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GulfWatch Papers: Gulf War Analysis
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The GulfWatch Papers
An international peace movement documentation and analysis of the First Gulf War in Israeli-Palestine and psychospiritual context by
Alastair Hulbert and Alastair
McIntosh
Published in the Edinburgh Review, Polygon (Edinburgh University Press), No. 87, 1992, pp. 15-71. The daily GulfWatch Papers upon which the text is based were deposited, with supporting documentation, by Scottish Churches’ Action for World Development (now “Commonweal”) in the National Library for Scotland, Edinburgh. As this is a long text, original page breaks have been preserved within this webpage for ease of academic referencing. Note that it may contain scanning errors.
GulfWatch Index
(this page) See also related pages on this website:
The GulfWatch Papers - Introduction
GulfWatch
was a daily bulletin of news and information about the Gulf War, much of it
differing from or extending what was presented through normal media channels.
Gleaned from the
GreenNet international
computer network, fax messages and even one telephone contact from inside Iraq,
it was mailed out each day of the war to church and peace groups. Through
computer networks and photocopied redistribution by peace groups, it was read
by many thousands of people internationally. Broadcasters used the information
in Chicago and Montreal. Aid agencies as far away as New Zealand had it faxed to
them. Finnish peace activists forwarded it to Swedish bishops. It even touched
countries like Nicaragua and elsewhere in the Third World. Complete sets of
GulfWatch were requested for all the United Church bishops in Pakistan, to help
them show that the war was not a simple Christian versus Moslem issue.
Appreciated by those of many or no faith alike, it was described as ‘A
remarkable service to the Churches at this very critical time’ by the Bishop
of Manchester, and as ‘One of the few bright points in a doomsday scenario’
by Duncan Forrester, Professor of Practical Theology at the University of
Edinburgh. Indeed, what started as a local effort with a Scottish focus, run by
a handful of volunteers in tiny offices in a church belltower and the back of a
suburban garage, became an alternative news service of global value. The
Gulf War is the first major conflict in which such high technology has been used
internationally to link those concerned with building peace. Here, the Edinburgh
Review carries an edited summary of the GulfWatch papers, with a commentary
placing this unique documentary work in the context of war and the
peace-building community by which it arose. Alastair
Hulbert is Secretary of Scottish Churches Action for World Development (SCAWD)
and was the main editor of GulfWatch. He has recently taken up a new position in
Brussels sponsored by the Church of Scotland to join the staff of the European
Ecumenical Commission for Church and Society. Alastair McIntosh is Development
Director with Edinburgh University’s Centre for Human Ecol- 16 EDINBURGH REVIEW /87 ogy and honorary Business Advisor to the lona Community. He was the
ideas, research and technology person of GulfWatch. We
arrived feeling desolate, frightened, disbelieving, awestruck, powerless. We had
gathered as the Steering Committee of Scottish Churches Action for World
Development (SCAWD). The log fire at Peace House near Dunblane spluttered to
keep our bodies warm against a snowy night. But within, each was touched by the
icy numbing of prescient shellshock. Donald
Briggs. Yvonne Burgess. Kathy Galloway. AlastairHulbert. Kate Houston. Alastair
McIntosh. Meredith Somerville. Helen Steven. Also Marlene Anderson and Tony Robb
(apologies, but with us). Similarly, Ellen Moxley and Kay Shanks, not on the
Committee, but cooking in the background — like us — caring and stirring.
And so the meeting opened. A reading from Janet Morley’s ‘Reproaches for
Good Friday’: I
brooded over the abyss, with
my words I called forth creation: but
you have brooded on destruction, and
manufactured the means of chaos… I
made the desert blossom before you, I
fed you with an open hand; but
you have grasped the children’s food, and
laid waste fertile lands… I
have followed you with the power of my spirit, to
seek truth and heal the oppressed: but
you have been following a lie, and
returned to your own comfort… Long
silence. Coloured flumes spurting from logs — beautiful —cozy. But too hot
inside. Too hot for children’s touch. Too hot to spray down on humankind. Even
if they are soldiers, damn them (damn us!), they are still children at heart.
Sons and daughters of mothers and fathers. Too human, too REAL to burn. ‘War
in the Gulf: Not in My Name’, said the 20p badges on the table. And when the
UN meets in an atmosphere like Peace House, alternatives WILL be found to war.
