that these references (below) to the 2004 Bush administration "downplaying their own bad" are partisan. Consider these three factors in my decision to include these examples:

(1) Incumbency always has the built-in advantage "to intensify their own good."

Being in power has an intrinsic value. A president, for example, has a "bully pulpit," as President Theodore Roosevelt called it. Presidents can set the time and topics for news conferences, photo ops, interviews; can "manage the news" by favoring friendly reporters with access and advance "leaks" giving them (and their employers -- TV networks, newspapers) advantages; and denying access to uncooperative reporters -- which puts pressure on them by their publishers and TV stations which see "news" as simply a device to maximize the size of their audiences, which they then sell to advertisers. Presidents can grant audiences("Exclusives") to the most friendly interviewers (who pitch "softball" questions), or require questions be submitted in advance, and avoid the hard questioning of genuinely open press conferences.

As David Kertzer (author of Ritual, Politics, and Power) describes it in "The Aura of the Office": "What decides presidential campaigns is not the issuing of position papers (which few voters ever read) or the crafting of party platforms (ditto). Our political allegiances are formed not so much by rational decision-making as by choosing a winner in a battle of symbols, fought through competing rituals."

Presidents can combine official travels with unofficial "non-partisan" fund-raising trips (using tax money for travel -- Air Force One, etc.); has a huge staff of full-time speechwriters, other PR types (in all lower echelons) with time, expertise, and motives to "spin." In 2004, the White House Office of Strategic Communications (Stratcom) even has a large number of public relations writers in Baghdad producing "good news" from Iraq.

So also, Senate and House incumbents (whether Republican or Democrat) have a similar built-in advantage (in name-recognition, news management, established fund-raising). Non-partisan analysis shows that most incumbents are re-elected. It's not a level playing field!

Furthermore, the current Bush administration has gone further, used more ways, than any previous incumbency ever had to use federal funds to present its partisan policies on controversial issues. The most egregious example may be the $12 million dollar TV advertising campaign ("informational" and "educational") to tout its version of the 2003 Medicare "reforms." But, in 2004, the IRS issued press releases with this bold-faced alarm: "America has a choice: it can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation."

"This is, "as The Los Angeles Times (April 26, 2004) notes, "startling on two counts: one, by law, government functions -- such as official press releases written by workers on a public payroll -- and political functions -- such as promoting one political policy over another -- are twains that should never meet. Two, that press release language is syllable-for-syllable identical to the language on a Republican National Committee website from the week before.

Now, Los Angeles Rep. Henry Waxman, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, says he's all for his New York colleague Charles Rangel's demand for an investigation into this too. 'Last Month, the Treasury Department conducted campaign research on the Kerry tax plans,' Waxman said. 'Now it has issued press releases with language taken directly from the Republican National Committee. The Treasury Department is funded by the taxpayer and is prohibited by law from engaging in partisan politics. It should not be turned into an arm of the Bush reelection campaign.'"

However, by early 2005, more reports (Tax-Funded White House PR Effort Questioned) indicated a more widespread practice of using tax dollars to fund internal propaganda campaigns in support of Bush administration policy. As part of a million dollar PR campaign to build support for the "No Child Left Behind," the Educaton Department hired Armstrong Williams, a conservative African-American TV host and columnist, to say good things about the program. without mentioning that he was getting paid $240,000 to do so. "His case is the latest and perhaps most striking example of the Bush administration using government funds to market its agenda to the American public under the guise of journalism."

Furthermore, the White House Office of Communication, or the Pentagon Office of Information, and the .net URL of the Digital Video and Imagery Distribution are all part of the Adminstration's "public information" program. People who say "That's not propaganda" make the same error as those who say "advertising doesn't affect me"-- they limit persuasion to blunt, direct statements instead of recognizing the many subtle, indirect techniques used by all persuaders. "Propaganda" is often used simply as a general attack word to label any claims or charges from opponents, rivals, or critics. In this website, however, two terms are used with very specific meanings:

"War propaganda," as the term is here, refers to persuasion targeted at an internal audience: to bond one's own group, to build morale (a belief in "being right" and in "being able"), to get people to agree, to get involved, to incite a response, to channel that response, and to silence internal opposition. (See: War Propaganda )

"Psychological warfare," as the term is used here, refers to persuasion designed to demoralize or terrorize an external audience: targeted at the "Other" (the outsider, the foe, the enemy) often by means of leaflet drops, radio and TV broadcasts, and rumors.

