MEDIA ROOTS – The Pentagon disseminates propaganda through many different avenues: embedded reporting, press conferences, active cooperation with Hollywood, and through American Forces Press Service. The capstone of AFPS is a daily report known as “Face of Defense,” which glorifies the fighter, omits the horrors of war, and hypes creative accounts of military life. Examples include:

“Passion for Cooking Drives Marine’s Service”
“Nebraska Native Mentors Afghan Farmers”
“Airman Saves Little Girl at Beach”
“Togolese-born Army NCO Lives His Dream”

The Pentagon also issues daily reports through AFPS, which are intended to quantify the individuals detained and killed by the U.S. military, and the weaponry it confiscates during operations in Afghanistan. One may deem them Detained-Killed reports for convenience. Through the distillation of all fifteen Detained-Killed reports, which were issued in March 2012, many lessons are deduced regarding the Pentagon’s choice of nomenclature, the locations of its battles with the Afghan resistance, and its professed reasons for occupying Afghanistan.

Use of Nomenclature  

In keeping with the Pentagon’s desire to arrogate progress in Afghanistan, each report described all operations as “Afghan-led” or led by “Afghan special units.” In extremely gratuitous cases, reports referred to “Afghan provincial response team with coalition mentors” or “an Afghan provincial response company advised by coalition forces.” However, in most instances, reports stuck with the standard reference to Afghan-led and coalition-supported forces.

In total, the Pentagon used thirteen distinct labels to describe the individuals it detained. These labels include Haqqani leader, Taliban leader, senior Taliban leader, Taliban facilitator, Taliban weapons supplier, Taliban insurgent, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader, IED manufacturer, insurgent, insurgent leader, suspected insurgent, insurgent commander, and suspect. Despite this great variety, the reader is left with no understanding of the standards the Pentagon uses to label its captives. In fact, Wired.com reports that the Pentagon has no formal criteria to delineate “leaders” from general insurgents. While the Detained-Killed reports provide some understanding of why certain individuals were detained, they don’t provide any indication of what distinguishes accused insurgents from suspects, facilitators from suppliers, or leaders from commanders.

Questions arise when assessing the variety of labels that are applied to these individuals. Once detained, is the humanity of an individual’s treatment gradated in proportion to the severity of his assigned moniker? For instance, are generic insurgents treated with the same disdain as confirmed Taliban members? How many of these detainees have access to any semblance of legal procedures or due process? When was the last time a confirmed, genuine Al-Qaeda member was captured in Afghanistan?

Locations and Reasons

These thirteen distinct types of enemy were detained across thirty-one specific locations throughout Afghanistan. The most active provinces where captures occurred were Helmand and Kandahar. Fourteen separate captures occurred in Helmand and seven separate captures occurred in Kandahar. The most active district was Nad ‘Ali in Helmand province, where individuals were captured on six separate instances.

The Pentagon’s Detained-Killed reports provide many reasons to justify capturing individuals. Some of the reasons for capture are quite specific. For example, in one instance Afghan judicial officials had issued an arrest warrant for a suspect who was linked forensically to IED components. In another instance, an individual was wanted for participation in illegal drug trafficking. Another individual was an alleged supervisor of Taliban finances. Aside from these examples, justifications for capturing the enemy were blurry.

The Pentagon’s reports didn’t distinguish how activities are qualified. For example, different individuals were arrested for allegedly organizing roadside bombings, overseeing the construction of roadside bombs, coordinating roadside bombings, and preparing suicide bombers. Although these descriptions vary, the Pentagon reports never clarify the difference between organizing, overseeing, coordinating, and preparing a bombing. One may speculate that the Pentagon keeps these lines blurred in order to provide Afghan/Coalition Forces (ACF) with sufficient flexibility to detain anyone they wish.

According to the cumulative total of these press releases, every individual was detained because of alleged involvement in plots or attacks against the foreign militaries, which occupy Afghanistan. Moreover, nobody was detained for plotting against the U.S. mainland or any other country. The implications of these statements are manifold.

Others individuals are captured simply because they’re “suspects.” One individual was suspected to have planned suicide attacks, while another was suspected of involvement in a bombing at Jalalabad airfield. Six individuals were captured for allegedly attacking or targeting ACF. Twenty-six individuals were captured for allegedly planning, coordinating, organizing, directing, or controlling insurgent attacks. Seventeen others were captured for allegedly providing or supplying weaponry, materiel, or funds to insurgents. No information was given regarding how the Pentagon determined the intent of the individuals who were detained for simply “planning” attacks.

