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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/23/160242

DemocracyNow! Tuesday, December 23rd, 2003

Retired Air Force Col. Reveals How The U.S. Orchestrated A Media and
PSYOPS Campaign Following Saddam's Capture 

Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner discusses how the Bush
administration used the press to conduct psychological operations aI'med
at Iraqi resistance fighters in the days following Saddam Hussein's
capture. [includes transcript]

* Col. Sam Gardiner, retired Air Force Colonel. He has taught strategy and
military operations at the National War College, AirWar College and Naval
War College. He was recently a visiting scholar at the Swedish Defense
College.

_________________________________________________________________

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now! - The War and Peace
Report. I'm Amy Goodman. On the line with us from Doha, Qatar is Yvonne
Ridley, freelance journalist and author, veteran journalist for a number
of British publications, including The Observer, and The Independent. She
wrote a piece in this past Sunday's Sunday Express about a different
version of how Saddam Hussein was captured. We are also joined by retired
Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner. I want to ask you, Yvonne Ridley, about
the other point you make, talking about intense, behind-the-scenes
negotiations, brokered by Britain, seeing the former dictator, Saddam
Hussein, jailed in Qatar, where you are, for the rest of his life. On what
is this based?

YVONNE RIDLEY: Well, it's no secret that the state of Qatar actually
offered Saddam Hussein exile before the start of the war in the hopes of
finding a peaceful solution. Iraq at the moment doesn't have a government
and it doesnt have a legal system. So, you know, we're talking about a
trial that is some months away, possibly years, and unless it's held in an
international court. The problem being that if he isn't executed, he will
-- you know, he will be I'mprisoned. And if he is I'mprisoned in Iraq, his
continued presence there will be seen as a rallying point for his
supporters. And it will -- he will also be a constant target for those who
want hI'm dead, and there are many thousands who want hI'm dead. The
safest place, and the most diplomatic place to put hI'm, would be in a
MuslI'm country in the Middle East. And from a security point of view,
Qatar provides the obvious option; and this is a deal that is being
brokered - the British initiative being brokered at the highest level - to
see, to explore the possibility of keeping hI'm I'mprisoned in Qatar.

AMY GOODMAN: You also cite British intelligence sources for your story of
how it was the Kurds, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K.), who first
found Saddam Hussein and handed hI'm over to the U.S. forces. Who were you
speaking to?

YVONNE RIDLEY: Well, I wasn't just who I was speaking to, as to say, you
just have to look at the first two wire reports, which came out from IRNA
and Reuters and they both quoted the leader, Talibani, and the official
spokesman of the P.U.K., as well. And when the news was broken to the
President, it was broken by a Reuters journalist and he quoted P.U.K.
sources. Now then, they were convinced -- and there have been many false
starts in the hunt for Saddam and, you know, the Kurds were 100% confident
without DNA testing, without anything, and we know that Saddam had many
doubles. But they knew that Saddam was in the hands of the Americans and,
as I say, they still stand by announcing it to the world first.

AMY GOODMAN: We are speaking with Yvonne Ridley in Qatar, and we are also
joined by Sam Gardiner, retired Air Force Colonel who has done a very
interesting piece for Mediachannel.org that begins "We're seeing an
orchestrated media campaign by the administration and a psychological
operation aI'med at the insurgents in Iraq. The success of this campaign
can be measured by recent articles in the Washington Post and the 
Christian Science Monitor. Colonel Sam Gardiner has taught strategy and
military operations at the National War College at the Air War College and
Naval War College, was recently a visiting scholar at the Swedish Defense
College. Can you talk about just what you mean by these psychological
operations? We welcome you back to Democracy Now! Colonel Sam Gardiner.

COLONEL GARDINER: Sure. What Im talking about is what we have heard since
the capture. And it is the threat that, (a) we found hI'm with a lot of
documents and, (b) that has resulted in breaking his network and revealing
major portion of the leadership behind the insurgency. Essentially what I
did is the same as I did during the prewar stuff and the war stuff. If you
look at the way the statements were made, who made them, how they were
made, it becomes clear - and, in fact, I even have gotten some sort of
nods from people inside that this is a psychological operations. That they
may have found a couple of people associated with the capture, or that
came from the capture. But essentially they found Saddam Hussein. And this
other stuff is part of the build-up to convince people that this is a
change, and more I'mportantly, to frighten the people in the insurgency
that we have broken in on the inside and have lots of names. Probably not
true. We may have names from other sources, but probably not from the
capture of Saddam Hussein.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to March 22. It was right at the
beginning of the U.S. invasion. We've just pulled up from the CBS news
website: 8,000 Men, Iraqi Division Surrenders. It says, An entire division
of the Iraqi army, numbering 8,000 soldiers, surrendered to coalition
forces in southern Iraq Friday, Pentagon officials said. The move marked
the largest single unit to surrender en masse. Iraq's 51th Infantry
Division surrendered as coalition forces advanced toward Basra, Iraqs
second largest city. The mechanized division had about 200 tanks before
the war, according to independent analysts and U.S. officials. And it goes
on to say, The surrender of the 51st removed a major obstacle to the U.S.
and British goal of securing all of southern Iraq so forces could focus on
the push to Baghdad. The problem with the story is that it was not true.

