You’re turning into milroyj. Forget the source, just look at the photograph RedFury linked to.
It’s only successful in pulling off those ruses to willful saps like you, eager to swallow everything this administration tells you.
The Arab world was not fooled by the statue stunt, nor were people capable of critical thinking in the West.
It actually is true, and it proves that your initial claim was bullshit. If your “point” was that you’re a gullible idiot, well, then, I guess we’ll let you have your point.
The ruse being, essentially, to deceive the American public and the rest of the world by fundamentally misrepresenting the state of the country we’d just “liberated”. Frankly, it doesn’t make me want to take my hat off so much as it makes me want to move to Canada. The production of propoganda to be fed to the public should not be a military function.
Hey I know the debate made the “ooops and the Polish” thing a joke but carrying it on is fairly shitty. There were many countries who wouldn’t join the coalition of the willing, why take the piss put of those who did?
Because being a lackey is even more disgusting then being a ringleader? 
The joke being the fact that the US was willing to spread the propaganda solely for itself, and not for the other countries that backed it in this war. The CIA wasn’t handing out Spanish, Australian, UK, et al flags either. So instead of proving to the world that a coalition effort to remove Saddam’s government was made, the CIA was willing to make this an American effort. Thusly ignoring all of the coalition help they received.
Since Poland was mentioned in the debate a couple times by President Bush as part of this memorable coalition, the humor lies in the fact that they were being forgotten about when it comes time to hand out the little flags.
On further reflection, I think “pathetic” is a better adjective then “disgusting.”
Editor and Publisher is an old, well-established trade magazine of the newspaper industry (it claims to be the oldest). Spend a few minutes wandering their website and you should get some feel for them.
I recall seeing something on this story several months back and I presume it was in the “mainstream media”, since that’s about all I have time for these days. (The problem here is, most of them don’t keep news stories up on their sites too long.)
No you’re not. If you were, all you’d have to do is look at the picture. But since it’s Kool-Aid antidote, you’ll refuse to believe your lying eyes.
WTF? What “point” would that be other than the one on top of your head? Because the only people that fell for the ruse are BushBots such as yourself. Out in the real world this was just one more example of the campaign of lies your Gov is involved in.
Tell you what, want to see for yourself just how popular American flags are in Iraq? Grab a couple of boxes full of them, stand in the middle of the very square in that picture and hand them out to any Iraqi that happens to walk by.
Then come back and tell us just how well that theory of yours went. Provided there are any functioning parts of you left that is. But since you’re clearly braindead already, the experience may not be all that painful.
Idiot.
How about this source?
It wasn’t the US Military that wanted to pull it off. The US Military was against it, with good reason:
So, how did you prove me wrong, again? My assertion was that whoever it was in the CIA that came up with this plan had his head up his as for not seeing what a stupid plan this was. My assertion was that this “ruse” could not have been successful and would have been harmful, and that our intelligence gathering agency was suffering some serious lapses in reality by suggesting it. My assertion was, and is, that this is bad for all involved parties.
Care to prove me wrong some more, Debaser? :wally
EZ
Put me down for a donation towards sending this informed citizen and any of the other see-no-evil apologists over for a spot of flag selling. I want a live web cam on the proceedings though.
Apologies – that’s the NY Times, requiring registration…
EZ
If I understand you correctly, then I suppose I should have been more specific. My confusion was not regarding the use of misinformation in general, but particularly regarding the allegation that Army PSYOPS was responsible for the staged destruction of Saddam’s statue. I was under the impression that the purpose of Army PSYOPS was to facilitate the work of the Army, whereas it would seem to me that this action worked against that goal by creating a distorted picture of how much resistance the troops would face. It seems like the NY Times article that ElectricZ linked to might address this, although since I am not a subscriber so I cannot tell for sure.
It’s basiaclly the same story by the same author. In the original link back in post 1, the byline reads:
The SeattlePI doesn’t require registration, though. If you Google +CIA +“American flags” +Iraq the top link takes you to the first page of the NYT article.
EZ
Just for accuracy’s sake, ElectricZ’s cite isn’t about the Saddam Statue photo. It’s a long article basically how the CIA, after totally screwing the pooch on the weapons in Iraq issue, then proceeded to screw the pooch on how much resistance the US forces would face. They declared that a number of cities were “ours” and would quickly support American troops when they arrived. One such town was supposed to be Nasariyah, now the scene of numerous attacks on Americans.
Your understanding of Army Psyops is at least partially correct - assisting forces in acheiving their objectives is part of their mission. The smuggling in American flags idea wasn’t the Army’s, though. The Army in fact opposed it, it was the CIA’s plan.
The CIA has different goals, in particular political goals. Among these they sought to justify their pre-war assessments by creating the impression of grateful Iraqis welcoming their liberators.
you realize, of course, that prior to our invasion, Saddam had no shortage of news footage of crowds cheering him on, too, right? yepsirree, takes stratgic planning aplenty to stage stuff like that.
A side note on that flag draped over Saddam’s statue: it has already been noted that the flag had been brought along by the company of soldiers directly involved in the occupation of the town, and that it was noteworthy because the flag had flown over the Towers on 9/11.
Does this not imply that said soldiers believed they were on a mission of vengeance for 9/11? Wherever did they get such a notion?
Elucidator, just a nitpick because I like the line of thought you’ve got going there. But it looks like that that flag was not flown over the the Towers on 9/11:
Look like those weren’t the only soldiers who were confused about **their “real” mission**.