(2) Incumbency, however, also has the built-in disadvantage of having more things to hide, of being more likely to "downplay their own bad."

People in public power simply have more potential to conceal and cover-up problems in the public sphere. Downplaying by "outsiders" usually involves only private issues -- skeletons in their own personal closet.

Earlier administrations have had cover-up scandals: Harding's Tea Pot Dome, Eisenhower's U2, Johnson's Tonkin Bay, Nixon's Watergate, Reagan's Iran-Contra, Clinton's Monica Lewinsky -- to name a few. Currently (2004), several whistleblowing books by former Bush administration insiders are controversial.

But, many veteran political observers believe the current situation is unrivaled in recent history. For example, in April 2004, John Dean (an insider during the Watergate scandal) charged the current problems of deceptive cover-ups in the Bush administration as being Worse Than Watergate.

President Bush initially rejected the idea of an investigation into the causes and conditions of the 9/11 attacks, then stalled, then reluctantly appeared before the commission in secret testimony, not under oath, and accompanied by Vice-President Cheney, a situation aptly summarized in "Bush will Talk the Most at 9/11 Hearing, Aides say." What they said, we'll never know, but we do know some of the sharp and specific questions asked by the families of the victims ( the 9/11 Family Steering Committee) : "I want to know the ugly truth"

On April 28, 2004 the Bush administration tried to get Qatar's foreign minister to exert pressure on the independent Arab TV station, Al Jazeera, located there, because it was making inflammatory reports. Two days later, in America, the first news stories about the Iraqi prison scandal became public.

Observers note the obscessive concern for secrecy and sensitivity to any criticism of this administrations possible problems. Even science-fiction movies ("The Day After Tomorrow"-- opening May 28, 2004) are affected as The New York Times reported: "NASA curbs comments on ice age disaster movie."

(3) Currency

Everyone has more interest in recent, current events, especially in civic affairs in which we participate.

Everyone has easier online access (via google.com & other search engines) to actual sources and varying viewpoints, by using current search terms (e.g. weapons of mass destruction, WMD, Enron, Halliburton, etc.)

In Senator William Fulbright's 1970 book, The Pentagon Propaganda Machine, he cited AP statistics indicating that in 1967 the Executive branch was spending $400 million a year on public information and public relations. That was $70 million more than spent on the other two branches of government, Congress and the Judiciary! Then, Fulbright quoted Rivers & Schramm's 1969 book, Responsibility in Mass Communication:

"All together, federal expenditures on telling and showing the taxpayers are more than double the combined costs of newsgathering by the two major U.S. wire services, the three major television networks, and the ten largest American newspapers."

Today, not many people would be interested in Fulbright's "old" book and historical figures. But, when The Pentagon Propaganda Machine was published in 1970, I was very interested because I had been a low-level Public Information Officer in the U.S. Army, Germany in the late 1950s, doing my patriotic duty, cranking out press releases ("NATO, Shield of Freedom!" stuff).

Officially, our unit was credited with one half-time PIO position. Unofficially, working for me preparing the "good news" from a relatively small unit, I had five full-time people (including in that draft era of universal service, a professional photographer, a film-maker, a writer, and a Disney cartoonist). Ten times more than the official statistics!

(but, that's soooo yesterday.)

About 1980, when I originally wrote the section on war propaganda, Osama bin Ladin was being supported by the CIA in Afghanistan in its war against the Soviet Union. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein was being supported in its war against Iran by the US. Neither of these wars then was on my mind which was centered primarily on the patterns of rhetoric of previous European wars. A decade later, the "Cold War" was over when the USSR disintegrated. Two decades later, Bush proclaimed the "war on terrorism" and linked our old friends, Osama and Saddam, as co-conspirators. Frankly, I do not know specifically who our friends and enemies will be twenty or thirty years from now. But, I think these patterns I've observed in the past will appear in the future.

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Bush Loyalists Pack Iraq Press Office
By JIM KRANE Associated Press Writer | 04/04/2004 BAGHDAD, Iraq

Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the U.S.-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq.

Dan Senor, a former press secretary for Spencer Abraham, the Michigan Republican who's now Energy Secretary, heads the office that includes a large number of former Bush campaign workers, political appointees and ex-Capitol Hill staffers.