Some individuals were captured as a by-product of search operations undertaken by Afghan/Coalition Forces. These captures occurred when ACF searched for a Haqqani “facilitator” and for a Haqqani “leader.” At least nine individuals were captured when ACF were searching for various Taliban leaders. At least two individuals were captured during searches for Taliban insurgents. Other captures occurred during an ACF search for an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader. No reasons were given for detaining any of these particular individuals.

Manipulation of Paraphernalia

Afghan/Coalition Forces confiscate and destroy certain items, which they encounter during the course of their operations. Sometimes the Detained-Killed reports give little detail and just note that confiscated items were “weapons.” Other times, Detained-Killed reports are quite specific. For example, Afghan/Coalition Forces confiscated 4,500 pounds of ammonium nitrate in Marjah, Helmand on 26 March.

Based on analysis of March’s Detained-Killed reports, everything destroyed or confiscated by Afghan/Coalition Forces fell into two categories: weaponry and “illegal drugs.” The weaponry included shotguns, rifles, hand grenades, ammonium nitrate, blasting caps, detonation cord, pressure plates, “suicide vests,” anti-tank mines, RPGs, and rockets. The “illegal drugs” were opium, heroin, hashish, marijuana, and marijuana seeds. Helmand province led the way with seven separate instances of confiscated weaponry or drugs. Nangarhar, Ghazni, Paktika, and Uruzgan provinces also witnessed confiscations.

Confiscating or destroying drugs that the U.S. government deems “illegal” does not change the fact that Afghanistan is economically dependent upon opium and marijuana cultivation. No amount of American-led destruction or confiscations will change that. Similarly, Afghan/Coalition Forces can seize all the bomb-making equipment they can find in Afghanistan and still not make a dent in the amount of weaponry available in the country. Furthermore, confiscating rifles and ammunition directly violates a fundamental norm of Afghan society; taking away a male’s weapon simultaneously confiscates their perceived masculinity, working against the very “hearts and minds” that the Pentagon’s Counterinsurgency Manual (FM 3-24) claims to help. Over eleven years into the war, these basic issues are still up in the air.

License to Kill

Afghan/Coalition Forces killed individuals during patrols, search operations, and confiscations. In the month of March, ACF killed the following enemy labels: a senior Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader, “multiple insurgents,” “several insurgents,” an insurgent leader, eight individual insurgents, and a Taliban bomb maker. After the killings subsided, ACF detained “several suspected insurgents,” a wounded insurgent, and two separate insurgents. Individuals were killed in the provinces of Baghlan, Faryab, Kunar, Kunduz, Laghman, and Uruzgan. Curiously, no deaths were reported from Helmand or Kandahar provinces, even though Helmand and Kandahar witnessed heavy fighting this past spring.

The Detained-Killed reports indicated Afghan/Coalition Forces never initiated hostilities. For example, “insurgents fired on the security force [and] the force returned fire.” Elsewhere, “insurgents engaged the security force with small-arms fire, [so] the force returned fire, killing the insurgents.” In other operations, a man “fired on security forces from behind the women and children, [then] two other insurgents fired at the security force.” These AFPS descriptions give one the impression that Afghan/Coalition Forces had no choice but to respond. Aside from one instance where Afghan/Coalition Forces ordered an airstrike against “insurgents [who] were planting two roadside bombs,” ACF never initiated combat during the month of March 2012, according to these Detained-Killed reports. These reports are also valuable for what they omit; they never mention statistics about individuals and civilians killed during night raids and bombing sorties.

The American Forces Press Service is a swamp of agitprop; it disseminates artful, literary propaganda, with no concern for truths. While analysis of March’s Detained-Killed reports has yielded some hard information about the Pentagon’s activities in Afghanistan, it also raises many questions about Washington’s longest war. The selective content of the Detained-Killed reports – including the Pentagon’s choice of vocabulary, its professed reasons for detaining and killing individuals, and large omissions about fighting in Kandahar and Helmand – is merely a crafty attempt to arrogate progress while the Pentagon solidifies its “enduring presence” in Central Asia.

Christian Sorensen for Media Roots.

Photo provided by Flickr user ISAFMedia

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MEDIA ROOTS –  When Saddam Hussein used white phosphorous against his own people in March 1988, the United States labeled it a chemical weapon and considered it to be a weapon of mass destruction. This helped justify the American-lead invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, when coalition forces used the weapon in Fallujah the following year, it was classified as a permissible incendiary device. Like napalm, white phosphorous has well-known and predictable collateral effects such as fallout linked to birth defects. And according to international law, the thermal weapon is prohibited from use on civilians or in civilian areas. American defiance of this statute in 2004 not only warrants a war crimes investigation of the former Commander-in-Chief, the prolonged high-rate of birth defects in Fallujah makes plausible an investigation for crimes against humanity.

