U.S. Troops // Current

Conflicting Stories on Those Who Died Sunday by U.S Raid

Reporting from Beirut and Washington -- U.S. forces ferried by helicopter Sunday crossed five miles into Syria from Iraq and launched a commando raid that left at least eight people dead, Syrian news outlets and sources reported.

Syria has long been a conduit for foreign fighters attempting to slip into Iraq to attack U.S. troops. American officials say that military action in Iraq has reduced the number of those fighters. And tense relations between Damascus and the Iraqi government have improved enough that this month Syria sent an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time since the early 1980s.

In the waning days of the Bush administration, the U.S. has shown a greater willingness to launch cross-border clandestine operations in another military theater, Pakistan, to protect U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan or to capture or kill Islamic militants.

The official Syrian Arab News Agency said U.S. military helicopters attacked the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal. The area is about 60 miles southeast of Dayr az Zawr, which is considered a haven for Sunni Arab militants that infiltrate Iraq and is near the site of a Sept. 6, 2007, Israeli airstrike on what U.S. officials have alleged was a plutonium plant built with the assistance of North Korea.

The news agency said four helicopters crossed into Syrian airspace about 4:45 p.m. local time and fired on people who appeared to be laborers at their jobs on the second day of the Syrian workweek. It said a man named Daoud Mohammed Abdullah, his wife and four of his sons were killed. The two other victims were not immediately identified.

"All victims were civilians," Syria's Dunya private television said.

People told the news media that they saw two helicopters land and eight U.S. soldiers get off. Syrian state television said the troops stormed a building.

There have been few reports of the U.S. military firing across the Syrian border since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. But Sunday's attack, if confirmed, would appear to be the first time that U.S. troops have launched an attack inside Syria.
Reporting from Beirut and Washington -- U.S. forces ferried by helicopter Sunday crossed five miles into Syria from Iraq and... more

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U.S. to Fund Pro-American Publicity in Iraqi Media

The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government.

The new contracts -- awarded last week to four companies -- will expand and consolidate what the U.S. military calls "information/psychological operations" in Iraq far into the future, even as violence appears to be abating and U.S. troops have begun drawing down.

The military's role in the war of ideas has been fundamentally transformed in recent years, the result of both the Pentagon's outsized resources and a counterinsurgency doctrine in which information control is considered key to success. Uniformed communications specialists and contractors are now an integral part of U.S. military operations from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and beyond.
Iraq, where hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on such contracts, has been the proving ground for the transformation. "The tools they're using, the means, the robustness of this activity has just skyrocketed since 2003. In the past, a lot of this stuff was just some guy's dreams," said a senior U.S. military official, one of several who discussed the sensitive defense program on the condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon still sometimes feels it is playing catch-up in a propaganda market dominated by al-Qaeda, whose media operations include sophisticated Web sites and professionally produced videos and audios featuring Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants. "We're being out-communicated by a guy in a cave," Secretary Robert M. Gates often remarks.

But Defense Department officials think their own products have become increasingly imaginative and competitive. Military and contractor-produced media campaigns, spotlighting killings by insurgents, "helped in developing attitudes" that led Iraqis to reject al-Qaeda in Iraq over the past two years, an official said. Now that the insurgency is in disarray, he said, the same tools "could potentially be helpful" in diminishing the influence of neighboring Iran.

U.S.-produced public service broadcasts and billboards have touted improvements in government services, promoted political reconciliation, praised the Iraqi military and encouraged Iraqi citizens to report criminal activity. When national euphoria broke out last year after an Iraqi singer won a talent contest in Lebanon, the U.S. military considered producing an Iraqi version of "American Idol" to help build nonsectarian nationalism. The idea was shelved as too expensive, an official said, but "we're trying to think out of the box on" reconciliation.

One official described how part of the program works: "There's a video piece produced by a contractor . . . showing a family being attacked by a group of bad guys, and their daughter being taken off. The message is: You've got to stand up against the enemy." The professionally produced vignette, he said, "is offered for airing on various [television] stations in Iraq. . . . They don't know that the originator of the content is the U.S. government. If they did, they would never run anything."

"If you asked most Iraqis," he said, "they would say, 'It came from the government, our own government.' "

The Pentagon's solicitation for bids on the contracts noted that media items produced "may or may not be non-attributable to coalition forces." "If they thought we were doing it, it would not be as effective," another official said of the Iraqis. "In the Middle East, they are so afraid they're going to be Westernized . . . that you have to be careful when you're trying to provide information to the population."

**article cont.....

The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news... more