More than one-third of the U.S. civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush's re-election effort with Iraq a top concern. Senor and others inside the coalition say they follow strict guidelines that steer clear of politics.

One of the main goals of the Office of Strategic Communications - known as stratcom - is to ensure Americans see the positive side of the Bush administration's invasion, occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, where 600 U.S. soldiers have died and a deadly insurgency thrives.

"Beautification Plan for Baghdad Ready to Begin," one press release in late March said in its headline. Another statement last month cautioned, "The Reality is Nothing Like What You See on Television."

Senor, spokesman for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, said his office is guided by ethical "red lines" that prevent it from crossing into the Bush campaign.

"We have an obligation to communicate with the U.S. Congress and the American people, given that they're spending almost $20 billion in Iraq and have committed over 100,000 U.S. troops here," Senor said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Earlier in his career, after Hebrew University and Harvard Business School, Senor was with the Carlyle Group, an investment firm with Bush family ties and big defense industry holdings. Senor jogged in a Thanksgiving Day race here wearing a "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirt.

Known as the Green Room, the press office is inside coalition headquarters in the Republican Palace that used to belong to Saddam Hussein. The palace is in central Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

The office counts 21 Republicans - 11 of whom have worked inside the Bush administration before their Iraq posting - among its 58 U.S. civilian staffers, according to figures Senor provided. The political affiliation of the 37 others could not be determined.

More than half a dozen CPA officials in the press office worked on Bush's 2000 presidential campaign or are related to Bush campaign workers, according to payroll records filed with the Federal Elections Commission.
Republican figures also permeate the wider CPA staff, including top advisers to U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and the Iraqi ministries.

The U.S. team stands in deep contrast to the British team that works alongside it, almost all of whom are civil or foreign service employees, not political appointees. Many of the British in Iraq display regional knowledge or language skills that most of the Americans lack.

The drive to re-elect Bush is a sensitive topic. Several coalition officials angered by what they see as CPA politicking - with U.S. accomplishments in Iraq being trumpeted to help Bush - grumbled privately, but would not go on record with complaints.

But Gordon Robison, a former CPA contractor who helped build the Pentagon-funded Al-Iraqiya television station in Baghdad, said Republicans in the press room intensely followed the Democratic presidential primaries as John Kerry emerged as the presumed nominee.

"Iraq is in danger of costing George W. Bush his presidency and the CPA's media staff are determined to see that does not happen," Robison said. "I had the impression in dealing with the civilians in the Green Room that they viewed their job as essentially political, promoting what the Coalition Provisional Authority is doing in Iraq as a political arm of the Bush administration," he added.

Robison, a journalist who said his political affiliation is a private matter, left Baghdad in March after finishing his contract with U.S. defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. A new U.S. contractor, Harris Corp., has taken over the Al-Iraqiya operations.

One CPA staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity said the press office had sent targeted "good news" releases to American television, radio and newspaper outlets that were timed to deflect criticism of Bush during the Democratic primaries.

Stratcom's schedule of news releases shows that stories were sent to media outlets in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee and Virginia and other states in the days before their Democratic primaries. But the schedule also shows releases sent to Virginia, Ohio and Florida after the primaries were over. Senor said any correlation to the vote was a coincidence.

Rich Galen, 57, a well-known Republican strategist, oversees the daily news releases sent directly to media outlets in the United States. Before joining the CPA press operation late last year, Galen wrote a GOP insider column and appeared on Fox News to harpoon liberal critics of Bush.

Now, he's still writing an Internet column, but he's turned it into what he calls a travelogue about Iraq. And he still appears on Fox - but long-distance via satellite and as a CPA spokesman.

Galen has been press secretary for both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Vice President Dan Quayle during their careers. Galen's 27-year-old son, Reed, is involved in the Bush re-election effort.

Since arriving in Iraq, Galen said he has made sure not to veer into politics in his work in the Green Room, in his column or during his television appearances.

"I understand when the game clock is on and when the game clock is off," Galen said. "The clock is off."

Were he to get directly involved in the Bush campaign, Galen said he'd be far more effective working at an office in Virginia outside of Washington D.C. than from the Iraqi capital. "It's as inefficient a way to run a campaign as I can imagine," he said of being in Baghdad.

Outside political analysts, however, said Galen's vast expertise lies in political campaigning, not shipping radio and TV spots to local audiences. Putting a sharp strategist like him in the press room is a campaign masterstroke, said Bob Boorstin of the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan political think-tank in Washington.

