Radio Nederland Wereldomroep February 05, 2003
Lies and statistics
Over the past few months, media outlets around the world have been full of statistics about the US military buildup in and around the Persian Gulf. There have been almost daily reports on aircraft carrier groups in the region, troop call-ups in the US, and the overall numbers necessary to make a successful invasion of Iraq. While these stories satisfy the public's need for detail, they also perform an important military function; because they are almost entirely false. According to defence experts, the Pentagon has been engaged in a policy of misinforming from the outset.
Patrick Garrett, a defence analyst with Global Security.org, says these official lies will not work as well against Saddam Hussein's military this time as they did in the first Gulf War. In this interview with Newsline's Lovejit Dhaliwal, he also tellingly points out that the US is ready to strike Iraq at any moment.
"A significant proportion of the information released to the press is intended to misinform Saddam and other people who are looking at the situation. We really have to look at the overwhelming number of active-duty reserve and National Guard units that have supposedly received a call-up, or that could be deployed in the coming weeks; one really has to look at those numbers somewhat sceptically. The military is in the practice of making sure that the enemy does not guess what they are doing. It's very likely that a significant number of the units that we've been talking about in recent weeks, or that we believe could be involved, are quite frankly not going to be anywhere near the action."
RN: "Do you have any specific examples?"
"One main example is the whole question of the numbers game. Today we're hearing that roughly 350,000 soldiers are going to be involved with a war in Iraq, or that's what the Pentagon believes they need, but a couple of months ago we were hearing only a quarter of a million, and a month before that only 120,000. The strategy behind this is if you keep Saddam guessing how many numbers the US believes it needs to invade Iraq, he can look at what's currently there, and decide he's got a long time to go before he has to worry about the war, when in fact the Pentagon can essentially begin this whenever they want to."
RN: "Do you think Saddam will be surprised by what happens next?"
"I think the problem is that there's been a lot of time spent thinking about what a second Gulf War would look like, whether or not it would be a rapid, decisive operation, where you have a lot of air power in the beginning stages of the war, which would be followed up by a small ground force, or whether it will be an extremely heavy ground force, like we saw during the first Gulf War. The problem is that both sides have given a considerable amount of attention to it. I don't think Saddam is going to be too surprised by what happens. It might result in some initial disorganisation in the opening minutes or hours of the war, but I think Saddam has got a pretty firm idea of what he wants to do, and what it is he's going to use, and I don't think the American strategy is going to have a significant impact on that."
RN: "Can you tell us what happened when the US used this strategy of misinformation in the last war?"
"Misinformation was used to make Saddam think there would be a major amphibious landing in Kuwait by the US Marine Corps. It was also pinned on the idea that US forces may or may not be used at certain stages. This misinformation campaign was very successful. Saddam Hussein did not commit the bulk of his forces to certain geographic areas because he believed that the main thrust would be coming from the amphibious forces. General Schwarzkopf and the rest of his military command were very successful at keeping Saddam on his guard. I don't think he's going to fall for those tricks again."
RN: "Will he totally ignore what's said in the media?"
"I'm sure his intelligence organisations are spending a lot of time staring at what the media is saying as well as what's happening on the ground. He and his intelligence organisations would be irresponsible if they weren't looking closely at what's going on. The trick though, is actually trying to figure out whether or not some of these units are deploying to south-west Asia or whether they are staying in the US."
Copyright © 2003, Radio Nederland Wereldomroep
