Misinformation on Marja battle to mislead US public

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, uncovers information on the US-led offensive on Marja, in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. The offensive included 7,500 US, NATO, and Afghan troops. In an article titled "Fiction of Marja as a City Was US Information War," Porter makes three major points.

First, "the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by the news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war." In the highly publicized run-up to the battle, US officials described Marja as "a city of 80,000 people." Porter reports that "Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agicultural area covering much of the Helmand River Valley, which covers "125 square miles." The focus of the attack was a location in Marja "where farmers gathered for markets" and included "a mosque and a few shops."

Second, Porter asks, "how did the fiction that Marja is a city of 80,000 get started?" "The idea," he reports, "was passed on to the news media by the US Marines in southern Helmand," and then picked up by the Associated Press and other news media. The story that was more or less repeated was that there were as many as a 1,000 insurgents in the town and that there would be deadly "house to house urban street fighting."

Third, why then was the fiction of an urban Marja perpetrated. Porter's answer can be gleaned from from the last two sentences in the article:

"The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that the decision to launch the offensive against Marja was intended largely to impress US public opinion with the effectiveness of the US military in Afghanistan" - and how Afghan soldiers are becoming ready to engage the enemy and do their part in the fighting that lies ahead.

"The false impression that Marja was a significant city was an essential part of that message."'

One implication of Porter's reporting is that the US command in Afghanistan - and at the Pentagon - is groping for a military strategy that can convince American elected officials and the American public that pouring more resources into the Afghanistan occupation will eventually be successful or cost-effective. They seem to be making it up as they go. What a snow job.

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/03/08/fiction-of-marjah-as-city.