Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
At 4:07 PM -0800 3/26/04, Devine, James wrote:people do often reply to polls by saying what they feel they "ought to" say.
They often do even under "normal" circumstances in the United States (e.g., Americans overstate their church attendance).
Doug and Joel ought to remember that Iraq is *under foreign military occupation conducting counterinsurgency warfare* with censorship, checkpoints, house raids, arbitrary arrest and detention, no due process, etc. -- i.e. Iraqis do not have freedom of speech.
I can't quite see the point of this argument. The (active) anti-war movement is irrevocably committed to "U.S. out of Iraq Now!" The debate is really over on that. No one is going to go out and organize in favor of some such slogan as "The U.S. should think about leaving as soon as it has established a stable order that the U.N. is willing to oversee and that is approved by at least 63% of the Iraqi people in a scientifically organized poll."
I agree that no one will organize any street demonstrations explicitly demanding the continuing foreign occupation until order is restored.
I've been thinking, though, that opinion polls in Iraq are not so much to reflect Iraqi opinions as to construct American opinions. The same BBC survey that Milan Rai writes about is proudly put on display on the CPA website: <http://www.cpa-iraq.org/cgi-bin/prfriendly.cgi?http://www.cpa-iraq.org/>. Now, I doubt that very many Iraqis believe what the CPA peddles without a giant grain of salt, so such CPA-approved polls can't influence Iraqis, despite what Douglas Feith said.
"When Douglas Feith, the official who oversaw OSI, was asked whether the Pentagon might 'secretly enlist' a non-government third party 'to spread false or misleading information to the news media,' he did not rule it out. 'We are going to preserve our ability to undertake operations that may, for tactical purposes, mislead an enemy,' said Feith (AP, 2/20/02), 'but we are not going to blow our credibility as an institution in our public pronouncements.' The Pentagon might lie, he seemed to be saying, but won't announce that it's doing so" (Rachel Cohen, "Behind the Pentagon's Propaganda Plan," _Extra! Update_, April 2002, <http://www.fair.org/extra/0204/osi.html>).
The main victims must be the American electorate, as William Arkin suggested:
***** Now, in remarks made at a November 18 media briefing, Rumsfeld has suggested that though the exposure of OSI's plans forced the Pentagon to close the office, they certainly haven't given up on its work. According to a transcript on the Department of Defense website, Rumsfeld told reporters:
"And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And 'oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.' I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have."
A search of the Nexis database indicates that no major U.S. media outlets -- no national broadcast television news shows, no major U.S. newspapers, no wire services or major magazines -- have reported Rumsfeld's remarks.
Rumsfeld's comments seem all the more alarming in light of analysis presented by William Arkin in a recent Los Angeles Times opinion column (11/24/02), in which he argues that Rumsfeld is redesigning the U.S. military to make "information warfare" central to its functions.
This new policy, says Arkin, increasingly "blurs or even erases the boundaries between factual information and news, on the one hand, and public relations, propaganda and psychological warfare, on the other." Arkin adds that "while the policy ostensibly targets foreign enemies, its most likely victim will be the American electorate."
("MEDIA ADVISORY: The Office of Strategic Influence Is Gone, But Are
Its Programs In Place?" November 27, 2002,
<http://www.fair.org/press-releases/osi-followup.html>) *****To read the full transcript of Rumsfeld's remarks, go to <http://www.dod.gov/news/Nov2002/t11212002_t1118sd2.html>.
Opinion polls conducted by non-government third parties "to spread false or misleading information to the news media" must be among the most useful tools of information warfare against Americans, especially if Americans who are as smart as Doug can believe that Iraqis are free to say what they think and feel under the foreign military occupation -- including advocating armed and unarmed resistance against it -- without worrying about any potential consequences at all. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