But the agenda! Back to our agenda. Listening time on the agenda. Each now
speaks to where she or he is at. More silence. Community. Tears. Holding. Yes,
holding. ‘Hold on world! World hold on! It’s gonna be all right! You gonna
see the light! (Ohh) when you’re one! Really one! You get things done/ Like
they never been done! So hold on’ (John Lennon). ALASTAIR HULBERT AND ALASTAIR MCINTOSH 17 ‘Where
better to be at this time? ‘Who better to hold on with? Powerless, perhaps:
disempowered — never! But the agenda… Review
of the Economics and Debt conference. Planning meetings for One World Week.
Reflection on the SCAWD organised church leaders’ visit to IsraeL/Palestine.
Arrangements for the visit of London Representative of the PLO, Afif Safieh ...
arrangements made, knowing it would be off if war broke out. But what stereotype
busting it would be for Scots to learn he is Christian! On to Islam-Christian
relations. Before we can think about a conference on this we need to learn much
more: agreed — watch Rana Kabbani’s ‘Letter to Christendom’ video at
our next meeting. Ongoing programme on the relationship between cultures and
development — Ivan Illich might come to our 1992 event. Link it in with our
Latin America concerns. Finally, planning the spring conference on
‘Enchantment and Liberation’ —and yes; Yes! We WILL hold on to that theme.
Even war will not stop us from singing, dancing and celebrating our inner
freedom. Back
to the Gulf. Was there anything SCAWD could do? somebody wondered. We’ve
been doing it all these years, and failed, bemoaned another. An older voice: ...
the first task of the peace movement is not necessarily to succeed, but to bear
witness to truth. We agreed, feeling the oppression lift somewhat. I
[Alastair McIntosh] had spent waiting time earlier that day in Gatwick
airport’s supposedly interfaith chapel. I had been aghast to see ‘Onward
Christian Soldiers!’ scrawled across the prayer book. Could we do anything to
counteract the crusader mentality? Helen had been a peace worker since her
relief work days in Vietnam, and voiced concern about how truth gets lost in
war, so even the focus of witness and prophesy becomes obscured. Then it was
suggested that we use access to international computer networks, fax and telex
to establish an alternative news service. GulfWatch was born. The
rest of the evening we felt so excited we forgot to crack open the bottle of
whisky. A statement of purpose and method was drawn up by the following morning.
Dated 15th January 1991, the eve of war, it said:
Disinformation
has already started. The reported defection of 6 Iraqi helicopters was an
American setup which the media was taken in by. Our government is recruiting the
services of PR consultants to handle the media, as they do not consider the
usual civil service channels appropriate to how they want the conflict reported. SCAWD
is concerned that disinformation and censorship means that key representatives
within the Scottish churches may not always have access to adequate information
on which to base public statements, pastoral letters, etc. arising out of the
need for 18
EDINBURGH REVIEW / 87 an
ethical critique of war developments. Accordingly, we are setting up an
emergency information service to provide daily short digests of material coming
in from uncensored sources within the international church, peace, environmental
etc. networks. To achieve this: ·
We will use
existing office communications technology at our disposal to access the regular
immediate Gulf updates coming in from non-governmental organisations on GreenNet.
GreenNet is an internationally networked (50 countries) computer conferencing
facility used by organisations such as churches, peace groups, human rights
organisations, etc.. ·
We will use
existing telex, fax and telephone contact numbers to augment GreenNet. ·
We will draw on
SCAWD’s experience since 1984 in building understanding within the churches of
Middle East issues (organising study tours, conferences, etc), to identify
where the news we collect differs from or extends what is being presented in the
mass media and summarise it in a daily digest. ·
We will mail or fax
this out late each afternoon to a manageably small list of key church decision
makers and policy advisors, to provide them with information they might not get
from the mass media. (The value of this can be appreciated if, say, there was a
nuclear attack or radiation fallout from bombing Iraqi nuclear plants. Chernobyl
experience showed that GreenNet sources in countries like Sweden fed in
information which, it subsequently became apparent, had been kept low key within
Britain.) ·
The above is
necessary because in a war, and particularly in one which certain elements of
the media might try to distort into a Holy War, the voices of church leaders may
be amongst the few which can speak freely and express ethical concerns within
their congregations and beyond. ·
The service will
last only for the duration of any war and will commence tomorrow, Wednesday 16th
January. The SCAWD Steering Committee has arranged for editorial, management and
other tasks to be conducted on an unpaid basis. Computer access, postage, fax
etc. costs will run at around £60 a day. Help will be needed to cover these
costs, but we are proceeding without identifying finance due to the utmost
urgency of the situation and having this morning consulted by telephone with
contactable church leaders. GulfWatch No. 1 came out on the afternoon of 16th January. There was no news in it not available elsewhere. But there were some powerful statements from concerned church and peace organisa- ALASTAIR HULBERT AND ALASTAIR MCINTOSH 19 tions,
so we reproduced these. The following day GreenNet went wild, as war launched
the international peace community into frenzied orbit. Each day’s two-page
Gulf Watch thereafter became a distillation from some 40 or 50 pages of selected
material, accounting for some 90 hours of computer network access time within
two months as well as hundreds of pages of fax and other hard copy. This
distillation service backed by research was what GulfWatch readers most
appreciated. Jewish peace worker, Margaret Phillips, living in St. Louis, USA,
wrote, ‘I provide printed copies for the organizers of anti-war activities
locally. For that, having it all together is useful.’ Alison Burnley of
Edinburgh remarked, ‘It may not improve my breakfast but it does improve my
knowledge!’ Much
of our inspiration had come from the 3rd January Statement on the Gulf Crisis,
signed by some 30 leading representatives of church and society in Scotland.
