Carl K.

Savich

The Origins and Causes of the

Bosnian Civil War
1992-1995
[2002]

You furnish the pictures and Ill furnish the war.

---William Randolph Hearst, March, 1898

Introduction
II. The Problem: Truth as a Casualty of War
III. The Origins and Causes of the Bosnian Civil War, 1992-1995
o The Role of US Public Relations Firms
o The Role of the US State Department
o The Role of the US Media
IV. A New Form of Aggression: Unilateral Diplomatic Recognition
V. Conclusion

Introduction
The collapse of the Cold War world order beginning in 1989 resulted in the disintegration of
the Communist federations of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the other nations in
Eastern Europe. The break up of these federations resulted in bloody civil wars both in the

former Soviet Union and in the former Yugoslavia. The most destructive and costly in human
life was the protracted civil war in the former Communist republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, constituted in 1945 as a constituent republic of Yugoslavia.
The diplomats and the media knew very little about the background to the conflicts and civil
wars in the former Soviet Union. They knew even less about the former Yugoslavia,
especially about Bosnia-Herzegovina. In US government and media propaganda, Yugoslavia
became "the heart of Europe" and "in the center of Europe". Before the massive US
"information war", Yugoslavia was regarded as marginal, peripheral, the "backwater of
Europe", on the periphery of Europe, not vital to any US interests, not part of the so-called
Western civilization and culture, not part of "enlightened Latin Christendom", but backward,
Byzantine, alien. Karl Marx termed the Balkan peoples "ethnic trash". His colleague
Friedrich Engels dismissed Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks as "robber riff- raff". Otto von
Bismarck warned that the Balkans were not worth the life of a single German soldier at the
time of the Bosnian Insurrection of 1875-1878. Through American media and government
propaganda, however, Bosnia became not only the center of Europe, but during the civil war,
the primary focus for the entire world. The lack of fundamental understanding and grasp of
the historical background and issues on the part of diplomats, academics, scholars, and the
media, contributed to needlessly prolonging and exacerbating the conflict.
The civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was caused and sustained by essentially three
major actors: 1) the United States State Department; 2) public relations firms; and, 3) the
American media. The precedent for such an alliance was the very successful performance of
all three actors in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which the United States with her NATO allies
Great Britain and France, waged against former ally and client state Iraq. The paradigm of
the Persian Gulf War was transposed upon the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina with
disastrous results. All three actors perceived the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina as Gulf
War II. The paradigm for the Persian Gulf War itself was established in 1898 with the
Spanish-American War. William Randolph Hearst told Frederick Remington, "You furnish
the pictures and Ill furnish the war." Hearst was a pioneer in realizing that the nature of war
had changed. War was now about information, not weapons and strategies. The SpanishAmerican War became an infowar where pictures and images were the crucial elements.
Hearst was ahead of his time. Most military historians and pundits missed this revolutionary
change in the nature and concept of modern warfare. As one of the founders of the mass
public newspaper, Hearst understood that propaganda techniques would be much more
important in the modern mass media and mass communication era. The US government
would apply Hearsts infowar paradigm in the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, the Krajina
conflict between Yugoslavia and Croatia, Haiti, and Kosovo. Indeed, the initial invading
force of Somalia consisted of an army of news reporters and camera crew which televised its
own landing on the Somalia coast. US policymakers learned from the Vietnam War debacle
that military force by itself is not sufficient. Information is crucial in modern war. To defeat
an enemy by force alone is to win only half the battle. Thus, there was a re-emergence of the
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infowar, of propaganda techniques and "information warfare" first developed by Hearst in

the 19th century.
The US State Department, the US media, and public relations firms caused and maintained
the bloody civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They based their analyses consciously and
unconsciously on ignorance, deceit, malice, racism, power politics, Realpolitik, and incorrect
assumptions and a faulty understanding of the background to that conflict. Truth is indeed
the first casualty in war.

II. The Problem: Truth as a Casualty of War

Truth is the first victim in war. This dictum is best exemplified in the media manipulations
and distortions which characterized the reporting of the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia,
particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The US State Department and public relations firms
have likewise distorted and manipulated the facts and the information concerning the civil
war in Bosnia. Along with the thousands of human casualties could be listed truth itself.
Along with the crimes committed against humanity were those committed against integrity,
decency, fair-play, and justice.
Ever since the civil wars erupted in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, the so-called Western
media, at first primarily the newly united Germany, but particularly the American media,
presented a daily barrage of news accounts and stories from Bosnia which equated the
horrors of that war to the worst of World War II. This media blitzkrieg was an unprecedented
and unrelenting onslaught which combined modern media techniques and advocacy
journalism. The media became an organized, coherent body, aggressive and strident cobelligerents who perceived themselves as active and partisan combatants in the civil wars.
The US government gave them their marching orders. The enemy were the Orthodox Serbs.
Allies were all who were anti-Serbian: Roman Catholic Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians.
All the media reportage had one thing in common: The reporting was partisan, anti-Serbian,
and had as its sole purpose and goal to force and to coerce Western governments, particularly
the United States, to intervene militarily against the Serbs, i.e., to force an interventionist
war against Serbs and against Serbia in a replay of the Persian Gulf War scenario with the
Serbian people and Serbia cast in the role of Iraq and as "aggressors". If it worked with
Kuwait, why couldnt it work in Bosnia? Needless to say, the US had militarily intervened in
Central and South America regularly and periodically throughout the twentieth century not
as "humanitarian interventions" but as invasions and occupations to install right-wing
dictators in the banana republics to maintain US commercial exploitation. The Bay of Pigs
fiasco in 1961 against Cuba is an example of just such an intervention.
The Persian Gulf War established the precedent of the modern infowar. The infowar
propaganda paradigm was followed during the Yugoslav conflicts. The Bosnian Muslims and

Croats hired prominent American public relations firms to advocate and to lobby for their
agendas and political programs. These firms manipulated, distorted, and falsified information
and facts to support the anti-Serbian policy of the government and media, working in a
symbiotic relationship. These public relations firms racked up phenomenal and spectacular
propaganda victories and successes for their clients, the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and
Kosovo Albanians.
The US sought to penetrate Eastern Europe and the Balkans politically, militarily, and
commercially, to create a neo-imperialist and neo-colonialist market and sphere of influence
in a region where it had been largely excluded. To further these goals, the US State
Department became an active and strident sponsor and advocate of secession movements in
both the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia. The State Department perceived that "sponsorship"
of "new states" would be in the American national interest and would advance "freedom and
democracy" around the globe. All the neo-imperialist catch-phrases were trotted out which
were anachronisms from the Cold War propaganda or information war. By breaking up and
dismembering states in Eastern Europe, the US was promoting "democracy", "the will of the
people", " economic prosperity", "freedom", and "fledgling democracies". The US State
Department thus became, like the US media, a partisan, co-belligerent advocate and actor in
favor of secession states. The State Department declared war against the geopolitical status
quo that was not in the US national interest: Disintegration, secession, and the creation and
emergence of "new states" was good, maintenance of the status quo was bad. Needless to
say, this support was highly selective and was based on whether it advanced US political,
military, or commercial interests. An independent and free Palestinian state was not
supported, Palestinian statehood and freedom were not supported. Likewise, Kurdish
autonomy or independence was not supported in Turkey, a NATO member. An independent
Corsica and independent Basque state were opposed because France and Spain respectively
were NATO members. The State Department embarked on a program to unconditionally
support and back the secession movements in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia because
those nations were not allies, client states, or members of NATO, they were in short, states
with adverse interests to those of the US. Needless to say, such reckless and irresponsible
actions resulted in bloody and entangled civil wars which have not been resolved but have
resulted in Vietnam-style quagmires for the US.

