This WaPo "Weapons" article, while mostly accurate, demonstrates one of the Washington Post's two favored propaganda techniques. Well, make that "Three" favorite propaganda techniques.
#1. Technique #1. of course is "say/write nothing; if we don't report it, we can pretend we didn't know!"
The ultimate example of this technique, of course, is the death camps of Hitler (and Stalin), where the "Good press in wartime" simply did NOT report, "Today, a trainload of victims from (Poland, Italy, France, etc., take your pick) arrived at camp _____; as with previous such trainloads, the victims will never be seen again." By NOT reporting, the victims simply DO_NOT_EXIST. DNE - a mathematical notation that is technique #1. in human propaganda.
OK, to get technical, we will expand our discussion of Propaganda Techniques to cover a few more categories:
#2. Technique #2., of course, would be "Accentuate the bravery and virtues of your side!"
#3. and the closely related third pillar of propaganda, Technique #3. ACCENTUATE the NEGATIVES of your opponents:
"They are evil, criminal, subhuman deviant scum! They breed like vermin, are treacherous liars, brutes, rapists, and murderers, and they will breed and devour resources and steal from good citizens, so to befoul our beloved motherland/fatherland/great nation/etc."
Which brings us up to the WASHINGTON POST's more sophisticated techniques, which are,
#4. Presents ALL issues in terms of a "He said, she said" format, or the "Horse race handicapping" that political pundits so favor over boring and tedious discussion of issues and policy.
For example, TORTURE. In the case of the Bush administration's CLEAR and UNAMBIGUOUS SUPPORT OF TORTURE, we can blend Technique #4. Straight into the more primordial step #3. "The terrorists deserved it! THE VICTIMS (of torture) ARE TO BLAME! And besides, it wasn't official policy - WATCH OUR KANGAROO COURT show-trials CONVICT little ol' female VOLUNTEER PRIVATES of 'abuse' - as their commanders GET PROMOTED for instigating the sadism and humiliation and dehumanization process in the first place!" THAT (those kangaroo court show trials - the ultimate 'he said/she said') PROVES that WE DIDN'T KNOW NUTHING 'bout TORTURE, we swear on a stack of bibles!"
Another excellent example of technique #4. would be the campaign of Al Gore vs George W. Bush in the summer of 2000, when the craven media - in complicit support of the RIGHT-WING TAX CUTS for BILLION-DOLLAR CORPORATIONS agenda, including tax rebates for media conglomerates, and further consolidation powers for those conglomerates -threw their entire editorial and 'news' weight behind that TAX CUTS agenda.
Thus instead of reporting "Texas Governor Bush SLASHED preschool, after-school, and healthcare for poor children in Texas, so to give Texas' WEALTHIEST CORPORATIONS HUGE TAX BREAKS," the WaPost instead wrote up the entire 2000 campaign as "Bush says this, Gore says that" even in cases where (for example) the Bush campaign was just making facts up, claiming progress in Texas public education (using misleading statistics to MASK the above-mentioned BUDGET CUTS) or nonexistent environmental programs, etc.
WHICH brings us up to technique #5, the technique of this WP "weapons" story.
#5. SOUND TECHNICAL, OFFICIAL, authoritative, informative - even if you might not be saying much.
In this case, "the United State AND Israel have been CAUGHT OFF GUARD... by the power and sophistication of the missiles and rockets of Hezbollah."
WELL, DUH!
Hezbollah targets have been on the RECEIVING END of US-made HELLFIRE, MAVERICK, and god-only-knows what other US missiles over the past decade, and in wartime, opponents tend to COPY each other's weaponry. In W.W.II a SINGLE technological advantage (radar, sonar, water-injection under high turbo boost; jet engines, swept wings, proximity fuses, etc.) could spell the difference between life and death. Opposing armies, navies, and airfleets WOULD COPY their enemies technology in months - W.W.II only lasted 4 years from official US involvement, so ALL of America's advance in radar, jet engines, and nuclear technology occurred in that brief time span.
Today, advanced surface-to-surface missiles are available on the open weapons market - indeed, America LOVES NOTHING MORE than trading weaponry (especially high-dollar systems) for ARAB PETRODOLLARS. (This week marks the Farnborough Air Show, where American weapons manufacturers join their European and Asian counterparts, TRYING their damnedest TO SELL THE MOST MURDEROUS weapons they can devise.)
SO, if US and Israeli analysts are "surprised" that Hezbollah has finally gotten their hands on some recent-model missiles, it is because they are living in a myopic, looking-glass dream world.
Even more to the point, in 1964 two powerful US Navy ships, operating in the "blue water" off the Vietnam coast, CLAIMED that they were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats - and the US Navy, and America itself - used this phantom, NONEXISTENT ATTACK as an excuse to START A WAR.
Not exactly the US Navy's shinning moment of honor, the USS Lester Maddox and Turner Joy claiming "we were attacked by little ol' NVA plywood torpedo boats over the night! Really! Even if we do NOT have A SINGLE SCRATCH (much less wounded crew, much less battle damage) to point out as proof."
How did the mighty US Navy, and the even Mightier United States, use a NONEXISTENT ATTACK as an excuse to launch a war???
-ans: because the Navy truly was paranoid that NVA torpedo boats would be able to sink a US Navy destroyer, not with torpedoes, but with GUIDED MISSILES.
