Gulf War Air Power Survey
Less Several Up to Several Tens of
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- Table 14
- Civilian Casualties
- Table 15
- Table 16
- 14 Feb 12 Feb
- Public Support for the War
- Media Coverage and Political-Military Decisionmaking
- Observations
Less Several Up to Several Tens of than 100 Hundred 1,000 1,000's 1,000's 24 Feb 10% 31% 20% 20% 3% 22 Feb 10 22 20 28 5 7-10 Feb 6 21 17 39 8 17-20 Jan 12 24 16 29 4 17-18 Jan 12 21 14 28 4 10-11 Jan 4 11 13 44 18 18-19 Oct 6 15 15 35 18 Not only did the allied losses remain low, but as the air campaign continued with attacks on Iraqi airfields and as many Iraqi aircraft fled to Iran, Iraqi total aircraft losses continued to mount, and the allied loss figure never exceeded the Iraqi figure. It would probably be reasonable to assume that in future contingencies the American public will pay considerable attention to casualties, and that U.S. aircraft losses will be spotlighted not only as absolute numbers, but also in relation to enemy losses (as a measure of how much is gained at what price). Casualties did seem to be on the media's, and by extension the public's, mind during the Gulf crisis and war. In one survey of the most frequently used terms or concepts in news coverage from August 1990 through February 1991, after Vietnam (7,299 references), those print and broadcast media surveyed used human shields (2,588 references) and allied/U.S. casualties (2,009) more often than any other of a dozen terms and concepts studied.1064 According to one study of ABC, CBS, and NBC television evening news broadcasts during the war, “The most frequently televised images of the Gulf War were not of combat or military casualties, but of damage and injuries inflicted on civilians. We coded 1,217 individual camera shots of nonmilitary damage . . . . Nearly half (48%) of these shots showed damage to civilian areas inside Iraq . . . . Ironically, the number of air combat visuals [594] virtually equalled the number of images of Iraqi civilian damage (590).” [Emphasis in original.]1065 Further, the public did seem sensitive to casualties, as one measure of the costs of a military operation or war. The results of a survey taken just before the Gulf War (11-15 January 1991) are interesting. The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research asked three questions, one to each third of a national sample; those in the first third were asked straightforwardly about support for going to war, those in each of the other thirds were asked a similar question, with the addition of a hypothetical estimate of U.S. casualties. All three questions were prefaced by, “As you may know, the United Nations Security Council has authorized the use of force against Iraq if it doesn't withdraw from Kuwait by 15 January 1991.” Sixty percent of the first third favored going to war if Iraq does not withdraw from Kuwait; in the second third, 52 percent favored going to war if that meant 1,000 Americans would be killed in action; in the last third, only 37 percent favored going to war if that meant that 10,000 Americans would be killed.1066 So in this case at least, support for going to war seems clearly related to public perceptions of the costs, the most prominent of which is casualties. It would probably be unreasonable and unwise to assume that in this dimension the Gulf War was unique. Related to these results are those of a Los Angeles Times poll taken immediately after the war began, which measured the public's perception of victory in terms of cost in U.S. casualties (Table 14). Table 141067 Assuming Iraq leaves Kuwait, would you consider the war with Iraq a success if ____ American troops died, or not? Number of U.S. troops killed Yes, a success none 80% 500 50
1,000 37 5,000 27
10,000 20 20,000 16 Beyond the broader point about the public's concern about casualty figures and how those might be related to support for the war or other military operations, John Mueller's argument in his study of public opinion during the Korea and Vietnam wars is also relevant: “ . . . one assumes that the public is sensitive to relatively small losses at the start of the war but only to rather large ones towards its end.”1068 Given that with the exception of Korea, Vietnam, Beirut (1982-84), and Desert Storm, most of the more than 200 U.S. military operations since the end of World War II1069 have been measured in days or weeks, not months or years, the public's hypothesized sensitivity to low numbers of casualties in the early days of an operation may be the only part of Mueller's two-part assumption that becomes operative: The first few days may be the only days! There is, however, some evidence that, indirectly at least, calls into question Mueller's thesis. A study of coverage of the Gulf crisis and war by The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times1070 indicates that allied casualties were not a prominent topic in front-page stories in the two papers during two critical periodsin only four percent of the articles during 1-23 January1071 (which includes the first week of the air campaign) and only six percent during 16 February through 1 March1072 (which includes approximately ten days of the air campaign and the entire ground campaign). Nonetheless, it