III. The Origins and Causes of the Bosnian Civil War, 1992-1995
The civil war in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was caused and
maintained by three principal actors; 1) public relations firms; 2) the US media; and, 3) the
US State Department. The origins and causes of the inherent ethnic, political, and religious
conflicts and antagonisms in Bosnia were ultimately caused by the mutually exclusive
national and political agendas of the three Bosnian factions: the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian
Muslims, and the Bosnian Croats, all Slavic and all speaking Serbo-Croatian, but all divided

by religion, by culture, and differing national visions. The Bosnian Muslims sought to secede
from Yugoslavia but yet to maintain Bosnian borders and the political structure as it had
existed in the Yugoslav federation. That is, the Muslims sought an unrealistic and
uncompromising maximalist position, an all or nothing approach, they wanted to have their
cake and eat it too. The Bosnian Serbs perceived that the destruction of the Yugoslav
federation would necessarily result in the destruction of what it maintained and instituted, the
Bosnian Republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina. If Yugoslavia was destroyed, then the internal
borders that Yugoslavia created would be destroyed. The so-called internationally
community de-recognized Yugoslavia but recognized arbitrarily the internal borders created
by Yugoslavia. In short, to establish Bosnia as an international entity there would have to be
bilateral agreement between Yugoslavia and a successor state, Bosnia. But this was precisely
what Germany and the US sought to prevent, advocating instead unilateral and unconditional
recognition of the internal borders of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was handed a fait accompli.
The Bosnian Croats wanted first to detach Bosnia from the Yugoslav federation and then to
create their own Croat mini-state, Herceg-Bosna, which would unite with Croatia. These
three mutually exclusive and antagonistic agendas were at the root of the conflict and the
crisis. Civil war, however, was not inevitable. Bismarck called politics the "art of the
possible". But no diplomacy was apparent. There were no discussions, negotiations, or
agreements. Instead, Germany and the US supported unilateral recognition. Germany and the
US presented a fait accompli instead of diplomacy. Germany and the US did nothing to
prevent a civil war but in fact did everything to encourage and foster it. With the absence of
diplomacy or a political agreement, the three Bosnian groups resorted to what Karl von
Clausewitz called "politics by other means", war. The actions and policies of the US State
Department, public relations firms hired by the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Albanians and
financed by radical and militant Islamic states, and the US media were the direct cause of the
civil war which followed and which continued from 1992 to 1995 greatly contributed to
sustaining and exacerbating that war. The key actions and policies of these three key actors
will be examined and analyzed in turn.
The Role of US Public Relations Firms
Propaganda has only one object, to conquer the masses
You can make a man believe anything if you tell it to him in the right way.
---Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda
Even before the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia erupted in 1991, the Bosnian Muslims,
Croats, and Kosovo Albanians had hired prominent American public relations firms and key
US member of Congress and the Senate, such as Joe Biden, Robert Dole, and George
Mitchell., to lobby for and to advocate their political agendas and national programs. These
public relations firms, primarily Ruder Finn and Hill & Knowlton, Inc., of Washington, D.C.,
were highly successful and effective. Of course, they were successful and effective because
the US government wanted them to be. In short, there was a symbiotic relationship between
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the US government and the public relations firms, just as there is a symbiotic relationship
between the US government and CNN and the other news networks. It is difficult to
determine where one ends and the other begins.
The precedence for a public relations war or infowar in the former Yugoslavia was
established with the Persian Gulf War, although the same or similar paradigm was followed
earlier in the Panama and Grenada "wars" during the 1980s. In the Gulf War, US public
relations firms, particularly Hill & Knowlton, achieved spectacular results, which diplomats
and statesmen from around the globe were quick to pick up. Image was everything. The
following famous example from the 1991 Persian Gulf War exemplified this point.
Hill & Knowlton, the public relations firm hired by the Bosnian Muslims and Croats, had
earlier as clients the Kuwaiti government. Kuwait retained the services of the firm to garner
public support in the US which would induce the US to militarily intervene against Iraq. Hill
& Knowlton thus deserves credit for initiating the "atrocity stories" which became so
common and routine during the Bosnian civil war and the Kosovo conflict, but which in fact
have a much longer history. William Randolph Hearst induced the US to wage war against
Spain by sensationalizing "Cuban atrocities" in his newspapers. During World War I, the
Allies scored massive propaganda victories by reporting on German or "Hun atrocities".
Before invading Poland in September, 1939, Adolf Hitler harangued against "Polish
atrocities committed against the German minority" and the unprovoked attack by Poland
against the Gleiwitz radio station by Polish troops. Before the US invasion of Haiti in 1994,
President Bill Clinton distributed "atrocity photos" allegedly committed by the Haitian
regime. The atrocity stories were proven to be effective in arousing public opinion.
Hassan el-Ebraheem, a former education minister in the Kuwaiti government and a member
of the Kuwaiti elite who had studied at Indiana University and understood the "American
way of thinking" hired Hill & Knowlton shortly after he became the president of the Citizens
for a Free Kuwait organization was formed in Washington, DC. The Hill & Knowlton
propaganda campaign cost the Kuwaiti government $10.8 million but it was money well
spent. Lauri J. Fitz-Pegado, a former member of the US Information Agency, organized the
propaganda campaign for Kuwait, handing out tens of thousands of "Free Kuwait" bumper
stickers and T-shirts, and media press kits. She organized a national day of prayer for Kuwait
by US churches, established a "Kuwait Information Day" on 20 US college campuses, and
convinced 13 state governors to declare a national Free Kuwait Day. But to be effective, as
Adolf Hitler and Edward Bernays noted, the propaganda theme must appeal to the emotional
drives of the masses. El-Ebraheem noted that the "popular psychology" of the US mentality
was based on "standing for the underdog and trying to stand for justice"., unless that
underdog happened to be Palestinians or Kurds or Basques or Corsicans, that is, unless the
US government found that "underdog" was hostile to American interests. The first axiom of
all propaganda is: Atrocities and massacres are an essential element of all propaganda meant
to lead to war or intervention. The difficulty was that there were no atrocities that could be
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presented. Hill & Knowlton then manufactured or fabricated an atrocity, the now famous
Iraqi incubator hoax.
The master stroke of Hill & Knowlton preceding the Persian Gulf War was their presentation
of the incubator atrocity. The PR firm presented an anonymous 15 year old Kuwaiti girl
before the US Human Rights Caucus chaired by California Democratic congressman Tom
Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter. In tearful testimony, she related forcefully and
extensively how she "saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital" and "took the babies out
of the incubators and left the babies on the cold floor to die." She thus testified that she
had personally witnessed the deaths of 15 Kuwaiti children when the Iraqi "aggressors"
seized the hospital. President George Bush cited this "atrocity" eight times in his television
conferences to justify war and US public opinion was swayed against Iraq. Later, it was
revealed that the girl was in fact, Nayirah al-Sabah, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador
to the US, Saud al-Sabah. She resided in Washington, DC, and did not personally witness
any of the events. She had purposefully and consciously lied to a US Caucus. But as John R.
MacArthur has pointed out in Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War,
lying under oath before a US congressional committee is illegal and a crime. Lying before a
Human Rights Caucus, however, is technically not illegal and is therefore not a crime. Tom
Lantos, a Hungarian Jew immigrant to the US who still speaks with a Hungarian accent,
admitted that he knew of Nayirah al-Sabahs true identity but withheld it from the media.
Lantos was the mastermind behind the incubator hoax. Lantos would figure prominently in
the later anti-Serbian propaganda during the breakup of Yugoslavia and during the Bosnian
civil war. These activities by Lantos point out the contradictions in his background. Lantos
fled the Holocaust in Hungary to escape to the US where he would engage in activities
against Orthodox Serbs that were identical to the Nazi activities against European Jews. The
atrocity which Lantos staged was pure sham. But it worked. But how did the incubator hoax
originate? What was its genesis?
The first reference to the incubator story was in the British newspaper, the London Daily
Telegraph on September 5, 1990. Yahya al-Sumait, an exiled Kuwaiti minister of housing,
reported to the paper that "babies in the premature unit of one hospital had been removed
from their incubators so that these, too, could be carried off." On September 7, the Los
Angeles Times ran a Reuters story in which a San Francisco resident named "Cindy" along
with her companion "Rudi" witnessed "atrocities" committed by Iraqi troops while Cindy
and Rudi in a group of 171 Americans were evacuated from Kuwait: "Iraqis are taking
hospital equipment, babies out of incubators. Life-support systems are turned off The
Iraqis are beating Kuwaitis cutting their ears off if they are caught resisting." As John
MacArthur noted, one of the primary axioms in journalism is to give full, complete names of
sources. In this instance, only the name "Cindy" was adequate as a source to give hearsay
testimony. This should tip one off immediately that this "atrocity" story is a plant and that it
is being used in a propaganda or PR campaign. But in US journalism, once a planted story
supports the government policy or agenda, regardless of whether it is true or false, there is
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constant repetition in a standardized way, "it gets repeated over and over again." This is an
example of planting. Hill & Knowlton planted the incubator story and then the US media did
the rest. This propaganda technique is useful because it doesnt cost Hill & Knowlton a
penny once the media picks it up. Is the US an open and free society? Who are these hidden
persuaders? Is the incubator atrocity hoax an example of freedom of speech or of the press in
America?
These same public relations firms, which were so successful in the Persian Gulf War,
brought their campaigns of disinformation and propaganda to the civil wars in Bosnia,
Krajina, and Kosovo. Wars come and go but the propaganda techniques remain constant. The
US PR firm Ruder Finn Global Affairs in Washington, DC, admitted it was retained by the
Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Kosovo Albanians to wage a public relations war against the
Serbs during the conflicts in Yugoslavia. According to a Washington newsletter that lists the
activities of US PR firms, in 1993, Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Kosovo Albanian
separatists paid Ruder Finn a combined fee of over $320,000 for only six months of work.
The policies and techniques of Ruder Finn are as follows: Frequency is not crucial in
information dissemination, but timing and strategic targeting are. The right persons must be
reached at the right time. The first assertion is what actually causes results. Moreover, all
denials are entirely ineffective. Propaganda operates at the subconscious level and at the
sensory perception level. Once we see something we cannot unsee it. This is why images are
so important. Ruder Finn public relations personnel understand the techniques of propaganda
perfectly.
James Harff, who was the director of the Balkan public relations campaign for Ruder Finn,
explained his methods in an interview he gave to Jacques Merlino of French TV2, which
appeared in Merlinos seminal analysis of the propaganda campaign in the Bosnian conflict,
Les verites Yougoslaves ne sont pas toutes bonnes a dire (1993):
It is very simple. A card-index, computer and fax machine. Voila! The basic work related
tools of ours. It is not frequency that counts but the capacity to intervene at the right moment
and to reach the right persons. It is the first assertion that really counts. All denials are
entirely ineffective.
Between June and September, 1992, Ruder Finn organized the following PR activities on
behalf of the Bosnian Muslims: 30 press group meetings were organized, 13 exclusive items
of information were disseminated, 37 last-minute faxes, and 17 official letters and 8 official
reports were passed. Rudder Finn organized several meetings between the Bosnian Muslim
representatives and then Vice-Presidential candidate Al Gore and with Secretary of State
Lawrence Eagleburger, an active sponsor of the Croat and Bosnian Muslim agendas, and
with 10 influential senators, such as Robert Dole and George Mitchell. The staff made 48
telephone calls to members of the White House staff, 20 calls to senators and almost 100
calls to journalists, news anchors, and other influential media representatives. Harff
8

