Almost a decade since the Gulf War one can look back at a regular stream of
              disinformation that has allowed policies that have killed a million people.
              Despite the massive resources of the U.S. State Department and others who
              seem to seek continued enmity between the U.S. and Iraq, there are some
              opportunities to confront these facts, ranging from direct action to skilled use
              of the media to backing third party candidates who break from the
              establishment line on Iraq.

              Perhaps the first clear example disinformation against Iraq was the charge, put
              out by the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm (on hire to the Kuwaiti
              government) during the buildup to the Gulf War, that Iraq soldiers had thrown
              babies out of their incubators. It was "witnessed" by the daughter of the
              Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.; pushed by government officials
              (then-president George Bush); boosted by the political "opposition" (most
              notably the Democratic chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus,
              Rep. Tom Lantos); non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights
              Watch and Amnesty International were either willing or unwilling accomplices;
              and it was echoed throughout the media. The one problem was that it was
              false.

              The decade since has seen slight variations of this these elements pushing other
              stories that make the U.S. feel that there is a massive threat from Iraq while
              ignoring the actual violence being done to the Iraqi people by U.S. bombing
              and economic sanctions. This suffering is dismissed as dying Iraqi children are
              dubbed "propaganda points for Saddam" and U.S. missile strikes are called
              "pinpricks." The natural corollary to that is that Iraqi victims should be ignored.

              As the U.S. administration was itching to bomb Iraq in early 1998, a series of
              dubious stories about presidential palaces bigger than Washington, DC were
              put out. After the fact, they were rather quietly retracted. During the same time
              period, NBC’s David Bloom, citing anonymous officials, reported on
              "credible evidence of Iraqi human experimentation." (January 14, 1998). Such
              stories were quickly dropped when the administration backed off from
              bombing after the outbreak of democracy at the Ohio State intifadah. Of
              course, it’s unclear why Iraqi use of human experimentation, even if true,
              would mean that the U.S. should bomb Iraq; or as is often implied, why we
              should treat Iraq as we do because Hussein gassed the Kurds when he was a
              U.S. ally. In any case, the allegation was that the human experimentation had
              been done years ago. But irrationality is a dead giveaway of someone merely
              searching for a pretext to bomb. The goal is a more general demonization of
              Saddam Hussein, making the U.S. viewer feel either threatened or enraged by
              Hussein’s inhumanity and thus willing to tolerate actions by their government
              they would ordinarily object to.

              Another story that was widely disseminated in early 1998 alleged that Iraq
              had placed weapons of mass destruction in other Arab countries. This story
              was put out by Yossef Bodansky of the right-wing House Task Force on
              Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, who recently wrote a book about
              Osama Bin-Laden. One effect of this dubious story was to have people view
              the conflict with Iraq as a "Clash of Civilizations" - that the U.S. is at war with
              the entire Arab/Islamic world. U.S. policy may yet ensure that this becomes a
              self-fulfilling prophecy. Such a worldview would detract from viewing the
              world as the haves and the have-nots (roughly the North/South divide). Denis
              Halliday, the former head of the "oil-for-food" programme in Iraq warns of the
              long-term possibility of a Taliban-type of government gaining power in Iraq as
              a result of the misery of the economic sanctions.

              The "threat from Iraq" fits into a general long history of dubious "Arab threats":
              The Levon Affair (in the 1950s, U.S. assets in Egypt were attacked by what
              turned out to be Israeli agents); the "Libyan hit squads" that were allegedly
              stalking Ronald Reagan (apparently an invention of CIA director, William
              Casey); the rush to judgment after the Oklahoma City bombing; and the
              assumption that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a bomb. The net
              effect is that many Americans ignore actual victims of violence, largely Arab –
              while exaggerating or just imagining Arabs as perpetrators of violence. One
              could almost expect that Arabs would be blamed for the Y2K bug — since
              we use Arabic numerals. Indeed, we were made to greet the New Year under
              the cloud of "the threat of terrorism" with the U.S. government - the reason
              many
              people resent the U.S. - being our presumed protector from an onslaught of
              Algerians. This too fed into a "Clash of Civilizations" mentality as the Christian
              calendar was depicted as being under siege by the Islamic threat.