still seems reasonable to argue that in future conflicts, which might involve a more balanced (i.e., between the two sides) air war, U.S. losses may be higher in absolute and/or relative (i.e., compared to the enemy's) terms than in the Gulf War air campaign, and press coverage of those losses may be more prominent and therefore have adverse effects on public support for the war effort. Civilian Casualties This is another potentially volatile issue in terms of public attitudes, and it was intermittently salient for the American public during the air campaign. Stated simply, the issue is that press coverage of civilian casualties might lead to a loss of support for the war effort. In other words, public support for the war might be contingent not only on the number of U.S. casualties (see results of surveys above), but on the incidence of civilian casualties on the other side as well. It appears that during the early days of the air campaign, this latent, potential concern was quickly and effectively mitigated by the footage of precision-guided munitions (including the Tomahawks) and diverted by the contrast with the Iraqi Scud attacks, especially on civilian areas in Israel. Later, however, this issue was brought dramatically into the public eye, especially by the 13 February attack on the Amiriya command and control facility, which apparently also housed hundreds of Iraqi civilians that night. The first point to be made here about the incident is that it was big and dramatic news in the United States. Less than nine hours after the attack itself, CNN was the first to run the story (at 5:04 a.m. EST),1073 and correspondent Peter Arnett's words set the tone for all the succeeding broadcast and print coverage: “We have the makings of a major tragedy here in Baghdad today.”1074 That evening all three broadcast networks included several reports on the incident, with graphic footage of the recovery of bodies from the ruins of the building. The pictures of the scene were perhaps the most emotionally striking shown up to that point during the four-week-old war. Indeed CBS anchor Dan Rather introduced the pictures with the words, “We caution you that some [of the pictures] may not be suitable for children.”1075 Likewise, the next day's (Thursday, 14 February) papers gave the story major play, minus of course the full drama of the pictures shown on television. “Bomb Strike Kills Scores of Civilians in Building Called Military Bunker by U.S., Shelter by Iraq,” was the two-line, six-column headline across the top of the front page of The Washington Post, which ran three page-one stories on the attack. “Bombs Killed Victims as They Slept” and “Air War's Political Risks Dramatized” were the headlines on the other two. In all, the Post ran twelve attack-related stories that day, along with the text of the White House statement on the incident and lengthy excerpts of the Pentagon daily briefing, which was dominated by discussion of the bombing. Several of those stories focused on the politi- ramifications of the bombing and on the U.S. government's response to the public reports of the incident. This was true as well of The New York Times' coverage of the incident.1076 The bombing was big news in the Timesthe main headline on the 14th (“Iraq Says U.S. Killed Hundreds of Civilians at Shelter, But Allies Call it Military Post”) and a total of ten articles, four of them on the first page. On the next day the main headline signalled the next turn in the story, towards the implications and aftermath of the bombing “Allies Study New Steps to Avoid Civilians in Bombing.” At the same time the U.S. version was given equal prominence, in a page one headline “U.S. Stands Firm on Bomb Attack and Says Investigation is Closed.” By 16 February, the story had disappeared in the Times. Thursday evening, both ABC and CBSbut not NBCgave significant coverage to the aftermath of the bombing, featuring larger casualty estimates and the implications of the attack for U.S. and Coalition bombing strategy and priorities for the air campaign. But on the morning of 15 February (Friday), the attack was no longer the top headline in the Post (“U.S. Raises Estimate of Iraqi Armor Destroyed” led the front page), but the incident and its implications were featured in no less than five separate articles. By Saturday's editions, the bombing incident had receded from view, displaced by the news of Iraq's offer to withdraw from Kuwait (subject to certain conditions), a story of larger and more immediate political import. The second major point is that the U.S. governmentcivilian and military, in Washington and in Riyadhappears to have made an intensive effort to “get on top of” the bombing incident story, to coordinate its responses to the questions being raised, and to provide its own interpretation early and consistently. CENTCOM public affairs officers argue on the one hand that this incident wasn't handled any differently than any other story, but on the other hand that the issue probably received the most high-level attention of anything briefed to the press during the entire war. Indeed as evidence of the latter they cite (CENTCOM briefer) Brigadier General Neal's frequent telephone conversations with Secretary Cheney, General