explained that "our craft consists of disseminating information, to circulate it as fast as

possible so that those favoring our cause are the first to be expressed." He insisted that his
job was not to "verify" information but to only engage in the "circulation of information
favorable to us." This could serve as a concise definition of propaganda. Is propaganda
appropriate in a democracy and a free and open society? Since the time of Hearst and
Edward Bernays, the role of propaganda in American society has been examined and
essentially accepted as appropriate. The American understanding of propaganda in US
society is problematic, self-delusional, hypocritical, and complex. Propaganda, however, has
been, under different names, accepted as necessary in even a democratic society. P.T.
Barnum admonished that "there is a sucker born every minute". In a capitalist, consumeroriented society such as the US, commercial propaganda is essential and fundamental.
Propaganda is thus accepted, especially if the ends justify the means. That is, it benefits the
government and thereby the national interest. As early as 1951, Marshall McLuhan, in The
Mechanical Bride: The Folklore of Industrial Man, noted:
Ours is the first age in which many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have
made it a full-time business to get inside the collective public mind. To get inside in order to
manipulate, exploit, control is the object now. And to generate heat not light is the intention.
To keep everybody in the helpless state engendered by prolonged mental rutting is the effect
of many ads and much entertainment alike.
The goal of commercial propaganda, advertising, marketing, promotion, is to create a
"condition of helplessness" in order to sell products and goods. Political propaganda sells the
programs or policies of the government. McLuhan saw that modern war had become
infowar, or information war, as earlier William Randolph Hearst had shown. In The Medium
is the Massage(1967), McLuhan noted that "the latest technologies have rendered war
meaningless. Real, total war has become information war." So Hill & Knowlton and Ruder
Finn are not an anomaly or some sort of incongruity in US society but part of the overall
environment of US society. They make up our medium, our environment. The environment,
the medium, "as a processor of information is propaganda." So newspapers, television
reporters, public relations firms, are the messengers only. It is futile to attack them. McLuhan
gives the analogy of a hot dog vendor at a ballpark. It is futile to attack him about the losing
record of the home team. Likewise, it is futile to attack the media and public relations firms
for what the government is doing. But the government is made up of persons we as citizens
have chosen to speak for us and represent us, speaking and acting on our behalf. Propaganda
reveals more about the propagandist than it does about the target. Propaganda reveals the
"popular psychology" of the propagandist and to what Hitler called the "emotional ideas of
the masses" and what Bernays called "the fundamental motivations of the interested
publics." What were the emotional ideas of the masses and fundamental motivations of the
interested publics which Ruder Finn relied upon in its propaganda war against the Orthodox
Serbs?

Ruder Finn considered its greatest propaganda success in the Bosnian civil war was to have
succeeded in moving the Jewish opinion on the side of the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and
Kosovo Albanian separatists. The Jewish-American population of the US is approximately
1% of the total. Why is the Jewish-American audience or demographic the key "interested
public"? Ruder Finn understood that getting Jews to support the Bosnian Muslims, Croats,
and Albanians would be a difficult, delicate, and arduous task because all three of its clients
had Nazi-fascist pasts and had participated in the genocide and extermination of over 60,000
Yugoslav Jews during World War II, a time when Serbs protected and rescued Jews.
Moreover, Iranian-backed and supported Muslim Bosnia was no friend of Israel or of
Zionism. Franjo Tudjmans neo-fascist and neo-Ustasha Croatia was likewise no friend of
the Jews, nor of Israel, nor of global Zionism. Kosovo Albanians likewise had interests
which were inimical to the state of Israel, Zionism, and Jewish interests globally. Moreover,
Ossama bin Ladens mujahedeen forces were a part of the Bosnian Army and fought during
the civil war against Orthodox Serbs. Ossama bin Laden is hardly a friend of Israel or Jewish
Zionist goals. During World War II, the Bosnian Muslims had formed two Nazi SS
Divisions, the 13th Waffen SS Gebirgs Division der SS Handzar/Handschar and the
23rd Waffen SS Division Kama. Bosnian Muslims had destroyed the Jewish Sephardic
synagogue in Sarajevo in 1941 and had shown that they supported the Final Solution of the
Jewish Problem endorsed by their mentor and ally, Heinrich Himmler. Himmler also was
active with Kosovo Albanians, supporting the creation of a Greater Albania, he sought to
create two Kosovar Albanian Nazi SS Divisions. Himmler created one, the 21 stWaffen
Gebirgs Division der SS Skanderbeg made up mostly of Kosovo Albanians who rounded up
the Jews of Kosovo for the Nazis, who later killed these Kosovo Jews in the Nazi
concentration camps. At the Croat concentration camp of Jasenovac, approximately 60,000
Yugoslav Jews were exterminated by the Croatian Ustashi, a fanatical Roman Catholic
nationalist organization. Following World War II, many of the Bosnian Muslim troops in the
Handzar SS Division fled to the Arab-Muslim world to escape prosecution for war crimes.
Instead, these former members of the Handzar Division became Bosnian Muslim volunteers
in the Arab armies which fought against the Jews in then Palestine who sought to create the
state of Israel. Why should Jews support these clients? Moreover, while the Vatican was the
first to recognize the independence of Croatia in 1991 followed by Germany, Israel refused
to recognize Croatia because the Croats had murdered 60,000 Yugoslav Jews during World
War II and because the then President of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, was regarded by Israeli
diplomats as being anti-Semitic. Tudjman accused the Israeli government of conducting a
genocide against Palestinian Muslims and of being Judeo-Nazis in his book The Wasteland
of Historical Reality (1989), a book oddly not translated into English and ignored in the
West. Why? In his book, Tudjman stated that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust,
that 900,000 Jews actually died during the Holocaust. Moreover, he argued that the Jews had
committed the first genocide in history when they massacred the original inhabitants to form
what is now Israel. Tudjman also publicly thanked God that his wife was neither a Serb nor a
Jew. Alija Izebetgovic had published The Islamic Declaration in 1970 which outlined his