"You know they're in trouble if they shipped Rich Galen over there," said Boorstin, who worked on four presidential campaigns, all Democratic. "They're desperate to control the story over there. It's a very smart thing on their part. He knows what he's doing."

Still, Boorstin said the shaping of the American message out of Iraq should come as no surprise. The rigors of election year politics demand the best possible portrayal of key policies, and Bush has staked his presidency on the notion that he's a war president.

"There's some deep questions about whether (the U.S. invasion) was a good idea. Wherever and whenever they can, Bush's political people are manipulating whatever they can," he said.

"Is that a surprise? No. Would Democrats do it? Yes. But it's particularly noxious because people's lives are on the line."

Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue
David Zucchino - Los Angeles Times - July 3, 2004

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.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

Army Takes Its War Effort to Task
Report says U.S. forces prevailed in Iraq despite deep supply shortages and bad intelligence.
By David Zucchino Los Angeles Times Staff Writer July 3, 2004

FT. LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — American soldiers who defeated the Iraqi regime 15 months ago received virtually none of the critical spare parts they needed to keep their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles running. They ran chronically short of food, water and ammunition. Their radios often failed them. Their medics had to forage for medical supplies, artillery gunners had to cannibalize parts from captured Iraqi guns and intelligence units provided little useful information about the enemy.

These revelations come not from embedded reporters or congressional committees but from the Army itself. In the first internal assessment of the war in Iraq, an exhaustive Army study has concluded that American forces prevailed despite supply and logistical failures, poor intelligence, communication breakdowns and futile attempts at psychological warfare.

The 542-page study, declassified last month, praises commanders and soldiers for displaying resourcefulness and resiliency under trying conditions, and for taking advantage of superior firepower, training and technology.
But the report also describes a broken supply system that left crucial spare parts and lubricants on warehouse shelves in Kuwait while tankers outside Baghdad ripped parts from broken-down tanks and raided Iraqi supplies of oil and lubricants.

"No one had anything good to say about parts delivery, from the privates at the front to the generals" at the U.S. command center in Kuwait, the study's authors concluded after conducting 2,300 interviews and studying 119,000 documents.

Among other highlights, the report revealed that the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad before cheering Iraqis was the brainchild of a U.S. Marine colonel, with help from a psychological operations unit. The report also credited a U.S. Army colonel with shortening the war by "weeks, if not months" with his dramatic "thunder run" into Baghdad.

Portions of an early draft of the report were described by the New York Times in an article in February. The study has since been revised and refined, but the overall conclusions in the final, unclassified report have not changed significantly.

Within the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized), which spearheaded the U.S. assault on Baghdad, "literally every maneuver battalion commander asserted that he could not have continued offensive operations for another two weeks without some spare parts," the study said.

The study, titled "On Point" and aimed at "lessons learned," is at odds with the public perception of a technologically superior invasion force that easily drove Hussein from power. In fact, as the authors point out in their battle-by-battle narrative, there were many precarious moments when U.S. units were critically short of fuel and ammunition, with little understanding of the forces arrayed against them.

The report, by the Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group at Ft. Leavenworth, called ammunition resupply "problematic" and said the medical supply system "failed to work." Engineers desperate for explosives foraged for Iraqi explosives and tore apart mine-clearing charges to use the explosives to blow up captured Iraqi equipment.

Many soldiers plunged into combat not knowing whether they had enough food or water to sustain themselves in punishing heat and blinding sandstorms. "Stocks of food barely met demand," the study said. "There were times when the supply system was incapable of providing sufficient MREs for the soldiers fighting Iraqi forces."

Military intelligence provided little useful information about the deployment or intentions of Iraqi forces, the study concluded. A Third Infantry tank commander whose company was attacked by Iraqi fighters hidden in an elaborate bunker and trench system in Baghdad on April 8 told The Times that he later learned from a French journalist that newspapers had reported details of the bunker network. Yet his own intelligence officers had told him nothing.

Most significantly, military planners did not anticipate the effectiveness or ferocity of paramilitary forces that disrupted supply columns and mounted suicide charges against 70-ton Abrams tanks. Some of those same forces, using tactics refined during the invasion, are part of the current insurgency.

