http://www.zmag.org/ZMagSite/Aug2003/barsamian0803.htmlQ: Clearly, there is a huge gap on the Iraq war between U.S. public opinion and the rest of the world. Do you attribute that to propaganda?
A: There is just no question about it. The campaign about Iraq took off last September. This is so obvious it’s even discussed in mainstream publications, like the chief political analyst for UPI, Martin Sieff, has a long article describing how it was done. In September, which happened to be the opening of the midterm congressional campaign, that’s when the drumbeat of wartime propaganda began. It had a couple of constant themes. One big lie was that Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the United States. We have got to stop them now or they’re going to destroy us tomorrow. The second big lie was that Iraq was behind September 11. Nobody says it straight out; it’s kind of insinuated.
Take a look at the polls. They reflected the propaganda very directly. The propaganda is distributed by the media. They don’t make it up, they just distribute it. You can attribute it to high government officials or whatever you like. But the campaign was reflected very quickly in the polls. By September and since then, roughly 60 percent, oscillating around that, of the population believes that Iraq is a threat to our security. Congress, if you look at the declaration of October, when they authorized the president to use force, said Iraq is a threat to the security of the United States. By now about half the population, maybe more by now, believes that Iraq was responsible for September 11, that Iraqis were on the planes, that they are planning new ones.
There is no one else in the world that believes any of this; there is no country where Iraq is regarded as a threat to their security. Kuwait and Iran, which were both invaded by Iraq, don’t regard Iraq as a threat to their security. Iraq is the weakest country in the region, and as a result of the sanctions, which have killed hundreds of thousands of people—about probably two-thirds of the population is on the edge of starvation—the country has the weakest economy and the weakest military force in the region. Its economy and its military-force expenditures are about a third those of Kuwait, which has 10 percent of its population, and well below others. Of course, everybody in the region knows that there is a superpower there, offshore U.S. military base, Israel, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons and massive armed forces and totally dominates anything.
But only in the United States is there fear or any of these beliefs. You can trace the growth of the beliefs to the propaganda. It’s interesting that the United States is so susceptible to this. There is a background, a cultural background, which is interesting. But whatever the reasons are for it, the United States happens to be a very frightened country by comparative standards. Levels of fear here of almost everything, crime, aliens, you pick it, are just off the spectrum. You can argue, you can inquire into the reasons, but the background is there.
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