10

Muslim nationalist goals for Bosnia. Izetbegovic argued for a Muslim Bosnia for Muslims
and that Christians and other minorities should be marginalized. He left no doubt that Bosnia
was to be a Muslim state and that Christians had no place in it. This book too remained
untranslated and was ignored by the intellectual and scholarly elites in the US. Remarkably,
even Nobel Laureate Ivo Andric, who was a Bosnian and in fact was the most famous
Bosnian, was ignored and his works relegated to the junk heap. Even a Nobel Prize winner
was not good enough for the intellectual elites, who instead were promoting and espousing
such books as Roy Gutmans Eyewitness to Genocide, Zlatas Diary about the Bosnian
Muslim Ann Frank, using the memory of Ann Frank for Muslim propaganda purposes, Noel
Malcolms Bosnia: A Short History. In short, the intellectual elites were rewriting the history
of the Balkans, or indeed, writing their own history.
So Ruder Finn knew that the pasts of Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo were marked by a "real
and cruel anti-Semitism" by their clients, the Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians. The
Orthodox Serbs had been the only ones who have protected and rescued Jews. Harff
discussed the problem as follows:
The game was extremely delicate Because President Tudjman was too imprudent in his
book A reading of his texts could find him guilty of anti-Semitism President
Izetbegovic grounded himself too firmly in the quest for a Muslim fundamentalist state in
Bosnia. Moreover, the past of Croatia and Bosnia was marked by a very real and cruel antiSemitism Several tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps.
There was thus considerable hostility and antipathy towards the Bosnian Muslims,
Albanians, and Croats in Jewish intellectual circles and organizations. The anti-Jewish and
anti-Semitic history and policies of its clients, the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Kosovar
Albanians, was known to the Ruder Finn firm. The president of Ruder Finn, David Finn, is
Jewish and has stated that through its PR activities, "I am helping to bring about historical
truth." It is difficult to comprehend how a PR firm through propaganda paid for and bought
by clients can "bring about historical truth". Using the Holocaust to manufacture bigotry and
racism and hatred against an entire people, the Orthodox Serbs, can hardly be regarded as
ethical or morally justified. Ruder Finn was nothing but a "hate group" manipulating the
Holocaust to foment hatred and bigotry against an entire people. Propaganda is meant to
dehumanize a target group so that they can be killed. Propaganda is ultimately meant to lead
to the killing or murder of those the propaganda targets. And, indeed, Rudder Finn
propaganda was used by the US government and media to ethnically cleanse a quarter of a
million Krajina Serbs in 1995 and was used to justify the bombing of the Bosnian Serb
forces. In 1999, propaganda was used to justify the "strategic bombing" of Belgrade, Novi
Sad, Pristina, Nis, Cacak, and other targets in Serbia, killing Serbian civilians and military
personnel alike. Is such an unethical and immoral use and misuse of the Holocaust to justify
the manufacture of racism and bigotry against an entire ethnic group appropriate in an open
and free society, a democracy?
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Ruder Finn achieved its brilliant propaganda master stroke with the so-called Bosnia
concentration camp stories which were featured from August 2 to 5, 1992 in New York
Newsday. Once these "concentration camp" stories broke, Ruder Finn staff immediately
convened three major Jewish organizations: the American-Jewish Congress, the AmericanJewish Committee, and the Anti-Defamation League (which is concerned with the
defamation of only Jews and not others). The firm further suggested that these Jewish groups
print an insert in the New York times and that they organize a protest in front of the United
Nations building. Harff described the spectacular propaganda effects as follows:
The engagement of Jewish organizations on the side of the Muslims was a super poker play.
We were able to associate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public opinion. No one could
understand what was going on in the former Yugoslavia. The vast majority of Americans
wondered in which African country to locate Bosnia itself. In a single shot we were able to
offer a simple story, a history of the good and the bad guys We have won targeting the
Jewish audience, the right target. The emotional charge was so powerful that no one could go
against it We really batted a thousand in full!
Propaganda reveals more about the propagandist than it does about the target. Harff
analogizes the fomenting of racial hatred against an entire people and religion to a poker
game and to a batting average in baseball. He nonchalantly reveals how he exploited and
manipulated the Jewish Holocaust for paying clients to stir up hatred and racist bigotry
against an entire people so that the US government would be able to kill and murder that
people so castigated by the Ruder Finn propaganda machine. Fomenting racist hysteria for
the object of killing and inducing military intervention is analogized to a card game and a
baseball game, it is merely a game. But not even Babe Ruth "batted a thousand in full!" Can
these results be legitimate?
The association of the Bosnian Serbs with the Nazis in public opinion thus resulted in a
tremendous propaganda success for Ruder Finn. Harff explained that "it was not long before
there was a clear change in the press language as emotional terms like ethnic cleansing and
concentration camps arrived, all evoking Nazi Germany, the gas chambers at Auschwitz."
The firm understood that the majority of Americans lacked any meaningful understanding of
the conflict in Bosnia. The creation of a bad guys and good guys scenario was crucial in their
success. Targeting the Jewish audience created a powerful emotional surge which could not
be resisted or challenged without accusations of anti-Semitism, revisionism, and insensitivity
to the Holocaust. Moreover, while Jews make up approximately 1% of the US population,
they are represented disproportionately at the US State Department, at the White House, and
in the President Bill Clinton Administration. Jews are also disproportionately represented in
the mass media, the movie industry, and newspapers and magazines. The Israel lobby and the
Zionist objectives of many Jewish-American organizations based in New York are powerful
in the intellectual life of the US. All James Harff and David Finn had to do was to spin
doctor the events in the former Yugoslavia as inimical to Jewish interests, as inimical to the
12

powerful Israel lobby, and adverse to global Zionist interests and objectives, and showing
irreverence towards the Holocaust. The propaganda terminology of the Bosnian civil war
was almost exclusively derived from World War II and Holocaust terms: "genocide", "ethnic
cleansing", "concentration camps", "refugees", "railroad wagon cars", "atrocities",
"massacres", "mass graves", "war crimes", "war crimes tribunal", Radovan Karadzic and
Slobodan Milosevic equated with Adolf Hitler. A fundamental tenet off all propaganda is the
moral superiority of the propagandist.
Like the Kuwaiti incubator hoax of the Persian Gulf War, the Bosnian concentration camp
stories were later exposed to be untrue and spurious. The British news network ITN had
actually filmed from inside the barbed wire which enclosed not Bosnian Muslim inmates but
a tool shed. This was "The Picture that Fooled the World" but like the earlier Protocols of the
Learned Elders of Zion, it had served its propaganda purpose. For propaganda has a short
life-span. Once the purpose of the propaganda is achieved, then the propaganda material is
relegated to the junk heap. Who can remember the last time the US media covered Sarajevo
or Bosnia. At one time, Bosnia is the top news story in the world. Once the propaganda had
achieved its objectives, Bosnia disappeared from news coverage entirely as if it had never
existed. In fact, it was later disclosed that all three sides, the Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian
Muslims, and Bosnian Croats, had all set up detention camps and centers, which were all
later disbanded. The concentration camp story was thus pure sham. The deception was,
nevertheless, greatly successful. The public relations firms hired by the Bosnian Muslims
and Croats and Kosovo Albanians were thus crucial in molding public opinion against the
Serbian people through a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign.
The Role of the US State Department
The US State Department sought to dismember Yugoslavia along the same lines as the
dismemberment of the Soviet Union. The State Department was the overseer of the
dismemberment and the dismantling of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia was anticipated as
the next victim. The US State Department became an active and vociferous sponsor of "new
states" and nations and of secession movements in countries which were perceived as hostile
to American geopolitical interests. The new and independent state of Palestine, however, was
not supported or sponsored, nor was a Kurdish state out of NATO member Turkey, nor a
Corsican state out of NATO member France, nor a Basque state out of NATO member Spain.
The Soviet Union were perceived as "evil empires" or "artificial states" or "impossible
countries", "lands of demons" which had to be dismantled and its constituent parts given
"freedom" and "democracy" and "independence". The US State Department thus obviously
was sponsoring secession movements selectively and with regard to whether such secession
would be in the interests of the US. Moreover, the new Balkan states, such as Bosnian and
Herzegovina, were erroneously equated with the "captive" Baltic states. As a sponsor of
"new states", the US would thereby gain in global geopolitical power and influence and
stature. New markets and new spheres of influence would be opened up in a region hitherto
13

denied to US neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism. By dividing and conquering potentially

powerful unified potential enemies, such policies would greatly contribute to advancing
American political, military, and commercial interests in the Balkans. The Balkans were ripe
for picking. The benefits of such a policy were evident with regard to the breakup of the
Soviet Union, the principal antagonist and competitor to the United States. Such a policy was
at first not considered beneficial with regard to Yugoslavia, where vital American national
interests were not at stake. Thus, at first, the US State Department policy under President
George Bush Administration was to maintain the Yugoslav federation. Intense diplomatic
pressure from the resurgent, post-Maastricht Germany, which was sponsoring the break-up
of Yugoslavia, however, led to the recognition of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The Vatican was the first country to recognize Croatia, followed by Germany,
and then, under intense German pressure, the rest of the Western European states followed.
The German fait accompli forced the US to follow suit and to recognize these seceding
republics and to embark on a disastrous course in Bosnia.
Once the dismemberment of the 72 year old state of Yugoslavia was an accomplished fact
due to the intense diplomatic efforts of Germany, US policy makers embarked upon a policy
to recruit the secessionist "new states" of the former Yugoslavia as client states. The US
sought to recognize and sponsor new states which would be dependent upon the US and
which would act as bulwarks against the dominant regional power in the region whose
interests were adverse to those of the US, a neo-colonialist and neo-imperialist "balance of
power" theory. With regard to the former Soviet Union, the major power or successor state to
be contained and neutralized was Russia; with the former Yugoslavia, the power was Serbia.
US policy makers had a complex and delicate problem with the containment of Russia,
which US policy makers sought to contain but not to unduly antagonize because Russia was
still a threat to American interests and still remained a threat to American security. Thus,
American policy makers had to walk a fine line with regard to Russia. Full NATO
membership to former Warsaw Pact nations was postponed by the creation of the Partnership
for Peace program, which would temporarily postpone the inevitable and give Boris Yeltsin a
face saving measure at home. Such a delicate and intricate high wire act, however, was
neither necessary nor desired with regard to Serbia. Serbia was not a threat to USA security
and was not vital to American interests. Serbia, indeed, presented the sole obstacle to NATO
expansion in the Balkans. Moreover, Serbia rejected the status of a satellite or puppet state of
the US. Serbia was pursuing an independent course. This did not fit the script for the New
World Order. Initially, Serbia was seen as another Iraq, in other words, Serbia was
expendable as serving no useful purpose to US interests and in fact having interests inimical
to those of the US. The US State Department perceived the "new states" of Bosnia and
Croatia as ideal for sponsorship, they would be pliant "Balkan banana republics" and
"fledgling democracies".
Bosnia met all the State Department criteria for US sponsorship: 1) the Bosnian Muslim
dominated and Muslim-controlled government for be dependent upon the US for defense,
14