Powell, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Pete Williams explaining to them in advance what he would be saying about this incident. To be sure, none of this means that the government tried, or even wanted, to distort or whitewash reality. Rather, the point isand, for the government, wasthat this was a dangerous story, dangerous in the sense that it could threaten domestic and international support for the war effort. Absent such a concern, it is hard to imagine why the government went to such efforts to manage how the story was handled by its various public affairs briefers, and in turn by the press. As one government official told the Post, the pictures of the bombed facility would be “the story of the day and we needed to have our game together fast.”1077 The New York Times reported “intelligence, operations, and public affairs officers scrambling from one office to the next in a concerted effort at damage control.”1078 According to the Post, the “public presentation appeared to have been carefully worked out,”1079 with the government having orchestrated what information and insights would be released by whom and where (Central Command in Riyadh, the Pentagon, State Department, and White House), and in what sequence. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, “We felt that the military would have to say how it happened and we would say why it happened.”1080 There is no doubt that much of the government's concern was based on the emotional power of the pictures being shown from Baghdad, from the site of the bombing incident. In Fitzwater's words, “The power of the image on television is so much stronger than the power of the word. It doesn't matter how much caveats [sic] you put in there, the picture tells a story that establishes itself in the mind's eye no matter what is said.”1081 Third, the issues raised by these powerful images of the aftermath of the bombing were centralthe quality of intelligence, the accuracy of the weapons (even the “smart” ones), the targeting priorities (including the special problems posed by “dual-use” facilities), the number of civilians killed (at this facility and elsewhere), the possibly differing views within the Coalition on how much of what to bomb, and even whether these (and other) civilian casualties were accidental or intentional.1082 And more precisely and more importantly, there was the question of public perceptions and the effect of those perceptions on public support for the war, both in the United States and in Arab and Western European countries of the Coalition. Fourth, there is evidence that, despite these seemingly well-grounded concerns, not only did public support for the war not drop off, but the public seems to have reached conclusions similar to the government's whether because of the government's efforts to get out its side of the story, or independently, is not clear. A Washington PostABC News poll taken the evening of 14 February, after two days of television news and one day of newspaper coverage of the bombing incident (Table 15), indicated no drop in support for the war from levels found earlier in the week, before the bombing. Table 151083 Do you approve or disapprove of the United States having gone to war with Iraq? 14 Feb 78% [approve] 12 Feb 78 10 Feb 75
B. Doing enough 67 60 C. Doing too much 18 22 A fifth, and more speculative, point is what effect another such dramatic, publicly revealed incident with large numbers of civilian casualties might have had on public attitudes towards the war in general or U.S. bombing policy and priorities in particular. Were there to be a repetition of such incidents, perhaps the concernsabout the competence with which the war was being waged, or about whether the civilian casualties were accidental or intentional, or about whether the United States was making sufficient effort to avoid or at least to minimize civilian casualtieswould have materialized and would have adversely affected public support for the war. A sixth and final point would be to examine whether after the 13 February incident any significant changes were made in Coalition bombing and targeting policy and practices. If such changes were made, one might reasonably conclude that senior officials, having weathered one incident in terms of sustained public support for the war, might have concluded that another one might have broken the dam of public support, or at least seriously weakened it. In fact, the record indicates that after this incident, the Coalition did not bomb any other similar facilities in the immediate Baghdad area.1087 Public Support for the War It is worth briefly highlighting here the results of polls concerning public approval for the war effort. A review of Gallup data during the war indicates that overall public support for the war, once it actually began, started outand remainedat very high levels. For example, in six Gallup polls taken during the first month of the war, between seventy-nine and eighty-one percent said they agreed with the decision to go to war.1088 Six polls taken for The Washington Post during the same period found that between seventy-five and eighty-three percent of respondents approved of the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq.1089 Thus, overall support for the war seems to