On October 14, 2004, Marine Lieutenant Lyle Gilbert appeared on CNN and informed the network’s Pentagon reporter, James McIntyre, that the American invasion of Fallujah had begun. McIntyre, like a good little Pentagon reporter, repeated the story to his American audience. People all across the United States, including the family members of American soldiers, thought that a huge battle had begun.
There was just one little problem with what Lieutenant Gilbert told the American people: It was a purposeful lie, a tactic in what they call “psychological operations”. In truth, the brutal and bloody invasion of Fallujah did not begin until three weeks later.
What was the point? The Los Angeles Times reports that Lieutenant Gilbert’s big lie to the American people was designed to fool the insurgents in Fallujah into reporting what kind of tactics they would use when the real invasion began.
If this is really the case, the lie was a big failure – large numbers of Americans were killed and injured in the invasion, and even larger numbers of Iraqi civilians, including children, were slaughtered. The invasion took much longer than planned, and became a public relations nightmare for the Bush Administration when an American was caught on film shooting an unarmed prisoner in the head. Many other reports from journalists and neutral organizations indicate that the American invasion of Fallujah was nothing short of a bloodbath, with countless war crimes by American soldiers in a fury at the intense and long-effective defense of Fallujah by the insurgents.
Now, on October 14, when the Pentagon falsely told the American people that the invasion of Fallujah had already begun, the Bush Administration suffered no negative public relations impacts at all. In fact, the news of the invasion gave a boost to candidate George W. Bush, by making him look tough without risking any of the messy consequences likely with a real bombardment and ground invasion of an entire city home to a huge number of civilians, many of which remained.
So what was the “psychological operations” effort really about? It looks more like a political psychological operation than anything else. Bush got to look like a big tough guy, but he got to delay the video of the American soldier shooting his unarmed prisoner in the head until after Election Day. He got to put off announcing the deaths of huge numbers of American soldiers until after the election. He got to make his war appear to be near final success without actually having prove it – until after Election Day.
What’s happened since the invasion of Fallujah has proved that Bush’s war plans are leading American troops into more and more danger. Since Fallujah was captured, the incidence of violent attacks in Iraq has more than tripled, and the attacks have spread from the ordinary hotspots to areas all across the country, even regions that were peaceful before.
George W. Bush’s war plans have backfired so dramatically that he’s had to tell 12,000 more American soldiers that they’re going to Iraq (or staying there – many soldiers whose tour of duty is over are being told that they have to remain in Iraq and keep on fighting for longer and longer).
Bush lied again, and Americans died again – but it happened after Election Day, in spite of the Pentagon’s PSYOPS attack against the American people.
If Lieutenant Gilbert had told the American people the truth, and if these disastrous events had taken place in the weeks before Election Day instead of the weeks after Election Day, would Bush have won by the razor thin margin of 51%?