development, and viability; 2) a Bosnian Muslim-dominated Bosnia would act as a bulward

against the independent Serbian state, a balance of power would emerge; and, 3) American
geopolitical interests would be advanced because political, military, and commercial
influence and markets would be gained in the Balkan region, which was formerly outside the
American sphere of influence, and a potential enemy would be neutralized. Opening markets
suitable for exploitation by US commercial interests had always guided US neo-imperialism,
"globalism". The US Ambassador to former Yugoslavia, the self-styled "last ambassador",
Warren Zimmermann, admitted that American policy in Bosnia was based on the prevention
of the Serbian population of Bosnia from exercising its inherent right to self-determination.
With regard to the Bosnian Serb population, the US policy was anti-democratic and sought
to defeat the popular will of the masses. Zimmermann opposed Bosnian Serb autonomy and
self-rule in Bosnia and instead rushed to recognize Bosnia and thus "internationalizing the
conflict", which meant preventing the Serbian population from deciding its own national fate
and making a mockery of democracy which the US espoused for propaganda purposes. The
propaganda ploy did not fool anyone. The war was on. Zimmermann explained this antiSerbian and anti-democratic policy in the New York Times, August 29, 1993:
Our view was that we might be able to head off a Serbian power grab by internationalizing
the problem. Our hope was the Serbs would hold off if it was clear Bosnia had the
recognition of Western countries. It turned out we were wrong.
Many innocent people would pay with their lives in the former Yugoslavia for that mistake.
Zimmermann would get a book of it, a memoir recounting his disastrous and inane
diplomatic efforts.
The State Department goals were thus to sponsor a weak Bosnian Muslim-ruled and
Muslim-dominated Bosnia (although Muslims were a minority to the Christian---Serbian and
Croatian---majority) dependent upon the US for security, economic development, and
political viability, to contain and neutralize the dominant independent power in the region,
Serbia, create a "balance of power", and thereby to advance American interests with this
increase in influence and control and the opening of new markets ripe for exploitation,
"economic globalism", which the ill-fated Ron Brown mission in 1996 sought to advance. A
further goal was to prevent a bad precedent or example from being set for the new states or
fledgling democracies of the former Soviet Union. By these policies, the US State
Department denied the Serbian population of Bosnia their inherent right to selfdetermination and self-rule and autonomy. Why was not a referendum supported which
would allow the population of Bosnia to democratically decide its own national future? Why
does the US support such a referendum for Kosovo Albanians but not for Bosnian Serbs or
Krajina Serbs? The civil war which followed was then inevitable but due mainly on
disastrous and misguided US policies which made it so.

15

The 1992 Lisbon Agreement between the three ethnic factions in Bosnia was a political
settlement of the crisis which prevented a civil war. Warren Zimmermann has admitted,
however, that he persuaded the Bosnian Muslim political leaders, Alija Izetbegovic and Ejup
Ganic, to renounce the Lisbon Agreement, where the three factions agreed to make Bosnia a
republic divided into three ethnic regions associated in a confederation, much like the Swiss
confederation made up of German, French, and Italian cantons. Swiss-like cantonization was
a viable and realistic compromise solution to the Bosnia conflict and was a model that may
have worked for all of former Yugoslavia. This was the only realistic and practical solution
which would be fair to all the ethnic minorities of the former Yugoslavia who lost any
safeguards once the multi-ethnic Yugoslavia was dismembered into ethnically homogenous
national states. Germany and the US State Department would have nothing to do with any
compromises or safeguards for ethnic minorities such as the Krajina Serbs in Croatia.
Former UN commander in Bosnia, Canadian general Lewis MacKenzie, conceded that the
Bosnia disaster resulted due to "premature recognition" and by the absence of any agreement
safeguarding ethnic minorities. The US State Department policy was to encourage the
Bosnian Muslim leaders to break with the proposed partition plan, to unilaterally and to
unconditionally reject and to renounce the Lisbon Agreement. A high ranking State
Department official, "who asked not to be identified", admitted in the August 29, 1993 New
York Times that the "policy was to encourage Izetbegovic to break with the partition plan."
He stated that "we let it be known we would support his Government in the United Nations if
they got into trouble." Richard Johnson, the Yugoslav desk officer at the State department
stated that James Baker, the Secretary of State, "told the Europeans to stop pushing ethnic
cantonization of Bosnia." He further maintained that "we pressed the Europeans to move
forward on recognition. Recognition soon followed and the civil war in Bosnia erupted and
spread throughout the republic. Henry Kissinger noted that premature recognition "called
into being a civil war, not a country." In Balkan Tragedy, Susan L. Woodward concluded that
"the purpose of recognition was not to end violence but to assert power and leadership
within the Euro-Atlantic alliance so that that the United States could join the allies and
respond to its Croatian lobby." Negotiator David Owen, former US NATO commander
Charles G. Boyd, and George Kenney of the State Department admitted that recognition had
been premature and provocative and had led to the civil war. The evidence shows clearly the
complicity of the US State Department in causing and unleashing the civil war in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic warned that by abandoning the Lisbon
Agreement and giving the Bosnian Muslims the green light to wage a civil war would result
in the needless loss of life and in wanton destruction, a civil war would result in hundreds of
thousand dead and hundreds of towns destroyed'. The US State Department has never
accepted responsibility for its complicity and guilt in causing the Bosnian civil war.

16

The Role of the US Media

At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought it insane;
later, it got on peoples nerves; and in the end, it was believed
The great masses of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
---Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1924
The media, particularly the US media, perpetuated and, indeed, greatly exacerbated the
Bosnian Civil War of 1992-1995. In the Bosnian civil war, as journalist Peter Brock noted in
"Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press" in Foreign Policy, the US media took on a
stridently active advocacy and partisan and combatant role in the conflict, a civil war where
each ethnic group was asserting its own interests. For the US media, the civil war became an
ideological crusade against the Serbian Orthodox population of Bosnia, Krajina, Kosovo,
and Serbia, that is, a propaganda or information war. The US media did not merely report on
the war but in fact contributed deleteriously to its progress by distorting, falsifying,
manipulating, and manufacturing information and facts. Such an information war against a
people and nation was in previous conflicts termed "war propaganda", reporting that was
consciously biased and partisan, reporting organized by governments to induce military
intervention. They key question is: Was this media reporting, the planned, organized,
systematic, and orchestrated information or propaganda war against the Serbian Orthodox
people merely a product of the whims and wishes of lowly journalists, newspaper editors,
news networks, and the news media? That is to say, why this propaganda war merely a
random and arbitrary decision and action of the US media, or was the US government behind
it, or US public relations firms responsible? The media in any country invariably and
ineluctably acts on behalf of the government and society which sent it? Public relations firms
act to promote the interests of the government. The US media infowar against the Orthodox
Serbian population was planned and organized solely by the US government. The media are
only the messengers.
The propaganda war against the Serbian people was begun and organized initially by the
newly united Germany in July, 1991, on behalf of its new clients, Roman Catholic Croatia
and Slovenia. The editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, Johann
Reismuller, attacked the Serbian Orthodox as "Yugo-Serbs", "military Bolsheviks", and that
Orthodox Serbs had "no place in the European Community", Roman Catholic Europe,
"enlightened Roman Christendom" of which Germany and her clients were members.
Joschka Fischer of the German Green Party which was committed to pacifism and was
antiwar, argued that Germany should military intervene against the Serbs to "combat
Auschwitz", that is, that Germany should go to war against the Orthodox Serbian population,
which was equated to Nazi Germany, to prevent the genocide against Croats and Bosnian
Muslims. The German racism and bigotry pre-dated Hitler and was of pre-Nazi origin,
17

