These guys in Washington have sure read The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley, but this war is real and it's not some intellectual funsport like Alan Moore dabbling in psycho-geography. There's an Army of Propaganda out there. Reality is conquered by Hollywood-imagery.

"Australian Broadcasting Corporation Four Corners looks at the propaganda war: how US, British and Australian military forces - and the Iraqis - employ sophisticated spin to control the flow of information and images. " Here are some excerpts from the transcript of the excellent TV-program which aired on ABC a few days ago.

"JONATHAN HOLMES, 'FOUR CORNERS' REPORTER/NARRATOR:: Late last year, in the run-up to the war, Defence Force spokesman Brigadier Mike Hannan went to media organisations with a deal that could have seen them virtually surrender control over what they reported. This draft document was prepared with the assistance of law firm Clayton Utz. Before any journalist could be accredited, the Defence Minister had to be advised. Journalists would be required "not to disclose information "other than in accordance with operational security briefings "and the operational security guidance "provided by the Commonwealth". They would also "abide by all Force Public Information Centre rules "which will be given from time to time". The proposed deal appears to have been quietly dropped in the face of media resistance. Peter La Franchi is shocked it was even suggested.

PETER LA FRANCHI, DEFENCE JOURNALIST: But the clauses in that document, for example, would prevent an Australian journalist revealing something say, like, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. It prohibits you are not allowed to identify operations people, anything that Defence says is what you must report. That's not freedom of the press at all. That is a dictatorship of the media.

(...)

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY, 'NEWSWEEK' MAGAZINE: Look, television viewers don't like to think. That's not the point of watching television. It's to share the experience. It's to be bathed in the moment. It's not about thinking. And the US go...knows that and they exploit it.

JONATHAN HOLMES: But the Pentagon has another audience in mind for this bombardment of sound and image. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, the most gung-ho supporter of the war on Iraq, is well aware of it.

(...)

REPORTER: Do you think it's worth it? US SOLDIER: Yeah, I... They say we're fighting for something. I don't know.

(...)

DONALD RUMSFELD: What we are seeing is not the war in Iraq - what we're seeing are slices of the war in Iraq, we're seeing that particularised perspective that that reporter or that commentator or that television camera happens to be able to see at that moment, and it is not what's taking place. What you see IS taking place, to be sure, but it is one slice, and it is the totality of that that is what this war is about and being made up of.

JONATHAN HOLMES: Which apparently suited the Secretary of Defense just fine. In the spanking new Hollywood- designed briefing centre in Qatar, there were no briefings at all for more than two days.

NICHOLAS WITCHELL: Nick, if you're looking for precise information, sadly this Central Command, where I am, is not the place to look for it from. Now, I suspect that the American view is that the media can be used in a sense as one of their weapons - anyone listening to the many different reports that the media are making will be left, perhaps, in a slightly confused state. Anything obviously that comes from here, from Central Command, will be taken as authoritative, and at the moment nothing of any significance or substance is coming from here.

BBC NEWSREADER: In that case, Nick, let's go to the eyewitnesses on the ground. Thanks for joining us from Central Command headquarters with no news of anything.

GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS, COMMANDER OF COALITION FORCES: Let me begin by saying that, uh...my heart and the prayers of this coalition go out to the families of those who have already made the ultimate sacrifice.

JONATHAN HOLMES: General Tommy Franks finally gave his first briefing on Saturday night, Australian time - 2.5 days after the start of the war.

GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS: The initiation of combat operations - we refer to that as 'D-day'. The introduction of Special Operations Forces - we refer to that as 'S-day'.

JONATHAN HOLMES: His disgruntled audience didn't feel the gung-ho rhetoric, lightly larded with information, had been worth the wait. If the Pentagon wanted journalists in Doha to be underemployed, it apparently wanted them out of Baghdad altogether.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: For their own safety, all foreign nationals, including journalists and inspectors, should leave Iraq immediately.

(...)

PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: The big difference between Iraq and the Gulf War has been the arrival not only of al-Jazeera, Arab television, but other Arab television channels as well. And they're in place now in Iraq with lots and lots of crew and as good as and as slick and as efficient as CNN or Fox News. And they're going to be competing to tell the truth. Now, how the American military plans to control the Arab television stations, I don't know.

JONATHAN HOLMES: Networks like al-Jazeera have helped to publicise Saddam's claim to be a champion of the Arab world. He's found plenty of support elsewhere in the Middle East. But how much does he really command in the country he has tyrannised? It's a question that reporters, faced with endless declarations of loyalty for the leader, would love to have honestly answered.

(...)

MOHAMED ELBARADEI, DIRECTOR-GENERAL, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY: Extensive field investigation and document analysis have failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81mm tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets.

JONATHAN HOLMES: The claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium ore from the African country of Niger was groundless too, said ElBaradei in the same briefing - it had been based on forged documents.

MOHAMED ELBARADEI: Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which form the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger, are, in fact, not authentic. We have, therefore, concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.

DAVID ALBRIGHT: I think the Bush Administration is not using even what we'd call standard practices to assess intelligence information. It's politicised the whole process, and it's seeking evidence that supports its claim, and dismissing evidence that contradicts their political goals and claims, and they're willing to punish people who dissent. So I think it's a... in my mind, it's scandalous.

JONATHAN HOLMES: By March 7, the world's media were obsessed with the last-minute manoeuvring over a Security Council resolution. The Atomic Energy Agency's conclusion that Iraq has no current nuclear weapons program got almost no publicity at all. But America is still trying to persuade the world that there are proven links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. It was a subject on which Colin Powell spent much time on February 5, and had new things to say. He showed slides of what he claimed was a "poison and explosives training camp" in the Kurdish-controlled area of north-east Iraq. It was part, he said, of a terrorist network run by al-Qaeda associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

COLIN POWELL: Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organisation Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.

ANDREW WILKIE, FORMER ANALYST, OFFICE OF NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS: I got quite angry, I recall, when I saw the telecast. It just didn't make sense to me that if there is this link, why is the poisons factory located in an area that is clearly outside of Saddam's control? I mean, it may as well not be in Iraq. So I don't know that this so-called agent that was referred to changes the bottom line here, and that is that there's no hard evidence of any active cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda. And I don't believe Colin Powell's presentation established any link. All it established is that in somewhere outside of Saddam's control, there is an al-Qaeda presence.

JONATHAN HOLMES: When British journalists visited the so-called "poison camp" just four days after Colin Powell's presentation, they found nothing but "a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings "at the foot of a grassy sloping hill." Tragically, Ansar al-Islam is now back in the news. On Friday night, local time, its base was attacked by American aircraft and cruise missiles and then overwhelmed by Kurdish militia. Next day, a suicide bomber killed ABC cameraman Paul Moran as he was filming outside the base.

full transcript