This group remained our editorial focus, while the mailing list, notwithstanding
efforts to curb it, grew to over 200 direct from us, and many thousands
indirect. US activist Rich Winkel said, ‘I post Gulf Watch to an internet
activism list with about 700 direct subscribers and about 15 re-distribution
points. From there it gets posted to the alt.activism group on Usenet
—probably several thousand readers there. I’ve gotten very positive feedback
on it ... please keep it coming!’ What
follows is a condensation of the main themes covered in GulfWatch. The GW number
indicates the issue of GulfWatch from which the passage is extracted. Source
referencing is given for all but the earliest inputs (when we lacked
sophistication). For instance, igc:ckruger mideast.gulf Mar 11 could be checked
in the GreenNet user index to show the input came from Cynthia Kruger via the
USA’s PeaceNet system, at an address with phone number in San Francisco, and
indication that her main area of activism is Latin America. Mideast.gulf is the
name of the particular conference (out of many hundreds) in which the full text
of the original material may still be active for responding to, or archived for
reading only. The date facilitates location. Our own material is either
referenced ‘GulfWatch’, or ‘aldopacific’ — our GreenNet account name. In
these ways we were able further to check certain stories — either by
telephoning, faxing, or most usually, by e-mail (instant electronic mail)
through GreenNet. Since active material in a conference can be publicly debated
by subscribers adding their responses to it, any items of questionable
authoritativeness pretty quickly get shot down as some 7,000 users in 50
different countries have the opportunity to scrutinise. Similarly, fresh
insights quickly get added. This
is the power of electronic networking with satellite computer telecommunication
links. Wartime media censorship applied to a • 20 EDINBURGH REVIEW /87 particular affluent country can never be the same henceforth. Some of
the same satellites that bounced down bombing schedules, albethey scrambled,
also carried messages of love, unscrambled, freely open to the interception we
know takes place. In this small way, perhaps, the oppressor’s tool can help
dismantle his fortress. As war was about to break out, the government took PR control out of the
hands of Whitehall civil servants and into those of a private PR company. Media
control was subsequently enforced by restricting the supply of reporting permits
for Saudi Arabia, causing, for example, Scotland’s leading left-of-centre
tabloid, the Daily Record, great
difficulty in getting a reporter on the spot. Hours before the war started it
became clear that attempts would also be made to control public opinion. [NB. Bold type indicates material quoted from GulfWatch daily bulletins.
GW2, for example, is GulfWatch Bulletin No. 2.] BBC AND IBA OPPOSE ‘UNDESIRABLE’ MOD CENSORSHIP RULES (GW2) GulfWatch. ‘Information
is the currency of democracy’ Ralph Nader. At 9.28 pm today (16 January) as
the very last item of its evening news, BBC1 TV reported that they and the IBA
considered aspects of MOD reporting requirements to be undesirable. In
case of war breaking out, information will be controlled by an Information
Committee, comprising John Wakeham (Chair), Chris Patten and (Chris?) Ryder.