deriving from the Austro-German nationalism of World War I when the slogan "Serbien
muss sterben!" (Serbia must die!) guided German policy. Germany violated the Helsinki
Agreement in pushing for the unilateral, unconditional, and un-negotiated "recognition" of
Slovenia and Croatia. The Helsinki Agreement pledged signatories to respect "the territorial
integrity" of member states such as Yugoslavia. But even before German recognition,
another European state recognized Roman Catholic Croatia: the Vatican. The Vatican was the
first state to recognize Croatia, a controversial action in that a religious body had taken a
political step which violated international law and agreements. Why did the Vatican and a
resurgent and nationalist Germany prematurely and unilaterally rush to recognize and
destroy Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic, democratic state, and a member of the United Nations?
The motivations were ideological in nature.
Germany and the Vatican had waged war against Serbia and Yugoslavia throughout the
twentieth century. The Vatican, in fact, sanctioned and authorized the Austro-German war
against Serbia in 1914, ushering in the Great War. Both the Vatican and Germany were
excluded from the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where they sought to reassert their influence
and control. Serbia was an obstacle in their way. Being Orthodox, Serbia was associated with
Russia, which was a major antagonist of Germany and the Vatican. Serbia would play the
role of a surrogate for Russia and be a whipping boy or straw man target for Germany and
the Vatican, who sought to destroy or weaken Russia by destroying Serbia. Germany and the
Vatican could not antagonize Russia which remained a powerful nation, but Serbia could
function as a surrogate to reassert their influence. The German and Vatican policies led to a
disastrous and humiliating military defeat for its client Croatia, where a civil war began
between Croats and Serbs within the Croat Republic. Peace, however, was not a goal. Both
the Vatican and Germany sought war, if necessary, to achieve their objectives in the Balkans.
The US initially pursued a cautious policy in the Balkans and was seeking to negotiate with
Belgrade over the secession of the republics. Secretary of State James Baker at first pursued
such a course. But intense German pressure and lobbying and following the Maastricht
Agreement, the US began pursuing a policy similar to that of the Vatican and Germany with
regard to recognition. The US ambassador to Yugoslavia, the self-styled "last ambassador to
Yugoslavia", Warren Zimmermann, stated this policy as follows: "We are aiming for a
dissolution of Yugoslavia into independent states peacefully." He told Bosnian Muslim
leaders to reject the Lisbon Agreement and to rely upon the US for help. James Baker
admitted that he told Margaret Tutweiler to brief the US press corps and media and to inform
them on what policy line they should take. The propaganda war against Orthodox Serbs had
begun in the US. David Gompert, a former National Security Council member, in "How to
Defeat Serbia" in Foreign Affairs, explained the propaganda campaign would consist of a
"sustained economic and information warfare against Serbia" and noted that "the power of
information technology is growing".

18

The US media essentially repeated the media techniques used against Iraq and Saddam
Hussein during the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Successful US media experiences in the Gulf
War to a large extent explain the media posture and role in Bosnia. In fact, the civil war in
the former Yugoslavia was meticulously and carefully modeled upon the Gulf War scenario,
with the Serbs in the role of the Iraqis, and the Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and
Kosovo Albanians as the Kuwaiti victims. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the
"Butcher of the Balkans," a "thug", a "Hitler", was the counterpart to Saddam Hussein, the
"butcher of Baghdad", also a "thug", and remarkably, also a "Hitler". The Bosnian Muslims
were perceived in US propaganda as akin to or parallel with the Kuwaiti "victims" of
"aggression" by a foreign invading power. Anthony Lewis and the so-called liberal media
called for the bombardment of Belgrade as early as 1992, following the pattern set with the
bombing of Baghdad. No one bothered to point out the important distinction. The analogy
between Bosnia and Kuwait was perfect for the media. In Yugoslavia, there was a civil war
and that unilateral recognition initiated by outside powers was violative of the Helsinki
Accords, that is, that recognition violated international law. Instead, the US media embarked
on rhetoric and propaganda, an infowar.
The US media was not acting randomly, arbitrarily, and of its own initiative. The US
government had planned and organized the information or propaganda war during the
Bosnian civil war. The techniques and modus operandi (MO) goes back at least as far back
as the Spanish-American War of 1898. The US government had sought to annex Cuba at
least since the 1854 Ostend Manifesto, which stated that the US should seize Cuba if Spain
refused to sell it. On July 15, 1895, the rebel Cuban junta, directed and headquartered in
New York City and led by Tomas Estrada Palma, unilaterally proclaimed Cuba an
independent state, which was followed by revolt and civil war. The revolt was led by Jose
Marti, Maximo Gomez, Antonio Maceo, and Calisto Garcia Iniguez. The rebels were armed,
supplied, and trained by the US, as would be the Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovo
Albanians. The US thus had expansionist and imperialist-colonialist goals in supporting
Cuban "independence" which was camouflaged under the smokescreen of yellow journalism
and government and media propaganda. William Randolph Hearst was an early pioneer of
the concept of an infowar. He enunciated the infowar philosophy succinctly in the phrase:
"You furnish the pictures and Ill furnish the war." Hearst amassed a vast media empire that
included ownership of the New York Journal, the Chicago American and Examiner, the
Boston American, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, World Today, Harpers Bazaar, Town
and Country, and Hearst International, over 28 newspapers, 18 magazines, radio stations, and
a movie company. He established a symbiotic relationship with the US government. He
would furnish them their war if they would furnish the troops to fight it. This symbiotic
relationship between the government and media would be characteristic of the Bosnian civil
war, both working hand in hand. Propaganda is not meant as Adolf Hitler noted as
"distraction for blas gentlemen". Propaganda is directed towards achieving a goal, military
intervention, war. Hearst did not originate the American expansionist and imperialist-

19

colonialist policy. He was merely perpetuating the "manifest destiny" doctrine first espoused
by John L. OSullivan in 1845 to justify and rationalize the US annexation of Texas, which
had been part of Mexico. In short, the media was merely the mouthpiece for the government.
The goal of US propaganda or the massive infowar was to create or manufacture an
imperative for military intervention. Such intervention was difficult to engineer because the
Bosnian conflict was a civil war between three ethnic factions. The US propaganda ploy was
to re-characterize the conflict as an aggression or military invasion of Yugoslavia against a
UN recognized independent state, Bosnia. This was merely rhetoric, however. On the ground
and factually, Bosnia had deconstructed into three ethnic factions, Bosnian Serbs, Muslims,
and Croats. And if Yugoslavia had forces in Bosnia and was providing support to the
Bosnian Serbs, Croatia had forces in Bosnia and was supplying the Bosnian Croat forces,
while Iran, Algerian, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and even Ossama bin Laden and his mujahedeen
forces were in Bosnia and supplying the Bosnian Muslims. What we had in Bosnia was a
classic, dictionary definition of a civil war. US policy, however, was to engage in info war
and to take sides against one of the combatants, the Bosnian Serbs, which was arbitrary,
partisan, biased, and not even-handed and fair. To rationalize this military intervention
against one side, a propaganda war was needed.
In all propaganda meant to lead to war, massacres and atrocities are necessary to create an
imperative for war. In Bosnia, there were the Sarajevo Breadline Massacre, the Markale
Market Massacre I, the Markale Market Massacre II, and the Srebrenica Massacre, described
by US journalists as the largest massacre in Europe since World War II. None of these socalled massacres were ever proven or shown to have been perpetrated by the Bosnian Serbs.
In fact, UN investigators and peacekeepers concluded that they were deliberately staged by
the Bosnian Muslim government to create sympathy and to create in the words of UN
commander in Bosnia Michael Roses words, "images of war". General Rose, General Lewis
MacKenzie, David Owen, Canadian peacekeepers all recounted how they had personally
witnessed incidents where the Bosnian Muslim forces had shelled their own citizens and had
fired near hospitals to create "atrocities" for the cameras, for the US propaganda machine.
Massacres and atrocities, however, were not enough or sufficient. Genocide and ethnic
cleansing became the defining propaganda terms for the Bosnian civil war.
The US government and media propaganda strategy was to categorize Bosnia as a conflict
where the Bosnian Serbs were committing genocide against Bosnian Muslims through ethnic
cleansing, mass rapes, rape camps, massacres, and death camps. Journalist Roy Gutman of
the sensationalistic newspaper New York Newsday and John Burns of the New York Times
won the Pulitzer Prize for their "ethnic cleansing" news articles. John Burns received his
Pulitzer for his interviews with Borislav Herak, who with Srecko Damjanovic, were
condemned to death for the ethnic cleansing murders of Kasim and Asim Bleckic, two
Bosnian Muslims. In the March 1, 1997 New York Times article "Jailed Serbs Victims
Found Alive, Embarrassing Bosnia" both alleged victims were found alive, Kasim Blekic
20