have been highand highly insensitive to the unfolding of events, at least during the first four weeks of the air campaign. On another related issue, evidence from Gulf crisis opinion surveys indicates that it is not necessarily press coverage, or a change in press coverage, that leads to changes in public support for a war or other crisis policy. In a late September 1990 poll covering a range of Gulf crisis issues, those interviewed were asked: “If the confrontation with Iraq continues for a long time, where do you think support is likely to drop first?” One-third (thirty-four percent) said the drop would appear first among the American people, while only eight percent said it would start with the news media.1090 These results seem to indicate that some of the public, at least, thinks that people's opinions on the war might change independently of press coverage, and not necessarily because of it. Media Coverage and Political-Military Decisionmaking The Gulf War seems to have invalidated much of the conventional wisdom and some standard hypotheses about the effects of press coverage, particularly television coverage, regarding governmental decisionmaking, especially during crises. Part of the public policy and political heritage of the 1970s and 1980s is a sense or belief that television news reports skew the business of government, especially during crises. Prominently articulated in 19841091 by Lloyd Cutler, the veteran Washington insider and counsel to President Jimmy Carter, this argument says that television news creates severe and dysfunctional pressures on the timing and the substance of governmental decisionmaking. Cutler concluded that “learning how to adjust to [TV's influence] is central to the art of governing today.”1092 According to Cutler, television news has an impact far greater than print journalism, first, because its audience is considerably larger12 to 15 million for each of the three network evening news programs, compared with only one to 3 million each for the four major national newspapers (The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post). The second reason is because the power of videotape or film footage greatly outstrips that of cold print or even photographs run in newspapers: “If a picture is worth 1,000 words, sounds and pictures together must be worth 10,000.”1093 Despite a grab-bag of suggestions at the end of his article for how government officials might manage or even mitigate these insidious effects of television coverage on the business of government, Cutler's overall message is pessimistic, especially regarding the agenda-setting power of television news: . . . an appraisal of television's impact on public policy must distinguish between its damaging effect on the time available for crisis decisions and its sometimes harmful, sometimes helpful, effect on the substance of broad policy. The most harmful effect of TV news is its tendency to speed up the decisionmaking process on issues that TV news is featuring . . . . In a very real sense, events that become TV lead stories now set the priorities for the policymaking agenda.1094 Following the logic of Cutler's argument, one would expect that television news would have wielded noticeable, even significant influence on aspects of the air war, parts of which, as noted above, lent themselves to the drama of television coverage. Yet, his persuasive analysis and prognosis seem not to have been supported by the events of Operation Desert Storm. Both senior National Security Council staff member Richard Haas and Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz are on record arguing that television had negligible influence on most of the major decisions before, during, and after the actual fighting in the Gulf War. In separate presentations to a 26 September 1991 conference cosponsored by The Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute and The Annenberg Washington Program of Northwestern University, the two senior officials, both of whom played major roles in Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm decisionmaking, identified eight (Haas)1095 or nine (Wolfowitz) key decision points and argued that television news' impact on policymaking was minimal.1096 Several of the key decision points cited by the two officials involve the air campaign. The first was the mid-January decision to initiate the air war. Haas said that television had no impact on the decision to begin or the date to begin, but that it did have an effect on the decision to exert extraordinary efforts to avoid collateral damage. The second was the decision, cited by Wolfowitz, to pursue an extended air campaign, which he said was related to the question of ending it quickly. According to him, some officials worried that weeks of coverage of the bombing campaign would cause problems for some parts of the Coalition, but those fears never materialized. When the images came in, he said, they tended to buoy public support. The third was the February decision to end offensive operations, which was discussed by both officials. Haas said that television may have had some effect on that decision, because there was some concern about, in his words, “piling on.” The decision to end the war, Wolfowitz said, was mainly made in principals-only