<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16981" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3>The Marja area just happens to be in
the center of the proposed pipeline from the oil and natural gas
rich " Stan " republics of the former Soviet Union.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3>The pipeline of course is one of the real
reasons for the invasion / occupation / and war in
Afganistan.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3>9/11 was just the " convienent " excuse to invade,
when the Taliban government ( who previously in the late 1990's early 2000 were
being subsidized by the U.S. government and invited to red carpet functions in
D.C. and Houston ) was not willing to accept the Oil industry's last and final
monetary offer.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>David J.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, March 09, 2010 6:23 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> The Siege of the Fictional City of Marja </DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial color=black size=2>
<DIV
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: arial,helvetica"><STRONG>International
Women's Day Edition</STRONG><BR>March 8, 2010<BR>A War of Perception and
Misinformation <BR><STRONG>The Siege of the Fictional City of Marja</STRONG>
<BR>By GARETH PORTER <BR>For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest
offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000
people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand.
That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February
that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district
centres in Helmand.<BR>It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja
presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is
one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire
war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the
conflict. <BR>Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters
of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern
Helmand River Valley. <BR>"It's not urban at all," an official of the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified,
admitted on Sunday. He called Marja a "rural community". <BR>"It's a collection
of village farms, with typical family compounds," said the official, adding that
the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards. <BR>Richard B. Scott,
who worked in Marja as an adviser on irrigation for the U.S. Agency for
International Development as recently as 2005, agrees that Marja has nothing
that could be mistaken as being urban. It is an "agricultural district" with a
"scattered series of farmers' markets," Scott said in a telephone interview.
<BR>The ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousands
associated with Marja is spread across many villages and almost 200 square
kilometres, or about 125 square miles. <BR>Marja has never even been
incorporated, according to the official, but there are now plans to formalise
its status as an actual "district" of Helmand Province.<BR>The official admitted
that the confusion about Marja's population was facilitated by the fact that the
name has been used both for the relatively large agricultural area and for a
specific location where farmers have gathered for markets. <BR>However, the name
Marja "was most closely associated" with the more specific location, where there
are also a mosque and a few shops. <BR>That very limited area was the apparent
objective of "Operation Moshtarak", to which 7,500 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops
were committed amid the most intense publicity given any battle since the
beginning of the war. <BR>So how did the fiction that Marja is a city of 80,000
people get started? <BR>The idea was passed on to the news media by the U.S.
Marines in southern Helmand. The earliest references in news stories to Marja as
a city with a large population have a common origin in a briefing given Feb. 2
by officials at Camp Leatherneck, the U.S. Marine base there. <BR>The Associated
Press published an article the same day quoting "Marine commanders" as saying
that they expected 400 to 1,000 insurgents to be "holed up" in the "southern
Afghan town of 80,000 people." That language evoked an image of house to house
urban street fighting. <BR>The same story said Marja was "the biggest town under
Taliban control" and called it the "linchpin of the militants' logistical and
opium-smuggling network". It gave the figure of 125,000 for the population
living in "the town and surrounding villages". ABC news followed with a story
the next day referring to the "city of Marja" and claiming that the city and the
surrounding area "are more heavily populated, urban and dense than other places
the Marines have so far been able to clear and hold." <BR>The rest of the news
media fell into line with that image of the bustling, urbanised Marja in
subsequent stories, often using "town" and "city" interchangeably. Time magazine
wrote about the "town of 80,000" Feb. 9, and the Washington Post did the same
Feb. 11. <BR>As "Operation Moshtarak" began, U.S. military spokesmen were
portraying Marja as an urbanised population centre. On Feb. 14, on the second
day of the offensive, Marine spokesman Lt. Josh Diddams said the Marines were
"in the majority of the city at this point." <BR>He also used language that
conjured images of urban fighting, referring to the insurgents holding some
"neighbourhoods". <BR>A few days into the offensive, some reporters began to
refer to a "region", but only created confusion rather than clearing the matter
up. CNN managed to refer to Marja twice as a "region" and once as "the city" in
the same Feb. 15 article, without any explanation for the apparent
contradiction. <BR>The Associated Press further confused the issue in a Feb. 21
story, referring to "three markets in town - which covers 80 square miles…."
<BR>A "town" with an area of 80 square miles would be bigger than such U.S.
cities as Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Cleveland. But AP failed to notice
that something was seriously wrong with that reference. <BR>Long after other
media had stopped characterising Marja as a city, the New York Times was still
referring to Marja as "a city of 80,000", in a Feb. 26 dispatch with a Marja
dateline. <BR>The decision to hype up Marja as the objective of "Operation
Moshtarak" by planting the false impression that it is a good-sized city would
not have been made independently by the Marines at Camp Leatherneck. <BR>A
central task of "information operations" in counterinsurgency wars is
"establishing the COIN [counterinsurgency] narrative", according to the Army
Counterinsurgency Field Manual as revised under Gen. David Petraeus in 2006.
<BR>That task is usually done by "higher headquarters" rather than in the field,
as the manual notes. <BR>The COIN manual asserts that news media "directly
influence the attitude of key audiences toward counterinsurgents, their
operations and the opposing insurgency." The manual refers to "a war of
perceptions…conducted continuously using the news media." <BR>Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal, commander of ISAF, was clearly preparing to wage such a war in
advance of the Marja operation. In remarks made just before the offensive began,
McChrystal invoked the language of the counterinsurgency manual, saying, "This
is all a war of perceptions." <BR>The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that the
decision to launch the offensive against Marja was intended largely to impress
U.S. public opinion with the effectiveness of the U.S. military in Afghanistan
by showing that it could achieve a "large and loud victory." <BR>The false
impression that Marja was a significant city was an essential part of that
message. <BR>Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with
Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback
edition of his latest book, "", was published in
2006.<BR><BR></DIV></FONT><br />--
<br />This message has been scanned for viruses and
<br />dangerous content by
<a href="http://www.mailscanner.info/"><b>MailScanner</b></a>, and is
<br />believed to be clean.
</BODY></HTML>