UPDATED - ColdType

EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
To most of the world, this PR maneuver backfired,
as PR columnist Mark Borkowski noted in
the Guardian on August 1st, “Since this is war,
this is PR and the Uday and Qusay photograph
incident, planned as a surgical media strike, has
turned mucky (both in media and military terms)
because no one had the sense to think through
the PR implications properly. It’s been a total PR
disaster.”
Meanwhile a non-stop manhunt for Saddam
began to feel like the earlier tracking of Osama
bin Laden. Like the elusive caliph of Al Qaeda,
the on-the-run Iraqi leader began releasing messages
to rally his supporters and taunt his pursuers.
In the Arab world, SH, was, like OBL,
becoming an icon of resistance. News anchors
followed the “action” closely with video of soldiers
breaking into Iraqi homes in hot pursuit.
They began reassuring viewers that it was only a
matter of hours, and then of days.
It all began to take on a soap opera-ish quality.
Sometimes it felt like reality TV shows such as
COPS with endless chase sequences. But bear in
mind, in the TV industry at least, much of the
reality programming is fabricated. Years ago a
TV syndicator rejected a TV series I was co-producing
on real world human rights issues
because “we only do reality TV.”
By the time you read this, Saddam have left the
material realm and entered into the mythic pantheon
of martyrs. Long time anti-war activist
Tom Hayden saw the end coming in time for the
next commercial break, writing, “To judge from
the excited build-up, Saddam Hussein will be
killed very soon. Once his location is identified,
the spectacle of his death can soon be orchestrated.
To have the greatest impact, perhaps it
will be televised in all time zones on a weekday,
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avoiding the competition of weekend sports.
There must be burnt offerings and a triumphal
revelation of the corpse. For an insecure America,
this killing will be a “ritual of blood,” a “compact
of fellowship” – terms used by West Indian
sociologist Orlando Patterson in the context of
ritual lynchings in the Old South.”
A BAD MEMORY,
NOT A RIGHTEOUS MISSION
AS the dog days of August grew nearer, the Iraq
war was on its way to becoming thought of as a
bad memory, not a righteous mission. What
media focus there was shifted to battlegrounds
closer to home, to the lies and distortions in the
alarmist claims that were used to stoke the war.
In Britain, Tony Blair was holding off mounting
skepticism in a scandal that included the dramatic
death of a high level weapons expert who
had been fingered as the source of BBC reports
that the government had “sexed up” its dossier
warning that the Iraqis could hurl Weapons of
Mass Destruction at its enemies within 45 minutes.
Not only was the claim later debunked as preposterous
but also the weapons themselves had
not been found. Soon the government was shifting
attention away from its actions to challenging
the BBC. A government deception had triggered
a media controversy.
In the U.S., it was 16 words in a presidential
speech attributed to British intelligence claiming
that the African country of Niger had sent uranium
to Iraq for its nuclear weapons program.
Even though the claim had been thoroughly
investigated and found to be based on forgeries
prior to the President citing this “evidence” in a