              A current myth on Iraq was stated by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" when
              he asked Al Gore and Bill Bradley: "One year ago Saddam Hussein threw out
              all the inspectors who could find his chemical or nuclear capability – one year.
              He now said just yesterday, ‘You’re not coming back.’" (12/19/99) I
              personally left a message on Russert’s voice mail and talked to two of his
              assistants correcting this error, but it didn’t seem to have an effect. Two
              weeks later, (1/2/00), Russert was at it again in an interview Madeline
              Albright: "One year ago, the inspectors were told, ‘Get out,’ by Saddam
              Hussein." When I called his office after this incident, his assistant, Lisa
              Havlovitz, replied that Russert "knows what he’s doing." Of course, the
              weapons inspectors were ordered out by UNSCOM head, Richard Butler, at
              the behest of the U.S., after a dubious report was issued just before Clinton’s
              scheduled impeachment vote to make way for "Operation Desert Fox." But
              the stereotype of Iraq as intransigent, violent and conniving, trumps the facts.

              Through out 1998 as Iraq was claiming that the weapons inspectors were
              spies, they were typically dismissed — I must admit, I didn’t much believe it.
              But just as UNSCOM came to an end, it was disclosed that indeed,
              UNSCOM was used as a cover for espionage by the U.S. It is unclear to
              what extent the U.S. actually used UNSCOM in such a way so as to kill it
              and undermine the UN, or fearing that news would get out, felt they had to kill
              UNSCOM. Whatever proportion of such motivations, it seems clear and
              indeed, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspectors, has advocated an
              agreement for the lifting of the economic sanctions and the beginning of a new
              inspection team.

              The recent Hollywood movie "Three Kings," in very sophisticated fashion,
              backed U.S. policy on Iraq. It chose a period in time - just after the Gulf War
              officially ended - to place the movie, and thus avoid dealing with either the
              bombing of Desert Storm or the sanctions that have continued since then.
              "Three Kings" is presumably a moral tale of how people are more important
              than money, but the movie was itself put film revenue ahead of the Iraqi
              victims of the U.S. policies it ignored. If someone really felt that human life
              was more important than making money, they would probably have made a
              very different movie.

              A tremendous opportunity was missed to use another movie, "Star Wars: The
              Phantom Menace" to do grassroots activism. That blockbuster was about an
              insidious Federation that blockades and starves a helpless planet. An
              organized effort could have been made to distribute information drawing a
              parallel with the sanctions on Iraq to people standing line to see the movie.
              This would initiate human contact between people in the U.S. on this subject,
              something that is generally sorely lacking. This has been accomplished to a
              limited extent with Post Office actions, where people go to their local Post
              Office and try to send a package of medicine to Iraq, literally making the
              global local.

              Currently, there may be still be opportunities to raise the subject of the
              sanctions to the presidential candidates, since elections provide a rare
              opportunity for the public to directly participate in the political process. One
              tool that has been fairly well used by activists is the Internet, with such pages
              as www.iraqaction.org, though much can still be done here and the substantial
              technical expertise in the Arab American community can be harnessed. Talk
              shows and such are still and under-utilized resource.

              What is needed is a concerted effort to respond to dubious assertions in very
              rapid fashion. The Institute for Public Accuracy had some success with this a
              year ago in highlighting the U.S. policy of keeping the sanctions in place even if
              Iraq were to totally comply with the weapons inspectors. This was important
              since many were claiming that the sanctions would be lifted if only Iraq would
              comply with the inspectors. IPA produced both a short and long version of
              statements by U.S. officials revealing their policy, placed it on the Internet
              (www.accuracy.org/iraq) and repeatedly mentioned it on appearance on cable
              channels, so it eventually became part of the discourse. Factual pieces sent to
              media outlets in a timely fashion, bearing in mind the media’s short attention
              span, can sometimes have a real effect with surprisingly little resources.

              A major problem with Iraq now is that it is simply off the agenda. Through
              1997 and 1998, as the U.S. continued the sanctions against Iraq, Saddam
              Hussein used virtually the only lever available to him to draw attention to the
              sanctions against Iraq - he would obstruct the UNSCOM weapons
              inspectors. With the inspectors out (thanks largely to the U.S. using them for
              espionage and Richard Butler’s withdrawing them just before Desert Fox),
              that option no longer exists. This makes Iraq’s actions unpredictable.

              A broader media/political strategy needs to be formulated with regular
              outreach, seminars and so on. A major factor, particularly for a relatively
              weak actor, is proper use of timing. This is clearer on the Israel/Palestine
              issue, where briefings in Washington DC can be scheduled at venues such as
              the National Press Club for relatively low cost and timed to coincide with the
              U.S.-sponsored talks in Washington. Similarly, properly timed news releases
              featuring analysts on the subject of the day may well breed results. The
              AAUG could be a major vehicle for such efforts, playing the role of virtual
              think tank.

              Sam Husseini is a board member of the AAUG and is the
              communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.