THAT was back in 1964.
So, today, the Washington Post is joining the Right-Wing chorus (Fox News: "All war, all the time") in trumpeting "IRAN SUPPLIES HEZBOLLAH TERRORISTS!"
We don't know exactly how much Iran supplies Hezbollah, but then again, we couldn't tell you the specific details of who supplied the Jewish Irgun terrorists who fought and bombed Arabs AND BRITISH officials to "win" Israel after WWII.
So, even a mild STEP BACK from today's events, to the long historical view, illustrates that, #1. the US blue water navy was paranoid of guided missile attacks - WAY BACK in 1964;
and, #2. IF the United State's excuse for attacking Iraq was that it had a sophisticated WMD capability in full production.... then it is pretty stupid to think that a well armed, funded, organized, and supplied militia hasn't tried to obtain 'off-the-shelf' surface-to-surface missiles.
THANKS, Washington Post, for your alarmist and oh-so UNINFORMATIVE article, that OMITS ANY HISTORICAL CONTEXT.
And all that technical gobbledygook that tells us so very little.
Arming of Hezbollah Reveals U.S. and Israeli Blind Spots
By MARK MAZZETTI and THOM SHANKER
Published: July 19, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/world/middleeast/19missile.html?ex=1310961600&en=f924f46388609f34&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
WASHINGTON, July 18 — The power and sophistication of the missile and rocket arsenal that Hezbollah has used in recent days has caught the United States and Israel off guard, and officials in both countries are just now learning the extent to which the militant group has succeeded in getting weapons from Iran and Syria.
While the Bush administration has stated that cracking down on weapons proliferation is one of its top priorities, the arming of Hezbollah shows the blind spots of American and other Western intelligence services in assessing the threat, officials from across those governments said.
American and Israeli officials said the successful attack last Friday on an Israeli naval vessel was the strongest evidence to date of direct support by Iran to Hezbollah. The attack was carried out with a sophisticated antiship cruise missile, the C-802, an Iranian-made variant of the Chinese Silkworm, an American intelligence official said.
At the same time, American and Israeli officials cautioned that they had found no evidence that Iranian operatives working in Lebanon launched the antiship missile themselves.
But neither Jerusalem nor Washington had any idea that Hezbollah had such a missile in its arsenal, the officials said, adding that the Israeli ship had not even activated its missile defense system because intelligence assessments had not identified a threat from such a radar-guided cruise missile.
They said they had also been surprised by the advances that Hezbollah had made in improving what had been crude rockets — for example, attaching cluster bombs as warheads, or filling an explosive shell with ball bearings that have devastating effect.
The Bush administration has long sought to focus attention on Iranian missile proliferation, and regularly discusses with journalists intelligence evidence of those activities. But American officials in Washington made clear this week that they were reluctant to detail Iran’s arming of Hezbollah in the current conflict.
The reason, according to officials across the government, was a desire by the Bush administration to contain the conflict to Israeli and Hezbollah forces, and not to enlarge the diplomatic tasks by making Iranian missile supplies, or even those of Syria, a central question for now.
Still, some officials in Washington admitted to being blindsided by the abilities of Hezbollah’s arsenal.
“You have to acknowledge the obvious — we’ve seen a new capability in striking the naval vessel and in the number of casualties that have been sustained from the Hezbollah missile attacks,” a Bush administration official said.
“In the past, we’d see three, four, maybe eight launches at any given time if Hezbollah was feeling feisty,” the official added. “Now we see them arriving in large clusters, and with a range and even certain accuracy we have not seen in the past.”
The officials interviewed agreed to discuss classified intelligence assessments about Hezbollah’s capabilities only on condition of anonymity.
While Iranian missile supplies to Hezbollah, either by sea or overland via Syria, were well known, officials said the current conflict also indicated that some of the rockets in Hezbollah’s arsenal — including a 220-millimeter rocket used in a deadly attack on a railway site in Haifa on Sunday — were built in Syria.
“The Israelis did forensics, and found several were Syrian-made,” said David Schenker, who this spring became a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy after four years working on Middle East issues at the Pentagon. “Everybody recognizes that Syria has played an important role in facilitating transshipment — but not supplying their own missiles to Hezbollah.”
Officials have since confirmed that the warhead on the Syrian rocket was filled with ball bearings — a method of destruction used frequently in suicide bombings but not in warhead technology.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said one Western intelligence official, speaking about the warhead.
But it was Friday’s successful launching of a C-802 cruise missile that most alarmed officials in Washington and Jerusalem.
Iran began buying dozens of those sophisticated antiship missiles from the Chinese during the 1990’s, until the United States pressured Beijing to cease the sales.
Until Friday, however, Western intelligence services did not know that Iran had managed to ship C-802 missiles to Hezbollah.
Officials said it was likely that Iran trained Hezbollah fighters on how to successfully fire and guide the missiles, and that members of Iran’s Al Quds force — the faction of the Revolutionary Guards that trains foreign forces — would not necessarily have to be on the scene to launch the C-802.
At the same time, some experts said Iran was not likely to deploy such a sophisticated weapon without also sending Revolutionary Guard crews with the expertise to fire the missile.
An administration official said intelligence reports have concluded that a small number of Iranians are currently operating in Lebanon, but the official declined to disclose their number or mission.
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