COLONEL GARDINER: That's exactly right. Not only did -- it was announced
by the British, too, who ended up fighting that same division for two
weeks at Basra. Amy, it was a psychological operation, and it was meant to
demoralize the rest of the military in Iraq. Now the problem with that is
-- in military operations, it's always had the objective of military
information, of demoralizing bad guys. What's happened, however, is that
public affairs and psychological operations emerged, so that democratic
people, we as listeners to news, can't tell whether or not we're being
given truth or whether we are part of a psychological operation aI'med at
the bad guys. The case of the 51st division, and there were numbers of
others during the same kind during Gulf II, and in case of much of what
we've heard in the post-Saddam capture, has been psychological operations,
aI'med at the bad guy, but giving us bad information.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Gardiner, in your piece, "Revealed, Saddam's Networks
Were Psy-Ops Campaign." you turn to the comments of President Bush on ABC
News, of Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers and
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq,
as you lay out your case for why you believe this is a psychological
operation against the resistances to demoralize them in Iraq. Can you
specifically say what they each said?

COLONEL GARDINER: Well, let me do it in general and give you an indication
of what makes me suspicious. First of all, after having done this and you
watch their method of speech, when they are doing something of non-truth,
they're really very careful not to tell a non-truth directly. Their
objective is to influence. All of the speakers, from the military, talked
about what they got from the psychological operations, use the "I" word.
As a result of this, I'm convinced we will have As a result of the
information, I am concluding that they were all very vague "I" words. In
additions to that, probably the behavior and the words of the Chairman of
the Join

 Chiefs of Staff is the biggest indication. When he was first

asked about it, he sort of almost said: I have -- you know, we probably
will get some information, but not much. At the tI'me that press
conference was being given, he was interrupted by Lieutenant General
Sanchez, who -- I mean, it is bizarre in itself that his junior would
interrupt hI'm and say no, we expect this to be -- I can't remember the
exact words -- something like a major intelligence insight. But the first
words out of the Chairman were not a big deal. Now on the Sunday news, he
announced that we have captured hundreds of Iraqi insurgents as a result
of this information we got when we captured Saddam Hussein. And the story
just doesn't follow from (a) the context, and (b), I mean, given Yvonne's
point and if you look at the capture instance, what I did was what I call
both context and content analysis. The content suggests that it's not
true, also the context. This was not a command center for somebody who was
running an insurgency. You know, there was no communications information
for communication assets. It was just hard to I'magine that this man was
running an insurgency from that spider hole.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Yvonne Ridley's piece in the Sunday
Express?

COLONEL GARDINER: Well, I think two things. One of them is that her
intuition of not being told the whole truth is probably true. Secondly,
some of the things she said I think I can confirm from what has been said
and also from some military logic. First of all, going to that second
point, we have seen and heard from individuals from the 4th Infantry
Division. Now the 4th Infantry Division is there, was there, in the in a
secondary role, compared to the unit that had the mission of going after
high-value targets. Now we've heard about this sort of clouded unit, which
is called Task Force 121. Task Force 121 is a special operations group
that had the mission of finding Saddam Hussein. We've heard from the U.S.
military, actually, that a special operations troop who opened the hole
was on the verge of putting hand grenades in there. Special Operations.
Wait, not 4th Infantry Division. We've not heard interviews with the
people from the 121st who were the ones who probably did the mission. Why
were the P.U.K. there, which Yvonne had eluded to? They were probably
working with the 121st. So they very well could have been involved in that
mission. They could have been advisers because certainly they would have
had the language skills and intelligence capability that would have been
helpful to the 121st. My guess is it was Task Force 121 that made the
capture. They have subsequently faded into the background. Associated with
them were people from P.U.K. Special Operation Forces and that's the way
the story got out. But Im not sure I would go as far as she would to say
that it was agreed that the P.U.K. were the ones that executed the
operation.