Since the invasion, birth defects in Fallujah have jumped dramatically from once every few months to several daily, according to many whom work at Fallujah General Hospital. The United States officially denies contributing to this increase and pundits continue to marginalize the effects of incendiary devices. But no matter how the story is spun, Fallujah now has a legacy of defects that is five-times the international norm, according to the news agency Al Jazeera in an investigative piece aired last week.

White phosphorous (WP) has been in the American arsenal since World War I. The use of “Willie Pete,” as it was referred to by American soldiers in Vietnam, was initially denied to have been used in Fallujah. However, the following year, United States General Peter Pace confirmed and defended its use for its ability to illuminate the battlefield and hide troop movements. The federal government today sells WP to allies such as Israel where it has been used numerous times against combatants in civilian areas.

Outcry for this injustice continues. The web page Birth defects in FGH was created in 2009 by a doctor at Fallujah General Hospital to help publicize the continued torture of the city’s newborns. Additionally the nonprofit The Justice for Fallujah Project has an advisory board that includes Doctors Noam Chomsky and Dahlia Wasfi and continues to fight for increased public awareness of this endemic.

Oskar Mosco

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Al Jazeera English highlighted the increased birth defects occurring now in Fallujah

in half-hour segment that aired last week.

Fallujah – The Hidden Massacre

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Photo provided by Flickr user Dapper Snapper.  

MEDIA ROOTS – Kathyrn Bigelow made a huge splash at the 2010 Academy Awards by usurping predicted winner Avatar with her depiction of soldiers fighting in Iraq in her movie The Hurt Locker.  The Oscar winning film was revered by conservatives and anti-war liberals alike for its ‘balanced’ and ‘realistic’ tone, but in reality the movie is a clever form of pro-military American propaganda.  It depicts an imaginary super hero-like character wearing a bomb protection suit, whose sole job is to diffuse IEDs from military zones.

Bigelow’s follow up film to The Hurt Locker is called Zero Dark Thirty, which will portray a real time account of the unfounded Seal Team 6 raid that supposedly killed Osama Bin Laden.  Considering how the film is scheduled to be released immediately following the Presidential election, the Obama campaign will likely be ecstatic with the additional marketing boost they will receive from the Hollywood hype.  While a movie about this event was probably inevitable, regardless of government involvement or sanction, one can’t help but wonder how close the relationship between the White House and Hollywood was in this particular case.

It’s been long known that movies glorifying our military receive free props and sets from said military as long as the movie’s message is pro-military.  This type of quid pro quo has been commonplace in Hollywood for years, a perfect example being Top Gun, the popular eighties movie about U.S. Navy pilots.  However, syncing up political propaganda movie releases with major political events is something relatively new.  In 2006, the respected, gritty filmmaker Paul Greengrass released United 93, which illustrated via shaky cam the events that supposedly took place on the doomed Flight 93 before its inevitable demise on 9/11.  The coincidental timing of United 93’s release coinciding with the trial of supposed twentieth hijacker Moussai cannot be denied.  During his trial, they focused heavily on the events of Flight 93, even playing unreleased audio recordings from the plane.  United 93’s marketing campaign happened simultaneously with the media hype surrounding the trial.

Even though Democrats will argue that Obama isn’t running his re-election primarily on the supposed targeted killing of Bin Laden, it has been one of the main pillars of the Obama administration.  On top of the billion dollars that Obama already has at his disposal, he will now have the full force of a Hollywood movie marketing campaign behind his election which can be argued as the most expensive campaign advertisement ever made.  The trailers for Zero Dark Thirty will most likely be running constantly on television leading up to election day.

It was previously unclear if the White House had any direct involvement in the movie, but now there is ample proof that Bigelow and crew were given exclusive access to classified details in order to make the film that no one has ever seen.  Despite Obama’s claims that little facts about the raid could be made public because of “national security” purposes, apparently it was fine to share this information with a multi million dollar Hollywood production.

Not only is it highly disturbing that the corporate controlled media regurgitated this manufactured narrative of an event no one actually witnessed, but now it’s combined with an expensive major Hollywood dramatization that will make millions of dollars.  This collaboration will cement the government narrative forever in the American psyche, causing historical revisionism to prevail over truth.

