Lying for Queen & Country

The Iranians manufactured a great deal of positive PR out of this exercise. I don't mean for the detention of the British sailors and Marines but for their treatment of them. The whole exercise of photos, video footage etc was all done to capitalize on a captive public convinced from previous U.S. rhetoric that the Iranians would behave like monsters they were portrayed to be. But instead of waterboarding their captives the worst thing they made one member do was wear a scarf. There's nothing quite like the humiliation of being treated well to dispel the myth of Persian evil.

In a sense then, the Iranian treatment of the British Sailors and Marines achieved two primary propaganda objectives. First, it portrayed a marked contrast between their treatment of detainees and the U.S treatment of detainees. This demonstrated that far from being the abject monsters portrayed by the COW centric media the public instead saw British Marines and Sailors talking candidly about the circumstances of their detention--a situation never before seen. One could almost hear the cries of neo-cons in their lounge rooms lamenting "why didn't you fight back!?" which really translates to "why couldn't you have just died in a firefight?" The media reports of U.S. frustration were palpable.

Don't get me wrong, we've seen captured troops before making confessions during the first gulf war but lets make no mistake that those videos were made under duress and obvious to all and sundry--different objectives. Seen in this light, harming the British Sailors and Marines then would have constituted a PR disaster for the Iranians and delivered a PR windfall to the the U.S. only too ready to lob a few cruise missiles into the pot. In other words, any poor treatment of the captives by the Iranians would have catalyzed public opinion firmly against them. It would have been the opportunity the U.S. were waiting for to be able to say "See! We told you they were cruel and inhuman."

The second propaganda objective as I see it was that it let the world know that the Iranians were not going to stand by and let their sovereignty be walked over by arrogant boarding parties from a far flung foreign country. This was Iran's way of saying we're not going to put up with your sh*t right on our doorstep.

Did it work? Well, taking in to account the number of comedian and talk show hosts who made the obligatory scarf and hot dinner jokes, the first objective was met. Also the reports of the British reviewing their boarding operation procedures in the disputed Shatt, the second objective was also met.

Subsequently, the British Government is in damage control attempting to apply counter spin to the Iranian PR coup by attempting to turn the Iranians back into the monsters they told everyone they were by permitting for the first time ever for active duty personnel to sell their stories of "torture" to the highest bidder.

I can't help but wonder, why the sweetener? What happened to lying for Queen and Country?