was shown raising sheep in a Sarajevo suburb. Instead, Blekic had been an ambulance driver
for the Bosnian Muslim Army during the civil war. The ethnic cleansing stories of Burns
were shown to be false and manufactured. But Burns was not stripped of his Pulitzer Prize.
The ethnic cleansing dispatches of Roy Gutman were likewise based on innuendo, hearsay,
and the information office of the Bosnian Muslim political leadership. None of his
allegations were substantiated. He too did not have to return his Pulitzer Prize. This infowar
led to the most sensationalistic denouement to the US propaganda war, the so-called
concentration camp stories.
The propaganda strategy of accusing the Bosnian Serbs of genocide and comparing their
actions to those of the Nazis and to the events of the Holocaust necessitated the need for US
propagandists to trot out all the Worlds War II era Holocaust analogies. For the Holocaust
comparison to work, there had to be trains transporting the victims, mass graves, war
criminals, war crimes, massacres, atrocities, cattle cars, attack on a religion and religious
symbols, an international war crimes court or tribunal, a plan of genocide, and finally, death
or concentration camps. Roy Gutman had written a story in which he called the Omarska
camp in northern Bosnia a "death camp". Penny Marshall and the British news network ITN
were sent by their editors to specifically find Serbian-run concentration camps. Roy Gutman
and John Burns had created a media feeding frenzy to find evidence of concentration camps
in Bosnia. Penny Marshall filmed refugees at the detention camps of Omarska and Trnopolje
in northern Bosnia. The refugees were at the detention center for their own safety and to
obtain food and shelter as war refugees. But informed Marshall that they were free to move
about and could leave anytime they chose to. What Penny Marshall and her team did,
however, was to film behind a barbed wire fence that enclosed the news reporters and not the
refugees. Moreover, the refugees were not mistreated and were not starved. But the
ITN/Marshall team purposely chose a refugee that apparently suffered from a child-hood
disease that left his bones deformed and gave him an emaciated appearance. His condition,
however, was not caused by his ill-treatment at the detention camp. But through deceptive
camera angles and judicious selection and staging, Penny Marshall was able to create what
the Daily Mail called "The Proof" and the Daily Star called "Belsen 1992: War Camp Hell
Stuns the World", the Daily Mirror called it "Belsen 92: The Picture that Shames the World",
proof of concentration camps in Bosnia. These images were crucial in creating. In the article
"The Picture that Fooled the World", which appeared in Living Marxism, German journalist
Thomas Deichmann was able to show how the barbed wire fence was actually enclosing a
tool shed and not the refugees. The Penny Marshall team had chosen the shed because the
barbed wire fence would deceptively and misleadingly create the impression that the
refugees were imprisoned and made it easier for US and British propaganda to liken the
camp to a German concentration camp. A Bosnian Serb news crew also accompanied the
ITN team and filmed the encounter. This footage further confirms and substantiates
Deichmanns exposures. In addition, Dragan Opacic, who testified on behalf of the Bosnian
Muslim regime confessed that he had lied on the witness stand before the UN war crimes

21

tribunal and that his testimony was manufactured by the Bosnian Muslim regime. The entire
genocide and ethnic cleansing propaganda campaign had been shown to be a sham. But it
had worked. Military intervention was ensured against the Bosnian Serbs.
US media deceptions, manipulations, and distortions were rampant. An infamous example is
the "Sarajevo breadline massacre" in 1992 which UN investigators and reports concluded
was perpetrated and staged by the Bosnian Muslim regime and was a horrendous atrocity
committed against their own people in order to gain world sympathy and to induce the US to
militarily intervene against the Bosnian Serbs. Investigators noticed that the area was
cordoned off and that news crews were positioned to film near the site. The propaganda ploy
worked. After this staged and manufactured Bosnian Muslim incident, the US induced the
UN to impose sanctions on Yugoslavia.
Television, magazines, newspapers, all aspects of US media, were engaged in war
propaganda, following the Gulf War pattern. The infowar was systematized, centrally
organized and planned from the State Department and other US government branches, with
news accounts that were being consciously manipulated to present a uniform and unvarying
image of the Bosnian conflict. US Army psychological operations specialists, psyops,
military propagandists, were working with CNN, the largest US news network, and with
other US media outlets. The US government planted news stories and information in US
newspapers and television networks, the technique of planting. In every news account from
the former Yugoslavia, one could detect US government propaganda imbeds, or imbedding.
Every news account from the Balkans would include a superfluous and always repeated
sentence or paragraph, the subliminal imbed of the US government. Why were there
subliminal imbeds in every US newspaper? Were we living in George Orwells 1984 or
Joseph Stalins USSR or Adolf Hitlers Germany or the Senator Joseph McCarthy
"Communist witch hunt" era of the 1950s or was it Bill Clintons United States, the "leader
of the free world"? It was difficult to tell. There was little if any independent thought or a
diversity of opinion and debate or discussion. Only a single viewpoint was presented.
Contrary viewpoints were rejected. US editorial staffs of newspapers, magazines, and other
publications silenced any dissent. The US media never reported on atrocities, massacres, or
ethnic cleansing committed against Bosnian Serbs or Krajina Serbs. Serbian victims were
erroneously listed as Muslims or Croats killed by Serbs. The US media reported on Bosnian
Muslim civilian deaths and casualties, collateral damage, but not on Bosnian Muslim
military deaths or casualties. Serbian deaths or casualties were rarely reported, and when
they were, the deaths were spin doctored to appear as justified deaths or rationalized as
"revenge killings". When Serbs were attacked and killed, the media reported on "violence" in
Bosnia, a US State Department infowar code word. Thus, when Croatian, Bosnian Muslim,
Kosovo Albanians kill Serbs, or Turkish Army troops kill Kurdish separatists, or Israeli
Army troops kill unarmed Palestinians, it is referred to as "violence", the infowar code word.
When Bosnian Serbs killed ethnic Albanian terrorists and separatists in the Serbian province
of Kosovo and Metohija it is termed "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide". The US State
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Department coined the oxymoron "Croatian Serbs" and "Israeli Arabs", showing a similar
pattern applied to both conflicts. The US media techniques of infowar have not changed
drastically since the time of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, during the age of
yellow journalism.
The unprecedented US media barrage of disinformation and war propaganda only fueled the
Bosnian civil war leading to still more death and destruction. The innocent victims of this
US media infowar were the populations of the former Yugoslavia.

