Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA 'OWN GOALS' IN THE GWOT
Pentagon cut and paste by Pepe Escobar 
THE ROVING EYE Pentagon cut and paste By Pepe Escobar, Asian Time Online, 5 May 2005 Talk about rebel technology: the Pentagon this week was not overwhelmed by a dirty bomb or a jet converted into a missile, but by a simple cut and paste job. Like anyone else, the Pentagon uses Adobe Acrobat. At first, the 42 pages of the report which would supposedly shed some light on the March 4 killing of Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari and the wounding of kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Baghdad showed up on the Centcom website as a PDF file heavily censored with large sections blacked out -including the significant omission, among others, of the names of all the soldiers involved in the shooting, as well as entire pages. But because the Pentagon failed to save the file properly, all it took was for someone to cut and paste the document into a word-processing application to give Italy and the rest of the world access to the full, uncensored version. The Pentagon was enveloped by huge clouds of embarrassment. Its first reaction was a "no comment". Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, a press officer, repeatedly told Italian journalists that if they wanted to find out how substantial, uncensored sections of the Calipari report could have been available "by mistake" on the Centcom website last Saturday night, they had to contact "the multinational force in Iraq". It took the Pentagon practically the whole of Monday to rebuke Italian journalists, until it offered the final confirmation that it was an "error of procedure" which didn't alter the essence of the report anyway. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the consequences were "more tactical than strategic". Truths collide The uncensored Pentagon report at least allows the international public to know that there were no less than 15,527 attacks on the occupation forces from July 2004 to March 2005. In Baghdad alone, from November to March 12, there were 2,404 attacks. These numbers confirm that when US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his minions spin that the situation in Iraq is under control they are essentially lying. In the three months since the Iraqi elections there may have been fewer American casualties, but there were countless more assassination attempts against the so-called Iraqi security forces, all of them based on precise intelligence. Every day, there are at least 20 bomb attacks in Baghdad alone, and at least 60 throughout Iraq. As for the Calipari/Sgrena affair, the Italian report - written by diplomat Cesare Ragaglini and General Pierluigi Campregher - contests point by point the Pentagon report. And stealing a page from Pentagon procedure, this is also a sanitized version: embattled Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi went overboard to salvage what he considers his privileged relationship with Washington, to the point, according to Italian daily Il Messagero, that he "read, reread, corrected and tweaked the report before handing it back to Italian military intelligence". Regardless, the Italian report is devastating. Among the most important issues: 1) American soldiers did not signal or warn the Toyota Corolla carrying Calipari and Sgrena - a fact confirmed even by a US official, who sheepishly ventured that the Italian driver did not understand the road signs "because they are written in English and Arabic". Sgrena, as well as the driver, a major with the Italian carabinieri, have always been adamant: there were no warning shots. 2) The soldiers at the checkpoint fired away due to "stress and inexperience". Specialist Mario Lozano was the man who shot and killed Calipari. 3) The Toyota was traveling at no more than 50 km/h (the Pentagon says it was close to 100 km/h). The road was wet, the major was driving with only one hand because he was talking on a mobile phone, and to top it all he was approaching a 90-degree turn. 4) The crime scene was not isolated and secured. Evidence simply "disappeared". 5) The Americans knew about Calipari, and that he was on a mission in Baghdad, even if they didn't know the details. US command was informed by the Italians of a delicate mission hours before the shooting, and they knew that Sgrena had been released 25 minutes before Calipari was killed. But in the end, nothing happened. Nobody is to blame - because by definition the Pentagon can do no wrong. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is happy, Berlusconi is happy. The same would not apply to Italian public opinion. Simply unaccountable The 15th World Press Freedom Day was celebrated this Tuesday. Paris-based Reporters without Borders took the occasion to issue its annual report. The numbers are grim: 53 journalists were killed - the largest number in the past 10 years - and 107 thrown into jail in 2004. Asia does not cut a good figure: 16 journalists were killed in 2004 - six of them in the Philippines. Twenty-six journalists remain in jail in China. In Myanmar, five journalists may have been liberated in 2004, but one is partially deaf and the other died a few days after leaving prison. North Korea has no press freedom whatsoever. In Turkmenistan, there's no press, apart from that which hails the glory of Dear Leader Saparmurat Niyazov. But it's Iraq - the alleged model for Middle East democracy - that remains the most dangerous country in the world for journalists: 19 were killed and 16 kidnapped in 2004 - including Sgrena, who was writing for Il Manifesto. Twelve fixers have been killed. Since the start of 2005, four journalists have been assassinated. Florence Aubenas of France's Liberation was kidnapped along with her fixer on January 5. Both are still missing. Repression against journalists is inextricably linked to the absence of law and democracy. In Iraq, independent journalists are just pawns in a power game, trying to give some voice to the voiceless and establish some facts dissimulated by clouds of propaganda. Repression against journalists may also be inextricably linked to superpower military impunity. Sgrena believes she was the victim of a Pentagon hit because she was trying to establish what really happened in the offensive against Fallujah in November, 2004. This may be very difficult to prove. But the worldwide perception of Pentagon unaccountability remains strong. The Pentagon is unaccountable for the death of Calipari and the wounding of Sgrena, unaccountable for the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, unaccountable for obliterating a whole city and turning its residents into refugees, unaccountable for Abu Ghraib. It will take more than a cut and paste job for the whole truth to emerge. |
EXHIBITS censored_report.pdf  uncensored_report.doc |