The study, which covers events in Kuwait and Iraq until President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, 2003, does not address the insurgency, which has killed far more Americans than were killed during the so-called combat phase. Nor does the study discuss the Pentagon's failure to anticipate or control the looting and chaos following the collapse of the Iraqi regime in April 2003.

But the report does say that the military's "running start" — the strategy of launching the invasion before all support units had arrived — made it difficult for commanders to quickly adjust from major combat to postwar challenges. Because combat units outraced supply and support units, combat commanders were caught unprepared when Hussein's regime collapsed after three weeks.

"Local commanders were torn between their fights and providing resources — soldiers, time and logistics — to meet the civilian needs," the report said. "Partially due to the scarce resources as a result of the running start, there simply was not enough to do both missions."

The report does not address the Bush administration's stated reasons for the invasion — Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, purported operational links between Baghdad and Al Qaeda, and atrocities committed under Hussein's dictatorship. Instead, the study critiques the Army's combat performance with an eye toward future wars.

The principal authors — retired Col. Gregory Fontenot, Lt. Col. E.J. Degen and Lt. Col. David Tohn — warned that Iraqi forces could have created significant problems if they had attacked relatively undefended U.S. units staging in Kuwait in the winter of 2002-03. Those units arrived without significant firepower or reinforcements and were vulnerable to a surprise attack.

The authors also said Iraqis could have extended the battle for Baghdad for weeks if they had destroyed or blocked approaches to the capital, or had forced American troops to fight a drawn-out battle in dense urban areas. (Former Republican Guard commanders interviewed by The Times in Baghdad said Hussein left the highways to Baghdad open because he thought his own forces would need them once they blocked the American invasion south of the capital.)

In an interview Friday, Fontenot said the Army excelled at "joint operations," integrating infantry, armor, artillery and air power to great effect during the war. "Arguably, the integration of joint warfare reached a level we had not seen at least since the Korean War," he said.

He also praised the effective use of Special Forces, the successful "pre-positioning" of vast quantities of materiel in the Middle East, and the quality of Army training. Fontenot, a tank battalion commander during the first Gulf War, said officers and men at the tactical level were better prepared last year than 13 years ago.

"I thought I was a pretty good tank commander, but the quality of these battalions is far better than we were," he said. "I was really impressed by the quality of the tactical leadership."

Fontenot said the narrative study, ordered by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, was not intended as the "seminal work" on the war. Rather, he said, "it's a first look."

The study credits a relatively junior commander — Col. David Perkins of the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division — with shortening the war with a bold armored strike into the heart of Baghdad on April 7. Perkins' "thunder run" surprised Baghdad's defenders with its speed and firepower, collapsing the regime from within before Iraqi forces could draw the Americans into a protracted urban war.

The authors said Perkins "made the single decision that arguably shortened the siege by weeks, if not months."
The Pentagon's plan for Baghdad had envisioned a series of attacks to slowly chip away at the regime. But the authors said Perkins' decision to suddenly revise the plan under fire and stay in downtown Baghdad was a prime example of flexibility and innovation by both the Pentagon brass and commanders in the field.

They "rapidly adapted and fought the enemy they found rather than the one they planned on," the study said.
U.S. forces prevailed despite seriously underestimating paramilitary forces, especially Saddam Fedayeen, Baath Party militiamen, al Quds local militiamen and Muslim jihadists from Syria, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries, the study said. Those fighters harassed U.S. supply columns and nearly overran Col. Perkins' forces along Highway 8 south of Baghdad on April 7.

"The intelligence and operations communities had never anticipated how ferocious, tenacious and fanatical they would be," the authors said. By dressing in civilian clothes and firing from civilian neighborhoods, paramilitaries were able to "hide with some success from the incredible array of technical intelligence" available to U.S. forces.

Efforts by psychological operations units to persuade Iraqi forces to surrender largely failed, the study concluded.

Despite success in minimizing damage to oil fields, the psychological units "produced much less than expected and perhaps less than claimed," the authors said. Some leaflets baffled Iraqi forces, while others were outdated, forcing units to resort to loudspeaker broadcasts, the report said.

Poor U.S. intelligence efforts were compounded by ground commanders' decisions — because of the dangers involved — not to send scouts and other reconnaissance troops ahead to report on enemy positions.

In addition, long-range surveillance units flying in lightly equipped helicopters "did not produce great effect for the investment of talent and the risk to those involved," the report said.
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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times