Daily briefings would be given to MPs. PR ‘problems’ would be limited if the
war is short, but could become troublesome if the war is protracted. The
report said that the media have today accepted reporting ground rules. These
involve no reporting on troop numbers, nothing on future operations, and
‘care’ to be taken in reporting on casualties. They want the media to
‘consult’ with them before reporting on: opposition to the war, and scenes
of death and injury. The BBC and IBA consider this restriction to be
‘undesirable’ and are currently having discussions with the MOD about it. The
onset of war activated an array of informal networks as peace workers in various
countries anxiously sought to communicate news of war opposition. PROTESTS IN GERMANY CONTINUE (GW2) University of Hanover SRC, 3:41 and 4:28 am Jan 17, 1991 In
contrast to the information spread by German television and the Innenministerium
(Home Office) German cities are not quiet tonight. ALASTAIR HULBERT AND ALASTAIR MCINTOSH 21 On Wednesday again some 200,000 people all over Germany gathered in
demonstrations, prayers etc. to protest the Gulf war. In Hamburg and Hannover at
12 noon all public busses, trams and underground trains stopped for five
minutes. Passengers were informed by loudspeakers that the reason is the
drivers’ protest against war. In Berlin some thousands of school pupils missed school to demonstrate.
In Wuppertal since 6 am, Wednesday, the end of ultimatum local time, actors of
the local theatre are reading poems from the Bible and the Koran. They promised
to read day and night till the war is stopped. Trade unionists consider voting
for a general strike to force their government to do everything to stop war. Eve Sinton, a journalist from New Zealand, reported heavily pro-war
media bias there. But a report from the States said that the Irish government
were refusing to follow Britain’s censorship example. In Italy the media
seemed to be positively encouraging dissent, a 17th January report saying, ‘On
Saturday more than 200,000 people demonstrated in Rome against war. Many local
radio stations are broadcasting John Lennon’s song ‘Give Peace a Chance’.
They propose that the same is done all over the world at 3.00 pm local time each
day. Audiences should be asked to put up the volume!’ (GW3) But the BBC was
coming under criticism for being more circumspect, for the best reasons, of
course. JOHN
LENNON RADIO CENSORSHIP (GW6) Gulf Watch Jan 20, 1991 Radio Forth reported on Sunday morning at 8.30 am that local radio
stations are coming under pressure not to play peace songs such as John
Lennon’s ‘Give Peace a Chance’. The Sunday
Times (20 Jan) and the Guardian (21
Jan) covered this. GulfWatch contacted Julia Shipston, London based press officer for BBC
local radio stations, who said there is no ban: what’s happened is that
guidelines have been issued to the 37 English BBC local radio stations, calling
for sensitivity when certain songs are played and giving a list of 67
potentially risky ones, including songs like, Fields of Fire, I Just Died in
Your Arms Tonight, Armed and Extremely Dangerous, and Roberta Flack’s Killing
me Softly. Shipston explained that a song like Killing me Softly is, of course,
completely neutral to war. However, if it was played just after a news report of
local soldiers being killed, it could be very painful. Fair enough, but amidst reports of disk jockeys being fired or censured
for playing peace songs, none of us heard any throughout the war. We had to sing
our own! One intriguing report was never 22
EDINBURGH REVIEW /87 again
repeated. Attempts by GulfWatch to find out why were frustrated by IRN’s
newsdesk. Calls over GreenNet to see if the story had been carried elsewhere in
the world drew a blank. BOMBING
OF CIVILIAN TARGET? (GW5) GulfWatch 21
January 1991 Independent radio news reported on Sunday 20 January at 10.00 am that
the allies had bombed Saddam’s home village of Takrit, identified as a
‘peasant village’. Because it was his birth place, went the report, he was
expected to be enraged by the action. This is the first report we have of
deliberate bombing of a non-strategic target. Has anyone heard of others? The
report has not to our knowledge been heard again. Various
reports were telephoned or c-mailed in to GulfWatch about apparent attempts to
frustrate the work of the peace movement, and to minimise public alarm. Where
these could be verified or were first hand, we carried them, such as a 19th
January report that, ‘We understand that in certain English cities civil
defence measures such as testing air-raid sirens have been suspended, so as not
to provoke anxiety amongst the population. A CND advert in a major UK daily last
week was allegedly published with 8 mistaken telephone numbers. The paper
republished, but who was responsible for the errors? Allegations are being made
that certain newspapers have refused to take peace adverts.’ (GW4) Sometimes
a news report lacked Western credibility — a Radio Havana piece, something
from a student demonstrator in Singapore, accounts from refugees. We were
questioned about reliability, how we could be sure of our sources. In some ways
the processes of verification of computer networks are best compared with those
of psychoanalysis — communication for the sake of self-knowledge and truth,
that eventually, in community and with experience, regularity and immediacy,
provides its own moral vindication: confirmation of the truth, rejection ofthe
unfounded. As
the war entered its second week the initial sense of disbelief amongst peace
workers wore thin, and a touch of fear set in amongst some of us. The very
effectiveness of the peace movement made it a threat to the war effort. We
learned that CNN and all national TV networks in the USA had carried reports of
Glasgow RC Archbishop Thomas Winning’s outspoken address of 21st January.
