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CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, QATAR
Gritty ground footage topping smart bombs
By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff, 3/25/2003
In the 1991 Gulf War, pictures like these were the Pentagon's propaganda stars. The most famous showed a "smart" bomb going straight into the door of a building. But yesterday, in a war where precision bombs are playing a far bigger role, the pictures failed to thrill."It looked like the first video game ever invented," said one European journalist, who asked not to be identified. "It was so tiny and nebulous -- and black-and-white. I didn't even use it in my report."
Five days into a second war with Iraq, the pictures, and the $250,000 Hollywood-designed set where they are projected, have been upstaged. Compared to the live, human-scale, narrative footage flooding the airwaves from the cameras of journalists traveling with troops, the Pentagon pictures are the equivalent of stick figures. They were caricatures, some reporters said. They sanitized the violence of war. They were so . . . 1991.
Even soldiers admit to being interested in the journalists' footage. "I'm a fan of it," General Tommy R. Franks said yesterday, adding that it placed US troops in a new spotlight: "The levels of motivation, training, morale, and capability are shown to be very high."
This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 3/25/2003.
he grainy picture, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said, showed an Iraqi MiG fighter jet. Then, poof! A puff of white smoke and the plane is gone. Next came before-and-after shots: Iraqi secret police buildings; then, the same spot with the buildings erased, but everything around them apparently untouched. "Even the walls of the camp are not affected," Brooks intoned.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
