Page 120 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Chapter 5

Saddam Loyalists and "Shia Extremists"

Time and time again, it is argued that Iraqi resistance groups are driven over-
whelmingly by those loyal to the Baath Party, and more importantly, Saddam
Hussein. Wolf Blitzer drove this point home as he questioned one guest con-
cerning the "bulk of the insurgency," wondering: "is this homegrown Iraqis
The
themselves, Saddam ~o~alists?'*~ claim has been repeated extensively in
other media sources. The Chicago Tribune characterized the battle against anti-
occupation forces as one of coalition forces pursuing "insurgents loyal to top-
pled President Saddam Hussein"-"insurgents" "who are intent on undermining
the U.S.-led effort to democratize ~ra~.'*~ The New York Times and the Wash-
ington Post ran various headlines associating resistance groups with Saddam
Hussein, such as, "Hussein's Agents Behind Attacks, Pentagon Finds," "U.S.
Officials See Hussein's Hand in Attacks on Americans in Iraq," and "Hunt for
Hussein led to Insurgent Hub," in order to frame those forces as little more than
an embodiment of tyrannical nostalgia for a return to Baath party rule.48 In the
last article, the Washington Post took at face value the military's claims in 2003
that there were "five families running the Iraqi insurgency7'-that "the upper and
middle ranks of the resistance were filled by members of five extended families
from a few villages within a 12-mile radius of the volatile city of Tikrit along
the Tigris River." Such an appraisal has been discounted in light of growing
resistance that is largely decentralized, including supporters from many different
walks of Iraqi life. Even the government's own assessments contradicted the
media's centralized resistance claim, as former CPA head Paul Bremer I11 ad-
mitted that there was "no evidence.. .of any centralized command and control"
of Iraqi re~istance.~~
The use of Saddam Hussein to discount resistance is no subtle characteriza-
tion, since it frames such forces as fundamentally repressive and fanatical, and
conveys the idea that Iraqis who oppose occupation lack any independent moti-
vations outside of following the wishes of the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein.
As the Progressive-Left Covert Action Quarterly magazine argues: the media
have attempted to convince Americans that "the peoples of Iraq. . . do not have
any feelings about their respective motherlands," that "all they have is love for
their kidnapped resident."^' This assumption has been increasingly challenged
after Saddam Hussein was captured, tried, and executed, and as resistance at-
tacks continue to grow. Reinforcing the "resistance equals Saddam loyalty"
mindset, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek believes the appeal of Iraq's resistance
cells "has clear limits," and that, "While it has drawn support from all Iraqis
because of its anti-American character, it is essentially a Sunni movement fueled
by the anger of Iraq's once dominant authority."" Jim Hoagland of the Wash-
ington Post seems to agree, lambasting "former Baathists and foreign Sunni
extremists who turned Fallujah into Terrorism ~entral."~~
Mainstream media sources have also attempted to invalidate resistance in-
spired by Moqtada a1 Sadr as driven and supported by "Shia extremist^."^^ Sadr
was singled out as a "violent Shia theocrat" working against the interests of