GulfWatch had discussions with other computer networkers about the risk that
efforts might be made to close us down. We concluded that this would be such bad
public relations as to be stupid. But for a while the fear was real, especially
as our American partners at PeaceNet were being required by police to provide
information on peace actions. It was ALASTAIR HULBERT AND ALASTAIR MCINTOSH 23 evident
that stronger censorship measures were in hand should the PR battle start being
lost. For instance, we input a report entitled Sleep Well America — Even
Your Dead Are Censored, stating, ‘A report on BBC Radio 4 at 1745 GMT this
evening, 31st January, said that the U.S. authorities are going to stop film of
dead Americans coming home from being shown on TV. This breaks with previous
custom. The slow-marched, flag-draped coffins are considered to have a
detrimental effect on domestic support for warfare.’ (GW14) While
most media coverage involved indirect censorship through denial of information
or distraction from relevant issues through incessant focusing on fringe shows,
such as the hyped-up performance of Patriot missiles, there were also shafts
of disinformation and hardcore censoring. The French media was reported to be
heavily muzzled, philosopher Michel Serre remarking that, ‘Our channels of
information, which traditionally used to be profoundly reflective, have been
contaminated by the immediate event and triviality, which is a style typical of
the media serving American society.’ (GW2O) Akbar Ahmed wrote in the Guardian,
6th February, that the media had tried to make it a war between Islam and
the West, frequently featuring Saddam at prayer so that ‘the not so subtle
message is that of the holy warrior’ (GW19). One mainstream American
journal even retouched a picture of Saddam to make his moustache look more like
Hitler’s! The BBC generally seemed to operate as impartially as it could
within the confines of what news was accessible, but restraint was still
exercised in line with the consensus view that this war was being
‘clinically’ executed. BBC
ADMITS BOMBING SELF CENSORSHIP (GW3O) The Guardian
18 Feb 1991 ‘...Film from Baghdad provided those who are anti-war with images of
far greater impact than any verbal argument. The effect was enhanced during the
9 o’clock (BBC 1 TV) News on Wednesday when the announcer explained that even
more terrible pictures had been received but were not being shown. ‘Working at the BBC on Thursday, I found several supporters of the war
angry that the news-reader had mentioned this self-censorship. They felt those
against the war would be able to say: “See, the true horrors of the bombing of
civilians are being withheld...” ‘Had film of the charred victims of the Hamburg fire-storm been seen
in every British home two days later, could the bombing have gone on?
Churchill’s reaction on seeing footage at that time was: “Are we beasts?”
What would the British public have said?’ (Article by Martin Gilbert,
historian and official biographer of Winston Churchill) Civilian
deaths were referred to by the military and reiterated by 24
EDINBURGH REVIEW /87 the
media as ‘collateral damage’ in a carefully orchestrated attempt to keep
public attention away from the reality that real sons of mothers, fathers of
children, were being mercilessly destroyed and maimed. It emerged, as
igc:pfranck put it on 24th January that, ‘It is clear that the battle has
now shifted to the hearts and minds of the US people, and that the media is the
absolute key to that battle.’ (GW9) Where doublespeak wore thin, the
military always had the means to throw up diversionary images. As items on the
use of napalm showed, they also had the crassness to expose their own
inhumanity. NAPALM
- JUST A DISUSED ‘DEFOLIANT’ (GW33) igc:aadams
mideast.forum.566.Defoliation of Kuwait ... 4:43 pm Feb
22, 1991 The ABC 5:30pm (CST) news carried the story of Marine Harrier Jets
dropping napalm. The report went on to say that ‘it was only being used to
clear oil filled trenches’. Then — a mysterious overhead (recon) photo
appeared on the screen, supposedly showing the trenches all along the border.
(For those without access to U.S. media — recon photos have suddenly started
appearing on the tube when they support whatever the administration wants people
to believe.) Two points here: To avoid having napalm classed as a weapon of mass
destruction under international law, the U.S. managed to get it officially
designated as a ‘defoliant’ back in the 60s. Just how much of that Kuwaiti
forest is still standing anyway? Also, when Jimmy Carter was president, the U.S.
airforce publicly announced that it was removing all remaining stocks of napalm
from it’s inventory, as they felt it was no longer needed. So where did this
stuff come from ... an interservice garage sale? NAPALMING
UNIFORMS EASIER THAN PYJAMAS - ADELMAN
(GW33) mts
mideast.gulf.378.Napalm ... 10:49 pm Feb 22, 1991, BBC Radio
Interview Nick Ross (Presenter:) ‘Kenneth Adelman, can I just ask you something
else. We have been getting reports through the day that the Americans are using
NAPALM in the Kuwaiti theatre of operations and, indeed, I gather that U.S.
