Fallujah, the Information War and U.S. Propaganda

The U.S. Army's Intelligence Analysis of the 2004 Fallujah Attack

An Interesting Piece
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
CounterPunch

"Now receded into distant memory for many, the battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah, accompanied by the al Sadr uprising in the south, was a decisive turning point in the Iraq occupation. These battles demonstrated to much of the world that the occupation was deeply unpopular among many Iraqis, who were willing and able to fight the occupation to a stalemate. These battles both ended in standoffs, as the U.S. forces felt constrained from unleashing their full military capabilities to crush the resistance. New insights into the thinking of the U.S.military are available from a U.S. army intelligence analysis ­ by the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center ­ of the first Fallujah battle entitled Complex Environments: Battle of Fallujah I, April 2004 that was leaked this week on the Wikileaks web site.....

....This new document confirms that the attack on Fallujah was designed to crush a symbol of resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.....

As befits a symbolic battle, the analysis makes clear that the information war was primary. The failure of the Marine's attack to retake Fallujah was caused, the authors claim, by resistance ("insurgents" in their lingo) forces' success in getting their message out to the world.....

The report echo's the concern of American leaders about the influence of Al Jazeera and other Arab media at conveying the rebel's side of the story....

While providing useful analyses of the nature of the Fallujah fighting, and of the information war, this intelligence report demonstrates yet again the difficulties that U.S. occupation forces, including intelligence analysts, have in coming to terms with the nature of nationalist opposition to occupation. While it contains interesting discussions of the organization of the Fallujah resistance, including their decentralized command and control structures which were hard to destroy, the authors cannot resist repeating the Marine attackers description of the resistance fighters as " an "evil Rotary club" rather than a military organization."

The report also illustrates American blinders in analyzing the political context of the Fallujah battle.....

In failing to come to terms with the unpopularity of the occupation, the report continues the American blindness to the difficulties of sustaining an occupation as opposition mounts. The report thus pays insufficient attention to the extent to which the Fallujah population supported the resistance fighters. Perhaps, however, the absence of any discussion of "winning hearts and minds" is an implicit recognition that this was an impossible goal, and one irrelevant to the U.S. desire to crush Fallujah as a symbol of organized opposition to occupation.....

Having failed to destroy Fallujah as a symbol of resistance to occupation in April, the U.S. designed the November attack to accomplish this goal once and for all.....