meetings, so the public record is thin here. Wolfowitz cited a tension between “how do you justify unnecessary killing?” and the belief that getting rid of Iraqi military power is a good thing. No one, he continued, thought that Iraqi units could do much damage if they went home. He didn't think that television coverage directly affected the decision to stop the war, but that television coverage of the so-called “Highway of Death” may have had some influence. This last observation by Wolfowitz raises some interesting pointsfirst, that memories of even vivid and important events (and the sequence of events) may be faulty, and second, the distinction between the effects of actual coverage of events and the anticipated effects of possible coverage. On the first, it is important to arrange the sequence of events: Iraqis began to flee Kuwait City in large numbers the weekend of 23-24 February 1991; the ground campaign began Saturday night, Iraqi time, followed by air (and later ground) attacks on Iraqis leaving Kuwait City; and the President made his decision to end the war on Wednesday, 27 February, announcing it that evening in Washington. There was no coverage of the so-called “Highway of Death” on the three broadcast networks evening news programs, nor was there any in The New York Times, prior to the President's decision to end hostilities. On the day he made that decision (Wednesday, 27 February), however, there was an article in The Washington Post, written by a media pool reporter from the Providence Journal on board the USS Ranger, on the allied attacks on Iraqis departing Kuwait. Its headline was dramatic“`Like Fish In a Barrel,' U.S. Pilots Say”but its placementthe second page of the special second sectionwas not. Also dramatic was much of its content, including references by U.S. pilots to “bumper to bumper” traffic and “sitting ducks.” It is difficult to assess with any certainty the effect such coverage had on the timing and substance of decisions at the highest levels of the U.S. government. The “fish in a barrel” theme was not a prominent aspect of Gulf War news coverage: The ground campaign dominated the news, whereas the Post article cited above appeared inside the second section and was not even reprinted in that day's Pentagon Current News Early Bird edition, and network evening news programs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday ran no stories along those lines. Whether any senior decisionmakers read the Post article that Wednesday, and what effect it might have had on them, is unclear. Nonetheless, it is plausible that such coverage, albeit limited, and, more importantly, the anticipated effects of additional such coverage, had some real effect. After all, such articles might become more frequent and more prominent if the war were to continue, television might gain access to and become interested in the story, and after-action reports along these lines might have reached the highest levels of political and military decisionmakers. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's own account1097 reinforces this line of reasoning, although it differs with it in some details. He relates a phone call from Gen. Colin Powell late in the afternoon (Riyadh time) of Wednesday, 27 February, in which the Chairman told him: “We ought to be talking about a cease-fire. The doves are starting to complain about all the damage you're doing.” In the book, Schwarzkopf goes on to explain: What had happened, of course, was that journalists were now interviewing Air Force pilots who'd been hitting the convoys fleeing Kuwait. And as soon as we'd liberated the area around Kuwait City, reporters who had once been part of the media pools had taken pictures of Highway 6, where we'd bombed a convoy Monday night. It was a scene of utter destruction that they'd named the “Highway of Death”a four-lane road strewn with the burned-out wreckage of more than a thousand military vehicles and stolen civilian trucks, buses, and cars. That was what people saw when they sat down Monday evening and turned on their television sets. Powell informed me that the White House was getting nervous: `The reports make it look like wanton killing.'1098 But General Schwarzkopf's account must be put into the context of the Haas and Wolfowitz versions, and the absence of any reference to the “Highway of Death” or any other such events in the transcripts of network evening news programs prior to the President's decision to terminate offensive operations. Looking at this fuller context, one might reasonably conclude that Powell's concerns, as recounted by General Schwarzkopf, may have been triggered by such limited and low-visibility stories as the Post's Wednesday morning media pool report and by a worry that if such coverage were to become more frequent and more prominent, then adverse political consequences might follow. But the evidence does not support Schwarzkopf's contention that “Highway of Death” coverage was included in network evening news programs prior to the President's decision. Indeed, it is interesting to note that after his famous “Mother of All Briefings” in Riyadh on the afternoon (Washington time) of 27 February, none of the three dozen or so questions he was asked referred at all to the “Highway