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Pentagon Bombs Public With Lies
Hires PR firm to cover up crimes and failures

By Heather Cottin, Contributing Writer

More than half a million tons of bombs have rained death and devastation on Afghanistan since Oct. 7. That amounts to "20 kilos for every man, woman and child in the country," writes the Economist of Britain on Nov. 2. "B-52s are flying from their base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to lend their terrifying loads of 1,000-lb. bombs to the U.S. onslaught."

As the Afghan people flee their cities, creating a pitiful tide of refugees, the United States and Great Britain have revved up their propaganda machinery to put a positive spin on the leveling of the poorest nation in Asia.

The carpet-bombing in recent days of Taliban front lines represents a shift in tactics, and a new urgency in the Pentagon's military campaign against Afghanistan and its people.

The United States claims it is bombing only military targets. However, every bomb that pounds this impoverished nation puts the lie to any statement about "smart bombs" or claims of "humanitarian" concerns. The bombing of Afghanistan's largest dam and the Kajaki hydro-electric power station in Helmand on Nov. 1, as reported by the Times of India, "could cause widespread flooding, putting at risk the lives of thousands of people, while cutting electricity to the inhabitants of the region."

Human rights organizations and a hospital in Pakistan reported a deadly attack that took as many as 60 lives in the small village of Chowkar-Karez, 25 miles north of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, according to reports based on eyewitness accounts.

The British newspaper the Independent published interviews with residents on Nov. 3. "As we buried the dead, the planes came again," said an old farmer called Mangal, who said he lost 30 relatives, including 12 women and 14 children. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that "every house had been flattened and huge craters could be seen in the surrounding fields."

"Many bodies were blown apart and all we could do was collect their limbs and put them together in the same grave," said 65-year-old Mangal as he showed a freshly dug graveyard.

Rather than bringing the Taliban to its knees, the joint U.S./British bombing campaign has turned the tide of public opinion in Afghanistan in favor of the Taliban.

As opposition grows, Pentagon hires PR firm

Around the world, people are questioning the Pentagon's attacks on one of the poorest nations on earth. In Britain and the United States governments face increased opposition to the bombing. Britain has noted a rapid shift away from support for the war.

CBC News online reported a London newspaper poll in the first week of November showing support for the war had fallen 12 percentage points, from 74 to 62 percent. It reported that the Church of Scotland had come out against the military campaign in Afghanistan, joining a growing anti-war chorus across Europe.

The U.S. government's response to this has been a massive campaign to promote the war and prevent any anti-war sentiments from surfacing. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "We need to do a better job to make sure that people are not confused as to what this is about." In desperation, the U.S. government has turned to a public relations firm to propagandize for the war.

The Rendon Group, a PR firm with offices in Boston and Washington, just signed a $397,000 contract to help the Pentagon look good while bombing Afghanistan. The four-month deal includes an option to renew through most of 2002. "At the Rendon Group, we believe in people," says the company's mission statement, and "helping people win in the global marketplace." Rendon will work in 79 countries to manipulate world opinion, reports Norman Solomon of the media watch group Alternet.

In the United States the news media have cooperated with Washington's war aims. The New York Times on Nov. 1 reported on the strategy of CNN and other networks. Television images of Afghan bombing victims are fleeting, cushioned between anchors or American officials explaining that such sights are "only one side of the story."

In other countries, however, "images of wounded Afghan children curled in hospital beds or women rocking in despair over a baby's corpse" are "more frequent and lingering." The Washington Post reported on a statement from CNN chair Walter Isaacson, who said, "It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan."

The 'we are winning' lie

Despite the evidence, the United States has strongly contested reports of civilian casualties while saying its bombing was causing crippling damage to the Taliban command, noted the Times of India on Nov 1.

But this is another lie.

The Economist of Nov. 2 reported that "The Taliban seem to be gearing up for more intense fighting, whether it comes from American commandos or a resupplied Northern Alliance. Refugees from Taliban areas have brought back consistent accounts of Kabul, the Afghan capital, and other cities under Taliban control being full of recently arrived Pakistani and Arab fighters. The Taliban have insisted that few of their soldiers have been killed or injured by the bombs."

