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MEDIA
Em-bed with the Pentagon
BY RICHARD BYRNE

As the US military prepares for war with Iraq, it’s decided not to leave American journalists behind this time. Already, the " training " in battlefield-survival skills offered to journalists last month by the Pentagon has been fodder for dozens of " first-person " pieces and a week’s worth of skewering in Garry Trudeau’s cartoon, Doonesbury. In many ways, the issue of preparing journalists for war has been approached with all the seriousness of Abbott and Costello’s Buck Privates — and why not? As last month’s conference of Military Reporters and Editors, held in Washington, DC, underscored in heavy red ink, media access to even the most conventional aspects of the war on terrorism — the battle against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan — was virtually nil for months after its commencement. The lack of access was a Pentagon-orchestrated blackout that had die-hard war correspondents railing angrily about " black holes " in US history. (See " Necessary Bedfellows, " News and Features, November 22.)

Yet, according to last Wednesday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times, all that hiking with heavy packs on a steady diet of ready-to-eat meals might come in handy after all. The Times reported that the Pentagon was planning to " embed " (Department of Defense–speak for " deploy journalists with combat units " ) hundreds of journalists in any military action undertaken in Iraq. The newspaper quoted Assistant Secretary of Defense Victoria Clarke as saying, " We are absolutely convinced the more news and information that comes out of Iraq — if there’s military action — the better off we’ll all be. "

So if — and that’s a mighty big " if, " given the Pentagon’s track record on media access since the end of the Vietnam War — the Pentagon’s PR crew has become convinced that " more equals more, " what exactly convinced them? Let’s not for a minute think it was media yelping that did the trick. The media have been yelping about their lack of access to military operations for decades, with little to show for it. Rather, it seems, two main factors have come into play.

The first is the nature of the enemy in Iraq. As Saddam Hussein showed this weekend with a massive document drop that was almost Clintonian in its scope, the Iraqi leader is planning to give the world media all they want — and possibly more. The enemy, then, will get its pictures on the air. And, frustrated with the US military’s info war by omission against the American press in Afghanistan, media outlets are already moving to deploy cameras and reporters to Baghdad and to Northern Iraqi zones controlled by ethnic Kurds. In the face of such pressure, the Pentagon must move past its customary video-game briefings and place meaningful embeds in the field of action to get its point across.

But the second reason the Pentagon may allow greater media access in Iraq is even more compelling. Polls such as a November 26 USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll have noted a strong sense of confusion among Americans about military action in Iraq and the White House’s war aims — despite the rhetorical onslaught accompanying what Bush chief-of-staff Andrew Card has infamously dubbed " introduc[ing] new products. " As of late November, 42 percent of Americans opposed using ground forces to remove Saddam Hussein from power. That number rises to 48 percent if UN weapons inspectors prove the Iraqi government right and find no weapons of mass destruction.

Americans supported the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in much greater numbers. They also bought the Pentagon’s line that the war against terrorism would require a new kind of warfare that would necessarily remain secret. It will be harder to convince the American public of the need for war against Iraq — and impossible to do so if the media, and by extension the public, is kept in the dark. This fact alone might well have convinced the Pentagon that it was time to get " embeds " with the US media.

Issue Date: December 12 - 19, 2002
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