Head Games With Media's Help Military using journalists in mental war
By Edward A. Gargan STAFF CORRESPONDENT
Kuwait City - As American and British troops prepare to move north from their staging bases toward the border with Iraq in preparation for an invasion, an elaborate and quite open psychological war is well under way, and the world's media have been summoned to the battle.
For two days, hundreds of journalists from dozens of countries have been bused to Army and Marine encampments across the Kuwaiti desert, where they will be "embedded" with a myriad of military units.
And while most are on official lists and have been approved by the Department of Defense, dozens of others - the number is not certain - have cut private deals with individual commanders to document their war. Some have spent lavishly to ensure the success of their private arrangements, buying everything from desert-camouflaged humvees to boxes of Havana cigars to distribute to the troops, or at least to their commanders.
This effort to open the war to correspondents is part of what one American officer called "a desire to show everything that goes on, everything." And by letting the media report everything - short of the actual invasion plan and its timing - the military is also showing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein what he is in for, the officer said.
Already, journalists are expressing surprise at the access they have been given. "We can see everything," said Mark Franchetti, a correspondent for the Sunday Times of London who is normally based in Moscow.
"I already know what our objective in Iraq is," said Franchetti, his head covered by an immense Russian-issue helmet and his torso wrapped in a Russian armored vest. "I can't write it. I'm not supposed to talk about it. But we know."
As a condition of joining front-line military units, journalists agree to certain restrictions, including refraining from disclosing operational information.
So confident is the military about a swift victory that plans are already afoot to fly a CNN correspondent and a British Broadcasting Corp. reporter to the southern Iraqi city of Basra the moment it falls, a senior British officer said.
"I'm not doing this so that the CNN correspondent gets another £100,000 in their salary," he said. "I'm doing it because the regime watches CNN. I want them to see what is happening."
The plan is very much part of a psychological warfare campaign, what the British officer called "white pys-ops."
"Yes, we are using them," he said. "We use everything we have."
Among some of the media accompanying military units, there is a palpable gung-ho attitude. Many reporters have decked themselves out in uniforms virtually indistinguishable from those of the soldiers they will be covering, some even going so far as to have their names and the word "Correspondent" embroidered on their breast pockets. At least one reporter marched to the front with a large American flag clipped to his backpack.
The Fox News Network dispatched former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a conservative commentator, to a Marine unit to cover the war.
"The more the better," said a Navy officer who did not want his name used. The television news sources seen in the Middle East are devoting ever more coverage to the U.S. and British forces in the desert, their live-fire exercises, their maneuvers.
At a less public level, the troops have stepped up their psychological operations inside Iraq against Iraqi forces. By e-mail, fax, cell phone and leaflets, Iraqi commanders are being told exactly how they should indicate surrender and lay down their arms, according to a U.S. officer.
"We're going to win," he said. "They're not."