Officials have now said: “Yes, indeed! Napalm is being dropped behind Iraqi
lines”. Now, to some of us here, that’s been a surprising development, not
for military reasons — because clearly, Napalm can be a very effective weapon
indeed — but for all the emotional connotations that Napalm had with Vietnam
… does it surprise you that it is in use — for political rather than
military means, I mean?’ Kenneth Adelman (former Director U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency): ‘Well, I think the objective was to make sure that ALASTAIR HULBERT AND ALASTAIR MCINTOSH 25 the,
behind the lines, er, was as wiped out as possible so that we would not risk
American and British boys if we needed to go on the ground war. And I think that
as long as the targets are kept military, it’s proper, as uninviting as it is.
In Vietnam what really caused the stir on Napalm that so inflicted the
“Vietnam Memory” was that we couldn’t tell who was military and who was
civilian. Everybody seemed to be running around in pyjamas part of the time. And
I think that, when you went after villages, quote “villages” that were said
to be Vietcong, with people in pyjamas said to be officers — but no one could
tell the difference between officers and enlisted men and the peasants in the
field — that got you in all kinds of problems. Here, I take it, with the
Republican Guard and back eschelons — military, it’s quite clear, they wear
uniforms, they sit in tanks, they, you know, cook over fire or whatever they do,
they look like military, they are mi1~tary and they’re clearly identified as
such. And so I think that it is proper in that time to kind of weed ‘em
out.’ (Media Transcription Service transcript). Peg:tribune
in Australia pointed out how in the media, ‘The language describing the war
comes mostly from male voices. They use imagery that domesticates what weapons
are really doing. Phrases like “taking out” targets and “carpet” bombing
sound like getting rid of garbage or fleas ... . (We women) feel that all power
has been taken away from us and decisions are made by generals and the generals
are men.’ (GW2O) Women worldwide played a major role in challenging this
war, albeit one with a low public profile. WOMEN
IN BLACK DEMONSTRATE IN COLOGNE (GW1O) sysop mideast.action 11:06 am Jan 25,
1991 (From News system) A society which places strong emphasis on its military strenth and the
heroism of its soldiers inevitably marginalizes women. Rachel Ostrowitz, of
Women in Black writes of the Israeli experience: ‘...The need to understand what was happening in the West Bank and
Gaza increased when we realized that censorship was being imposed on the public,
and that television was not telling the whole story. Women are sensitive to
censorship, direct or indirect, for experience has shown that our stories are
not always told...’ Poster
suggestions from igc:lareader included, ‘Turn off your TV and Think!’ and
‘The Media Is Carpet Bombing our Consciousness!’ (GW13) Others included ‘How
come “our” oil got under their ground’, ‘The price of cheap gas is too
high’ and ‘Stop drilling, start killing, so we can keep spilling
oil.’ (GW12 appendix) Public opinion polls in most Western countries
showed strong support for the war. A System Three survey in the Glasgow
Herald showed that 77% of 26
EDINBURGH REVIEW /87 Scots
supported the war. But other surveys suggested that just over 50% of women opposed it. However, the information base on which the
public’s views were established was non-existent or distorted. The Bishop of
St Andrews, Michael Hare Duke, was quoted saying, ‘Stay free — don’t
get caught in the thinking that’s around, the propaganda of war.’ (GW31) U.S.