Even the New York Times conceded Nov. 2 that "waves of American bombs delivered plenty of flash and thunder but appeared to have largely missed their targets." The Times wrote, "The reports from the front were amplified today by a senior official of the Northern Alliance, who complained that the American bombing campaign appeared increasingly misguided and ineffectual."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's optimism about U.S. gains is at odds with what is actually happening in Afghanistan. The India Times reports: "Mr. Rumsfeld, speaking in India on Nov. 5, flatly denied that the war would last very long. 'Do I think the operation in Afghanistan will take years? No I don't,' he said. 'We will take the least possible time.'"

But on Oct. 26 Rumsfeld admitted to the London Independent that "the Taliban was a more formidable foe than the allies expected." The report said that an Oct. 20 commando raid by Delta Force and U.S. Rangers left the U.S. soldiers "stunned by the resistance they met."

A report by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine Nov. 12 issue is a searing critique of this military disaster, which involved 300 Army Rangers who came under intense attack from Taliban fighters. One participant dismissed the planning for the Afghanistan mission as "Special Ops 101," and said, "I don't know where the adult supervision for these operations is. Franks [the general commanding the operation] was clueless."

The Guardian on Nov. 1, noting that there were actually very few ground forces capable of invading Afghanistan, reported that such a ground offensive couldn't happen until spring. British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon told Sky News: "The weather is closing in. It does limit the opportunity of certain kinds of operations."

There seems little evidence for Rumsfeld's contention that the Taliban are no longer functioning as a government in the areas that they do control. In fact, they appear to be getting stronger. The Russia Times reports from Islamabad on Nov. 5 that "thousands of pro-Taliban Pakistanis armed with rocket launchers and swords have crossed into Afghanistan to wage jihad, or holy war, against the United States and many more are waiting to go."

This development is evidence of growing Pakistani opposition to the complicity of their government with U.S. bombing policy. Pakistanis are Pashtun people, like the majority of Afghans, and they are increasingly angry at what they see as war on their national group.

The New York Times on Nov. 4 admitted that the Northern Alliance is not likely to deliver victory. "Many Afghans (and Pakistanis) despise it, and the Taliban outnumber it by about three to one. Alliance soldiers are poorly led, trained and equipped. Despite recent talk about how the Northern Alliance would capture Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul, it has launched no major offensives. Indeed, the Alliance may be losing ground to the Taliban, even with American air support."

The food aid lie

The greatest lie remains Washington's contention that it is conducting a war and at the same time engaging in a massive humanitarian effort. About one million food packages have been dropped near the columns of refugees or on the towns where the few remaining Afghans who have not fled the bombing still live.

The U.S. government has boasted about this campaign in an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan as well as the U.S. people. Since the UN has estimated the number of refugees so far to be over 300,000, those one million yellow food packets have provided exactly three meals per refugee over the past month. Moreover, the number of refugees is expected to increase to one and a half million. This is a public relations campaign, not a humanitarian effort.

This war has created an immense and deadly refugee crisis. The plight of child refugees is so desperate that UNICEF has flatly stated, "As many as 100,000 children will die this winter inside Afghanistan if aid does not reach them in sufficient quantity in the next few weeks."

Nigel Fisher, UNICEF's regional director, said that "commitments have been made for cash by donor agencies but so far it has not materialized. The starved children and women are waiting for help as winter is approaching fast."

The Pakistani newspaper The News reported on Nov. 5 that "UNICEF is facing difficulties in supply, distribution, safety of staff and in reaching the people who have migrated to rural areas due to heavy bombing in cities and crossed over to neighboring countries."

"Either you're with us or you're against us," bullies George Bush every time he gives a speech. As the murder of Afghanistan continues, this is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People everywhere oppose this war. The mighty superpower and its compradors cannot defeat the poorest nation in Asia without the genocide of an entire people. U.S. armed forces face another Vietnam quagmire, and the whole operation functions by an official policy of deceit. The war in Afghanistan is a quagmire and the imperialists know it.

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