Media's Disinformation and the Nature of the Iraqi Resistance

The flurry of news, hypotheses, and disinformation about the nature of the Iraqi Resistance against the Occupation continues unabated. How much of this is managed propaganda against the Iraqi Resistance?

According to both the Western mainstream media and the alternative media, the U.S. is "building democracy" and fighting "terrorism" in Iraq. The distortions of reality and lack of oppositional media leave people in the West, Americans in particular, ill informed. The Western media diligently diverts public attention from the illegal Occupation of Iraq and the responsibility of the U.S./Western governments for the horrendous crimes committed against the people of Iraq.

Western journalists and pundits are the main agents of this distorted propaganda. The aims are to portray the Iraqi Resistance as violent "religious fanatics" isolated from the rest of the population and to advocate for ongoing occupation.

Time and again, the public have shown to be less tolerant to the old cliché of "religious fanatics". By contrast, people around the world have a record of supporting national resistance movements. In other word, portraying the Iraqi national Resistance movement as a collection of "religious fanatics" and "foreign" fighters "with nothing to lose" is the Occupation's way of discrediting the Iraqi Resistance and denying the Iraqi people their legitimate right to fight for freedom and national sovereignty.

Amply documented, the pretexts for the war and the Occupation were based on fake intelligence. Hence, the U.S. and its "allies" are in the process, through media disinformation, of not only legitimizing the Occupation, but also of creating new pretexts for the maintenance of continued US military presence.

The most common pretext in the media reports is that U.S. forces are invited to stay in Iraq to prevent civil war and "maintains stability". But like the pretext of WMD, there is no evidence to support these U.S. sponsored lies. There is a U.S-engineered stalemate with no one with a majority to govern effectively. The "government" is powerless dominated by the same groups of expatriates who lobbied for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The U.S. is pitting Iraqis against each other and creating a climate of fear.

In this regard, the creation, arming and financing of 'ethnic militias' and death squads by U.S. forces is designed to create ethnic divisions and provoke sectarian violence among Iraqis. These US sponsored militia groups are: The Kurdish Peshmerga whose leaders supported the U.S. invasion and Occupation. The Iranian-trained Badr Brigades, The armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) led by Ibrahim Al-Jaaferi of the Da'wa party, The INC militia of Ahmed Chalabi, and the INA militia of Iyad Allawi.

All these groups are involved in terrorist activities against Iraqi civilians. The latter three groups entered Iraq on the back of U.S. tanks, without valid Iraqi citizenship papers.

The Kurdish militia are the Occupation's most loyal collaborators, receiving arms and money from their masters. Together with the occupying forces, they are responsible for wide scale atrocities in Iraqi towns and villages.

Together with the Peshmerga, Israeli Mossad agents and U.S. forces, the militia groups went on systematic killings of thousands of prominent Iraqi academics, scientists, politicians and religious leaders. They also participated in the atrocity and total destruction of Fallujah, which is depicted as "the storming of Fallujah" in most mainstream media. The city was completely destroyed and still a 'no go zone' for Iraqis. Other Iraqi towns and cities have not escaped this deliberate destruction. Their crimes have never been investigated, and no one has been arrested. In fact the Bush Administration is protecting these criminals elements and encouraging their crimes.

Former U.S. administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer at the behest of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Deputy of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Ahmad Chalabi initiated the murderous policy termed "DeBaathification". The Bush Administration is not only supporting this murderous policy, it introduced the "El Salvador option" of murdering Iraqi dissidents through the appointment John Negroponte as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. Chalabi, who never lived in Iraq before the invasion, stated that he "wants to raise Iraq from the ground and build 'new' Iraq". What is taking place in Iraq today is a U.S-instigated criminal atrocity. {mosgoogle right}

In addition to the daily intrusive and aggressive house raids being conducted by U.S. soldiers Iraqis also witness daily, routine street patrols. Journalist Ken Dillian of Knight Ridder wrote:

"All day long, the soldiers pointed their guns at Iraqi civilians, whom they called 'hajis'.... Wary of ambushes, they rammed cars that got in the way of their Humvees. Always on the lookout for car bombs, they stopped, screamed at, shoved to the ground and searched people driving down the road after curfew - or during the day if they looked suspicious".

According to a recent report by the U.S. Project on Defense Alternatives: "Strong majorities in the Sunni and Shiite community oppose the occupation - and significant minorities have registered support for attacks on US troops. 'What drives these attitudes more than anything else', says the report's author, Carl Conetta, 'are nationalism, the coercive practices of the occupation, and the collateral effects of military operations'".

The report, Vicious Circle: The Dynamics of Occupation and Resistance in Iraq, notes U.S. occupation abuses many Iraqis every day. Iraqis face: "Constant foreign military patrols - about 12,000 per week; Ubiquitous (and too often deadly) vehicle check-points; Raids -- 8,000 total since May 2003; and Citizen round-ups -- 80,000 detained since April 2003". People have only one option left: Resistance.

All resistance movements have been required to respond with armed resistance to defend against military aggression and occupation. Iraq is not different. Violent resistance arises from violent military occupation.

How the Media depicts the Resistance

It is easy for the U.S. "Left" and "Liberals" to pontificate about 'non-violent' resistance, but what is at issue is the violence committed by the occupying forces. It is a clear case of double standards and distortion of the underlying facts. It is also points to a lack of solidarity on the part of those "progressive" groups in the West, who put the onus on the Iraqi people, who are defending their homeland against US imperial aggression. It should be borne in mind that the U.S. "is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today", and all acts of violence and destruction in Iraq have occurred under the radar of U.S. forces.

The U.S. press and Western media are focusing on civilian’s casualties with a view to discrediting the Iraqi Resistance. Regrettably, much of the coverage of the Iraqi Resistance in the Western media has focused on the U.S-created phantom groups of Al-Zarqawi and Al-Qaida network, called "radical Islamists" and "suicide bombing". Yet despite the media hype, there exists no substantial evidence that these groups are active inside Iraq. Most of the attacks on the occupying forces have been attributed to the main Iraqi Resistance groups, and very few of these attacks were on civilians.