PUBLIC MISINFORMED SAYS NEW OPINION SURVEY (GW3O) igc:peacenet
mideast.media.126.Public Misinformed! 8:51 am Feb 19,
1991 An important survey of U.S.A. Gulf war attitudes and opinion
manipulation has been carried out by researchers at the Department of
Communication, University of Massachusetts/Amherst. It says, ‘Despite the
months of television coverage devoted to this story, most people, we found, were
alarmingly ill informed. If the news media had done a better job in informing
people, would there be less support for the war? Our study indicates that the
answer to this question is yes. As
concern about media distortion in Britain grew, a packed meeting of journalists
at Friends House, London, decided to set up an alternative weekly newspaper, ‘War
Report’ (GW17). However, it should be recorded that not all regular papers
knowingly allowed their vision to be distorted. The Guardian was in many ways exemplary; the Scotsman received praise north of the border. But Gulf Watch seemed
to be the only daily bulletin we know of specialising in summarising news from
alternative sources. The response of church leaders, for whom it was primarily
intended, is summed up in a letter from Rev Maxwell Craig, General Secretary of
the ecumenical body, Action of Churches Together in Scotland: ‘I am writing on behalf of ACTS to congratulate SCAWD for the quite
remarkable production of GulfWatch throughout the Gulf war and beyond it. This
was a quite excellent piece of work which made an enormous contribution to all
of us who were so deeply concerned both about the period leading up to the
outbreak of hostilities and about the conduct of the war itself. It was not
simply the information you gave us, though that was important. It was of almost
equal importance that the presence of GulfWatch was a healthy reminder to us to
be both discriminating and sceptical about the information that was given us
through the media. We know that this information was carefully filtered and
subject to censorship either by military sources or by the proprietors of the
media concerned. Gulf Watch was a healthy reminder to us to recognise the
ancient maxim that truth is the first casualty of war...’ ALASTAIR HULBERT AND ALASTAIR MCINTOSH 27 Military
Dimensions and ‘Collateral’ Damage [Alastair
Hulbert’s voice] On the evening of 16th January, on my way home from taking
the first GulfWatch to the post office, I met Trevor Royle, Defence
Correspondent of Scotland on Sunday. (We
were at school together.) He had just returned the previous day from Saudi
Arabia, after spending several days at the front with a British tank regiment.
He told me what it was like and shared his foreboding that war would inevitably
come soon. Night
falls early in the desert, he said, at about 5.30. On moonless nights it is very dark. No lights are allowed; it is
bitterly cold and normally there is simply nothing to do but go to bed. When he
was there, however, some of the young soldiers, 20-year-olds, took to crawling
along to Trevor’s tent to talk in the dark. He was as he said ‘a kind of
uncle to them for a few hours’. These
boys were afraid — of the future, the unknown, the threat of danger, the
disaster and pity of war. Loneliness, the strangeness of the desert, distance
from home, inexperience of life, above all the darkness of night brought out
their deepest dread. Yet these same fellows, come morning, were up and about
their business — determined to go get ‘em, resolute, self-confident, macho
even. The
pathos of the description affected me deeply. War began, as we discovered, only
a few hours after our conversation. I ‘watched it on TV’, full of dread,
until President Bush spoke to the world at about 2.00 am. Then I switched off. GulfWatch
was in a sense an attempt to face up to the dread and foreboding which so many
of us, not just those boys in the desert, felt at the onset of war. It was a way
of dealing with the alienation imposed on us by television and the illusion of a
‘clean war’. The statistics were extensive, even when edited. AIR
WAR (GW15) igc:greenbase
mideast.gulf.290 5:32 pm Jan 31, 1991 ·
Over 10,000 sorties
of all sorts had been flown during the first week of war. The number of sorties
flown to date is now over 32,000, with 2,600 flown on 31 January. ( Six sets of
air war stastics follow, all brief but detailed, culminating in this:) ·
300 sorties per day
flown against Republican Guards ground units: on Jan 26,27 B-52s dropped 455
tons of explosives; on Jan29, 21 B-52s dropped 315 tons of explosives; on
Jan 30, 28 B-52s dropped 450 tons of explosives. Such statistics are difficult to comprehend, especially when related to the television which would have you believe it was actually reporting something by showing the screen lit up like a fireworks display. More eloquent was the following: ‘Military censors permit no interviews with the B52 bomber-pilots.’ (GW7) Or: 28
EDINBURGH REVIEW /87 GREENPEACE
REPORT ON IRAQI DEATHS (GW13) igc:pnmideast
mideast.media.63 6:30 pm Jan 30, 1991 Greenpeace/ USA According to a source of mine in the State Department, a B-52 bomber
attack that was carried out this morning that wiped out Saddam’s elite forces
has likely killed up to 150,000 Iraqi troops. That is the number of troops that
were housed in the encampment that was bombed ... Daphne Wysham, Greenpeace