of Death.”1099 There is some evidence that military officials in theater were concerned about the potential for such coverage and its possible effects. Less than two weeks after the end of the war, The Washington Post ran a lengthy article (“U.S. Scrambled to Shape View of `Highway of Death'”) saying that the highway bombing “also was the focus of a public relations campaign managed by the U.S. Central Command in Riyadha campaign designed to shape perceptions of the war's last and most violent phase . . . .”1100 The article cited political problems potentially posed by the way the war was ending: “Continued allied attacks raised the specter of a one-sided slaughter of retreating Iraqi troops, possibly complicating U.S. political problems in the Arab world.”1101 According to the Post, on Tuesday the 26th U.S. military briefers in Riyadh began to emphasize that the Iraqis were not retreating, and that, in the briefer's words, the United States did not “`have any real evidence of any withdrawal at this time . . . .There are still not any indications of a significant amount of movement in any direction, north or south . . . .There's no significant Iraqi movements to the north.'”1102 “By noon Tuesday, interviews with U.S. attack pilots conducted by media pool reporters that morning and circulated on news wire services had undermined the briefer's portrait of the Iraqi movements . . . . “As the day wore on, senior officers with the U.S. Central Command in Riyadh became worried about what they saw as a growing public perception that Iraq's forces were leaving Kuwait voluntarily and that U.S. pilots were bombing them mercilessly, according to U.S. military sources. Relaying these worries to the Pentagon as they prepared for Tuesday's scheduled televised news briefing, senior officers agreed that U.S. spokesmen needed to use forceful language to portray Iraq's claimed `withdrawal' as a fighting retreat made necessary by heavy allied military pressure.”1103 This led to an intense and coordinated U.S. government approach to managing the problem, including making a careful and clear distinction between a “retreat” and a “withdrawal.” “`Saddam Hussein has described what is occurring as a withdrawal,' [Brig. Gen. Richard] Neal said [in a Riyadh briefing for newsmen]. `By definition, a withdrawal is when you pull your forces back, not under pressure by the attacking forces. Retreat is when you're required to pull your forces back as required by the action of the attacking forces. The Iraqi army is in full retreat.'”1104 This was not a merely semantic distinction: According to the law of war, retreating soldiers are legitimate targets of attack. Nor was this concern abandoned with the end of the war. The final DOD report on the war included a four-page discussion of “The concept of `surrender' in the conduct of combat operations.”1105 The only way to resolve these uncertainties about the effects of actual coverage of the “Highway of Death” or the effects of anticipated further coverage would be to interview the senior decisionmakers themselves. Observations Looking back on the three issues featured in this chapter, one sees different ways in which press coverage seems to have influenced public attitudes and policymaking on the war. In the first, the press did not fall into the trap of relying on a single measure of merit on the progress of the war, in particular comparative aircraft losses. In fact, the press avoided any such short-hand indicators of progress, for a variety of reasons (none of which will necessarily occur in future situations). Thus, the press did notin this case, anywayskew public perceptions of how well the war was going. In the second, press coverage of civilian casualties became, albeit briefly, intense, graphic, and dominant. The U.S. government clearly went into a crisis-management mode to deal with the coverage and its possible, even (seemingly) likely, consequences. That these negative consequences in fact failed to materialize is no guarantee that they will not in future conflicts. If in the Gulf War changes were made in bombing policies and practices, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they were made in response to the spotlight of this dramatic, powerful coverage. In the third, press, especially television, coverage generally did not seem to affect government decisionmaking in the ways one might have anticipated given the experiences of the 1970s and 1980s. One exception seems to be the influence not of actual coverage of the so-called “Highway of Death,” but rather of anticipated coverage of the attacks on Iraqi forces in what turned out to be the last hours of the war. This last phenomenon is intriguing because it reflects a mind-set that takes possible press coverage and possible public reaction to that coverage very seriously. It is a damage-avoidance or damage-limitation mentality, rather than a damage-control approach. It indicates that particular kinds of press coverage can have important effects even before they occur, indeed even if they never do. It reflects a proactive approach, rather than a reactive one. In many ways, it may be the most interesting and poignant demonstration of the power of the press in wartime. 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