AMY GOODMAN: Yvonne Ridley, your response?

YVONNE RIDLEY: Well, I didn't say that the P.U.K. had led the operation. I
said that they were there and took part in the operation. And, as I say,

>from Talibani's own mouth, he named the person at the head of the

operation. And Im quite satisfied that the story that we were fed by Paul
Bremer was not the true story and more details will emerge. And you just
have to look back at the way the information started leaking out about the
capture of Saddam and his disoriented state. I mean, those who know hI'm
best, one in particular his daughter, Raghad, she had given an interview
with CNN, and she said that she was 100% convinced, her own words, that
her father was drugged. She said Anyone with insight could tell from the
first instance that my father was not fully conscious. And this is coming

>from someone who knows hI'm, who's lived with hI'm, who's had a close-up

of what Saddam is like in private as well as in public. And she, herself,
said that she is convinced that one of the people he relies on must have
put something in his food because she knew that her father would never
surrender. And when you look at the hole that he was held in, there were
no mobile phone, no communications, as Sam said, this was hardly a center
of a big nerve operation, organizing the insurgents.

AMY GOODMAN: What would the Kurds have to gain by capturing Saddam
Hussein, and handing hI'm over to the U.S. forces to get the glory for
that capture? What would they negotiate?

YVONNE RIDLEY: Well, they didn't seek the glory. They just couldn't resist
telling the world that Saddam had been captured. But my understanding is
that they held on to hI'm for awhile until they negotiated some political
advantage to their situation in Iraq, which would be feasible because the
Kurds have been betrayed horribly over the years, and they are skilled
negotiators and I think that there was more than $25 million reward at
stake here. I think that they wanted to secure their position, and Im sure
that they have put an advantageous political view, and obviously that will
probably emerge over the coming months.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, Jalal Talibani right now is in Moscow, and he has
been talking to the leadership there about Russia getting oil contracts,
other business contracts with Iraq. Sam Gardiner, before you go, you
mentioned Task Force 121. It is not something that's talked about very
much. We recently had on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hirsch,
talking about how a new special forces group, assembled to neutralize
Iraqi resistance, is working with Israeli commandos to train in
assassination and other tactics, comparable to the Phoenix Program in
Vietnam. A key planner, Lieutenant General William Boykin, who declared
Bush was not elected, but appointed by God. Can you comment further on
Task Force 121, the unit that has been assembled from Army Delta Force
members?

COLONEL GARDINER: Sure. And it may be other Special Operations forces,
too. And it may include portions of the Kurdish Special Operations. It may
have in it British Special Operations, too.

AMY GOODMAN: Also Navy Seals and CIA Paramilitary.

COLONEL GARDINER: Yes. And they were supported by Air Force assets. In
fact, there is a lot of discussion I hear from news people in Washington
that there is a major effort underway by this Task Force 121 that will be
focused on - actually, let me use the words that are in the Special
Operations manual - inflicting damage on designated individuals. The
Seymour Hirsch article may be only a part of it. Im hearing from press
sources that the United States may be introducing a major campaign to do
assassinations of mid-level people in the Baathist party who may be
supporting operations and this assassination program may extend beyond
Iraq. I think it is a very I'mportant thing that has gotten not enough
press by what Seymour Hirsch revealed to us.

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hirsch of the New Yorker. What do you mean "beyond
Iraq?"

COLONEL GARDINER: Other countries.

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

COLONEL GARDINER: Like Afghanistan. Maybe -- you know, we hear lots of
places where we suspect that there are other individuals from the Al-Qaeda
being held or being trained. Might include going into Iran. I'd include
going into places like Somalia and Sudan, where we haven't got total
cooperation. May include going into the Becca valley. Im told that big
things are being planned.

AMY GOODMAN: You're a military man. What is your response to those who
say, Extreme tI'mes demand extreme measures?

COLONEL GARDINER: I guess I would answer that two ways, Amy. First of all,
you have to say that this is not a war. That's one of the things that
upsets me every tI'me I hear it. The President can't define a war. The war
is declared by the Congress. So, in historical terms or in constare not in
a war. We are in a fight against crI'minal elements. A lot of which we
have given to describing in political terms to incite things. There is
also the part that when we begin to do things like this, like an
assassination, if that's what, in fact, we're about to begin, we're
inflicting damage on designated individuals, we have become something that
I don't think we are

AMY GOODMAN: Retired Air Force Colonel Gardiner has taught at the National
War College, Air War College, and Naval War College. You are listening to
Democracy Now!