Pentagon-Spin zu Zivilopfern

--- Carl Conetta vom Project on Defense Alternatives hat eine Studie über die "new warfare" in den jüngsten "Anti-Terrorkriegen" der USA vorgelegt. Darin arbeitet er insbesondere heraus, wie das Pentagon Medienmeldungen über getötete Zivilisten zu kontrollieren sucht: The Pentagon conducted "perception management" campaigns during the Afghan and Iraq wars that also obstructed the public’s awareness of civilian casualties. These activities included Pentagon efforts to "spin" casualty stories in ways that minimized their significance or cast unreasonable doubt on their reliability. Efforts also may have included the placement of misleading news stories. Such activities are "antithetical to well-informed public debate and to sensible policy-making," according to the report’s author, Carl Conetta. ... One case study examined in the report is the Baghdad marketplace bombing that killed more than three dozen people on March 28, 2003. Coalition spokespersons had insisted that Iraqi air defense missiles falling back to earth might have been the cause -- a scenario that the report assesses as highly unlikely. The coalition persisted in its stance even after debris bearing the serial numbers of US weapons was found at the site by a British journalist. The report also concludes that defense officials consistently overplayed the idea of "precision warfare", giving the false impression that the Iraq war would be a low casualty event. In fact, the study estimates, as many as 15,000 Iraqis (including 4,000 non-combatants) were killed during the main phase of the conflict.

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