Magazine, Senior Editor. The
question of casualties was a source of great concern — to everyone (except
perhaps Saddam) but for different reasons. Given the participants, enormous loss
of life was inevitable, as this sum made clear: SLOGAN
OF THE WEEK (GW1O) igc:pnmideast
mideast.forum 7:35 pm Jan 27, 1991 Saw this in San Francisco: 1
Bully +
1 Bully =l000s
dead
Joel Gazis-Sax At
the end of the first week of war GulfWatch relayed a horrific report, not
without trepidation as regards its veracity. GERMAN
EX-GENERAL SPEAKS OF 300,000 DEATHS (GW7) sysop mideast.gulf 5:27 am Jan 23 1991
(From News system) According to German Radio/TV (ARD) Member of Parliament and former
Air-Force General Manfred Opel says there have been more than 300,000 deaths in
Iraq. Opel said US military experts had told him there were over 100,000 deaths
in Baghdad alone. ‘I have no doubt that this information is respectable’, he
said A
journalist friend then discovered that the Guardian
had investigated the same report and finding it untrustworthy had not published
it. GulfWatch backtracked the next day, a little. In retrospect, and in the
light of the fact that no trustworthy figures of the Iraqi casualties in the
Gulf were ever disclosed, discovered, or even seriously sought by the
authorities, it was probably not a bad thing that the German general’s report
was published. Later reports, especially the transcripts GulfWatch carried of
Ramsay Clark’s press conference ‘Eyewitness Account’ (GW25) and BBC
2’s interview ‘UK Expert’s View re Bombed Shelter’ (GW27), vied
with it for the horror of their message. 300,000 dead? — the enormity of the
numbers, like the details of the bombs dropped, had a dreadful numbing effect. A
telephone call from a Jordanian worker with the Red Crescent inside Iraq
estimated 112,000 civilian deaths, 60% of them children (GW34). ALASTAIR HULBERT AND ALASTAIR MCINTOSH 29 ‘Official’
post-war estimates have settled down in the region of 100,000 to 250,000
combined military and civilian, with presumably several times that number
seriously injured. But
in fact the numbers of the dead were not so relevant as their dying. (The Bible
incidentally hasn’t a good word to say about the search for body counts. And
in the end, the One Jesus, like Everyman, represents all.) It is rather the
slant, the context, the channel of communication, the do-it-your-self-reliance
and commitment to disclosing reality which matter: the difference, as Pablo
Casals used to say, between playing notes and making music. GulfWatch
No. 13 began with this little voice crying in the wilderness — a symbolic
protest that is now doubly relevant in the light of Gunter Grass’s outcry at
the Bundeswehr’s use of Picasso’s Guernica for a recruitment
advertisement during the Gulf Crisis (Guardian,
May 23 1991): GUERNICA’S
CALL FOR PEACE IN THE WORLD AND IN THE PERSIAN
GULF (GW13) igc:jgutierrez
mideast.action.386 3:22 am Jan 30, 1991 The Town Hall of Guernica in Spain has issued the following
proclamation: ‘Guernica, a small town in the wake of humanity, cannot keep
quiet when faced with the grave situation in the Persian Gulf. For we, too, have
been the victim of a barbarous bombing — as represented in the famous painting
by Pablo Picasso. Guernica, in valuing human life, expresses its unconditional
rejection of all violence ... Armed conflict is a crime against humanity!’ Ironically
what has just been said about the relevance of numbers appears to find a
parallel in official US reaction to the question of casualties during the war. CASUALTIES
(GW15) igc:greenbase
mideast.gulf.290 5:32 pm Jan 31, 1991 Gen. Schwarzkopf in his summary of the ground engagements this week
stated matter of factly that Marines ‘reported severe damage on the enemy, and
great loss of life.’ Yet when asked about Iraqi casualties, the General said
that the US was ‘shooting, not counting… Body count means nothing,
absolutely nothing.’ The military … fail to understand that people are
interested not to keep score, but to gauge the human cost of the war. GULF
CASUALTIES (GW18) igc:greenbase
mideast.gulf 7:44 pm Feb 5, 1991
Greenpeace USA The Pentagon still vehemently refuses to discuss Iraqi casualties. Some
Pentagon spokesmen state that this reluctance simply reflects the lack of
information ... Trying to downplay media and public 30
EDINBURGH REVIEW /87 interest,
these spokesmen assert that casualties are not an important measure of the
military success of the war… US and allied casualties in combat so far number less than 100,
according to the Pentagon. But estimates of Iraqi military and civilian
casualties vary widely, from the few hundreds to the many thousands. The issue
of casualties is one that the US government and the military establishment is
quite sensitive to. The
point here is that the Pentagon and General Schwartzkopf were not interested in
the human cost to the enemy. They were interested only in winning the war —
and of course in keeping US casualties low for the sake of domestic political
support for the war. This is why there was so much reference to the Vietnam war
with its loss of life and face, and so much triumphalism in the multiple US
post-war victory parades, including their firework displays ‘to recreate the
atmosphere of the first night of the war’. |