Glenn Greenwald and Abby Martin of Media Roots and RT TV explore the significance of the link between the White House and the upcoming Bin Laden movie.  Abby discusses the subject with a White House reporter and writer from Politico on RT TV; notice as the guest shuts down Abby’s rational questioning about the raid while providing no proof to the contrary, instead he repeats official government propaganda as if it were religious dogma.

Written by Robbie Martin of Media Roots

Edited by Abby Martin

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SALON – As part of a court order in the Judicial Watch lawsuit, the Obama administration yesterday disclosed dozens of emails from the DoD and the CIA documenting that, as NBC News put it, “the Obama administration leaked classified information to filmmakers on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.” Politico‘s Josh Gerstein added: “Just weeks after Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency officials warned publicly of the dangers posed by leaks about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, top officials at both agencies and at the White House granted Hollywood filmmakers unusual access to those involved in planning the raid and some of the methods they used to do it.”

The internal administration documents — which pointedly note that the film has a “release date set for 4th Qtr 2012 (Sep-Dec)” — reveal enthusiastic cooperation with the filmmakers by top-level DoD officials, including Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers, all done at the direction of the White House. The very first DoD email indicates the request to work with the filmmakers came from the White House. Then-CIA Director Leon Panetta is deemed “very interested in supporting” the film. The documents also reveal a meeting between the filmmakers and Obama’s chief counter-Terrorism adviser John Brennan and National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, at which the two White House officials shared information about “command and control.” The DoD officials meeting with the filmmakers were given the White House talking points from the night of the raid, which including hailing the President’s actions as “gutsy” and stressing the heavy involvement of the White House in the raid.

Continue Reading Whitehouse Leaks for Propaganda Film.

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Abby Martin discusses the Bin Laden leak on RT with a writer from Politico.

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Article Photo by Flickr user Ssoosay

Front Page Photo Public Domain (by US law any photo taken by a solider while on active duty automatically becomes public domain) 

MEDIA ROOTS — It’s been a whole year since Osama bin Laden was allegedly assassinated in a Pakistani Navy Seal raid, but that isn’t stopping water-carrying media outlets and the White House from ratcheting up fears of terrorism, painting the potential for an ‘anniversary attack.’  Not surprisingly, a federal judge recently ruled, because of ‘national security,’ the Obama Administration does not have to release photos or video of the raid.  We were told by the White House the Seals had helmet cams running in real-time during the operation.  However, they have now back peddled on that claim, stating no video exists, as the feed allegedly, and coincidentally, experienced an apparent ‘black out’ during the actual raid itself.

In a 2011 60 Minutes interview, a week after the raid, Obama said, “We have done DNA sampling and testing… we are absolutely sure it was him.”  If they’ve done DNA testing to prove it, why can’t they—at the very least—show us that evidence?  It raises many questions, among others, why they would need to do DNA testing at all, unless his body was unidentifiable to the naked eye.

The timing of Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow’s upcoming bin Laden raid movie could prove to be very convenient for the Obama re-election campaign.  She was granted exclusive access to classified documents detailing the accounts of the raid, but unlike most White House propaganda ‘leaks,’ this one will be in the form of a Hollywood film.  It’s still in production, but one shoud expect the previews and TV spots for Bigelow’s movie to help remind everybody why Obama ‘keeps us safe‘ right before the November 2012 election.

Written by Robbie Martin of Media Roots

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SALON — Earlier this week, an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled in favor of the government in a national security case (needless to say), when he denied a FOIA request to obtain all photos and videos taken during and after the raid in Pakistan that resulted in Osama bin Laden’s death. The DOJ responded to the lawsuit by arguing (needless to say) that the requested materials “are classified and are being withheld from the public to avoid inciting violence against Americans overseas and compromising secret systems and techniques used by the CIA and the military.” Among other things, disclosure of these materials would have helped resolve the seriously conflicting statements made by White House officials about what happened during the raid and what its actual goals and operating rules were.

But while the Obama administration has insisted to the court that all such materials are classified and cannot be disclosed without compromising crucial National Security secrets, the President’s aides have been continuously leaking information about the raid in order to create politically beneficial pictures of what happened. Last August, The New Yorker published what it purported to be a comprehensive account of the raid, based on mostly anonymous White House claims, that made Barack Obama look like a mix of Superman, Rambo and Clint Eastwood; The Washington Post called it “a fascinating, cinematic-like account of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.”

Read more about Selective Bin Laden Leaking.

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Photo by Flickr user Ssoosay