IV. A New Form of Aggression: Unilateral Diplomatic

Recognition
With the benefit of hindsight, many analysts conceded that the civil wars in the former
Yugoslavia were precipitated by premature diplomatic recognition. The resurgent Germany
was at the forefront of this new form of aggression which took the form of unilateral,
unconditional diplomatic recognition. Germany, prevented from using its military forces
outside its own borders since World War II by treaties ending that war and by subsequent
legislation, sought a new means of exerting its new-found power and influence, which was
demonstrated at the Maastricht Summit. This power turned out to be illusory. Germany
initially created the crisis that the US resolved. Germany used diplomatic recognition as a
substitute for outright military aggression against the Balkans, particularly Serbia. German
troops had invaded and occupied Belgrade in 1915 and again in 1941 after a massive
bombardment that killed tens of thousands of Serbian civilians. With German diplomatic
support, Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 in violation of the 1878
Treaty of Berlin, in violation of international law. Adolf Hitler invaded and conquered
Yugoslavia in 1941 and then dismembered the country, "recognizing" the newly created
independent states, one of which was the Independent State of Croatia, A Nazi-fascist puppet
state which "de-recognized" the Orthodox Serbs and incorporated Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The leaders of the new Germany, Helmut Kohl and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and later, Klaus
Kinkel, a former German intelligence chief working for Croat, Bosnian Muslim, and Kosovo
Albanian secession during the 1980s, sought to exert their new geopolitical power and
influence in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, a sphere from which
they had hitherto been excluded. One means of German power expansion was to seek to
create a unified Euro-state led, dominated, and controlled by Bonn. German leaders wanted a
unified currency, a European parliament, common markets, and a common army. This
unified, monolithic Euro-state would be dominated by Germany. Thus, German foreign
policy sought unification, conglomeration, and centralization where such would advance
German interests. A second means of power expansion was to dismember, re-recognize, and
Balkanize states and destroy the status quo where doing so would serve German interests by
allowing German penetration and infiltration of markets and military and political influence.
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A policy of "Balkanization": was pursued in the Balkans where Germany sought entre. This
policy was achieved by a new form of aggression: diplomatic recognition. Thus, without
firing a single bullet, Germany could achieve all its foreign policy and geopolitical goals and
agendas which it set. Like Hitler before them, however, the German policy led to disaster
and war. In both former Yugoslav republics which Germany had recognized, two brutal civil
wars erupted which unraveled and undid all of Germanys machinations.
Once it was seen that premature recognition was unfair and provocative, US Secretary of
State Warren Christopher and French President Francois Mitterrand accused Germany of
precipitating and causing the civil wars in Yugoslavia through a reckless and dangerous
policy of unconditional, unilateral recognition.
Was diplomatic recognition proper for Croatia and Bosnia in 1991 and 1992 without
negotiations with Belgrade and without safeguards for the Serbian populations and without
agreements ensuring minority rights? The international legal guidelines for recognizing new
states were established in the 1932 Montevideo Convention. Under that Convention, three
criteria must be first met before recognition could and should be granted: 1) there must be a
government which is in control; 2) there must be clearly established borders; and, 3) there
must be a stable population. With regard to both Croatia and Bosnia, these criteria were not
met or satisfied.
Unilateral, unconditional, non-negotiated diplomatic recognition of the seceding republics of
the former Yugoslavia violated the Helsinki Accords. Under the Helsinki Agreement,
signatory states had agreed to respect the "territorial integrity" of member states, of which
Yugoslavia was one. Unilateral and unconditional recognition of Slovenia, Croatia, and
Bosnia-Herzegovina as independent states by the Vatican, Germany, and other states violated
the Helsinki Agreement. Thus, premature recognition violated both the Montevideo
Convention and the Helsinki Agreement. In recognizing the seceding Yugoslav republics,
international agreements and laws were violated.
Approximately 30% of Croatia as constituted in the Communist Yugoslavia was settled by
ethnic Orthodox Serbs who were the majority in those areas and who did not wish to be a
part of the new nationalist Croat state, which was anti-Serbian and anti-minority rights and
which based its independence drive on a racist attack on Serbs. The city of Knin was made
up of a majority Serbian population, before the civil war, the Serbian population of Knin was
88%. The total Serbian population in this region of Croatia, called Krajina, numbered
approximately 1,200,000. The Srem and Slavonija regions were also majority Serbian
regions of Croatia. Even before the secession of Croatia from Yugoslavia, there were
widespread skirmishes and battles in these regions. Instead of negotiations which would
grant the Krajina Serbs autonomy or a legal safeguard to their minority rights which Serbia
had granted to Kosovo Albanians, however, the Croatian government under former
Communist general Franjo Tudjman turned neo-fascist nationalist sought to unsuccessfully
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annex these areas by military force into a German and Vatican sponsored Greater Croatia. To
assist Croatia in these efforts, Germany and the Vatican initiated a propaganda war and
attempted to gain international recognition for the Communist created borders of Croatia,
which were arbitrary and artificial internal borders imposed by Belgrade under the
Communist dictatorship of the Croat-Slovene Josip Broz. After a bloody and brutal six
month civil war, neither Croatian military efforts nor German diplomatic efforts were able to
prevent the secession of Krajina. While Germany supported the secession of Kosovo from
Serbia, it at the same time opposed the secession of Krajina from Croatia. Thus, based on the
guidelines of the Montevideo Convention and the Helsinki Agreement, Croatia should not
have been recognized until it had resolved the issue of Krajina, Srem, and Slavonija.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, more so than Croatia, met none of the criteria of the Montevideo
Convention. Bosnia did not have a government which was in control. Under the Communist
Yugoslav federation, Bosnia had a rotating, collective presidency modeled on the federal
Yugoslav system to ensure that Bosnias three ethnic groups, Serbs, Slavic Muslims, and
Croats, would be represented in the leadership. So even before secession, Bosnia was in fact
a state of three "nations" and was created in 1945 by the Communist dictatorship to protect
the interests of all three groups from domination by the others. Realizing the precarious and
delicate balance in Bosnia, it was resolved by the leaders of the three factions, Radovan
Karadzic, Alija Izetbegovic, and Mate Boban, to meet in Lisbon, Portugal to reach a peaceful
agreement on the future of the republic. From these meetings the Lisbon Agreement emerged
which divided Bosnia into three ethnic zones or cantons, Serbian, Muslim, and Croatia, the
so-called partition plan, all three united in a Bosnian confederation. This effort was a
compromise negotiated solution meant to avoid a civil war.
The US State Department, through US ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmermann,
informed the Bosnian Muslim leaders that they did not have to abide by the Lisbon Plan, that
the negotiations with the Bosnian Serbs and Croats should be rejected, and that a Muslimdominated and Muslim-controlled Bosnia would be supported by the US in the UN and in
the US media. Shortly thereafter the Bosnian Muslims reneged on the Lisbon Agreement and
voted with the Croats to unilaterally secede from Yugoslavia. The Bosnian Serbs boycotted
the referendum on secession and declared it null and void because under the Bosnian
Constitution, all three ethnic groups had to agree for any political changes to occur.
Immediately after these events, the civil war began in Bosnia. Thus, Bosnia never had a
government in control, a prerequisite of the Montevideo Convention for recognition. What
Bosnia did have was three governments.
Bosnia did not have clearly defined or established borders, but only internal boundaries
imposed by Belgrade. Bosnia-Herzegovina was the political creation of the Yugoslav
Communist dictatorship in 1945. Before the founding of Yugoslavia in 1918, Bosnia had no
independent political existence but had been part of imperial and colonial empires, the
Turkish Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since the middle of the fifteenth
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century, Bosnia was part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled from Constantinople (Istanbul).. The
Communist internal boundaries for the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina were modeled on
the Ottoman borders. Between 1878 and 1918 Bosnia was administered and ruled by the
Austro-Hungarian Empire from Vienna. The 1908 annexation of Bosnia by the AustroHungary in violation of the Treaty of Berlin set in motion the events that led to the Great
War, World War I. After 1918, Bosnia was part of Yugoslavia, then known as the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes until 1929, when the name was changed to Yugoslavia. In the
"first Yugoslavia", 1918-1841, Bosnia-Herzegovina had no distinct borders or boundaries
under the banovina system. There was thus considerable dispute as to what the borders for
Bosnia should be.
Most importantly, Bosnia had a very unstable population which was made up of Serbs,
Slavic Muslims, and Croats, but which included Yugoslavs, that is, persons with mixedancestry or those who identified with Yugoslavia, with being part of the larger South Slavic
ethnic identity. By analogy, Germany is made up of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse, and
many other states and regions. Germans identify with, for instance, Bavarian identity and
with the larger identity as Germans, or with Germany. All three groups were Slavic and part
of the South Slavic cultural group and all spoke Serbo-Croatian but were deeply divided by
religion, culture, and history. For over 400 years, the Bosnian Muslims had been the local
rulers of Bosnia, who were subordinate to the Turkish rulers in Istanbul, the capital of the
Ottoman Empire, which was a Muslim state where only Muslims have full political and civil
rights. The Orthodox Christian Serbs, the largest ethic group in Bosnia for most of the
Ottoman period, were second-class citizens. In 1875, the Serbian population of Herzegovina,
one of the poorest and most exploited region by the Muslim rulers, revolted and began the
Bosnian Insurrection or Revolution. Serbia and Montenegro declared war against Turkey. In
1877-78, Russia intervened militarily against Turkey and defeated the Turkish forces in the
Russo-Turkish War. The Serbian population expected freedom and independence from
foreign occupation and rule. But at the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Austria and Germany forced
Russia and the Bosnian Serbs to accede to the administration of Bosnia by the AustroHungarian Empire while in theory the Turkish Sultan retained his role over Bosnia. In 1908,
Austria annexed Bosnia outright. The Austrian government sought to maintain the status quo
in Bosnia and to maintain Bosnia as it existed under the Ottoman Empire, preserving the
privileges of the Bosnian Muslims and supporting the Roman Catholic Bosnian Croats while
maintaining the Serbian population in a backward state, preventing land or agricultural
reform and educational reform. The Bosnian Serbs rejected this oppressive foreign rule and
occupation which did not benefit them and deprived them of their rights. On June 28, 1914,
Vidov Dan (Day of St. Vitus), Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian from Herzegovina and a member of
the Young Bosnia nationalist movement, assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz
Ferdinand in Sarajevo., the act that precipitated World War I. Austria fostered a Bosnian
ethnic identity for all three ethnic groups seeking to stifle national self-determination by the
Serbian and Croatian populations and opposed to the creation of a unified South Slavic state.

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During World War II, Bosnia-Herzegovina was part of the Ustasha Independent State of
Croatia, headed by Ante Pavelic, like Gavrilo Princip, born in Herzegovina, and Dzafer
Kelnovic, a Bosnian Muslim, as vice-president. The leadership of this state was thus made
up of a Bosnian Croat and a Bosnian Muslim. During this period, 1941-1945, hundreds of
thousands of Bosnian Serbs and Krajina Serbs, or "Croatian Serbs", to use the oxymoron
created by US State Department propagandists, were massacred and ethnically cleansed by
Croats and Bosnian Muslims in a planned and systematic genocide. Ethnic cleansing had its
origins during this period, the term being coined by Ustashi leaders. Due to this genocide
and ethnic cleansing, the Bosnian Muslims became the largest group in Bosnia while the
Bosnian Serb population declined. The Communist dictatorship which ruled Yugoslavia
following World War II locked in the Bosnian Muslim and Croat population gains giving
them control over formerly Serbian areas. A separate "nation" status was created for the
Bosnian Muslims. In 1971, the Bosnian Muslims were given a new ethnic classification by
the Yugoslav regime. These actions only exacerbated the Bosnian Muslim nationalist drive to
control and to rule Bosnia, which was begun during the Ustasha period when the Bosnian
Muslims established a Nazi Protectorate with the aid of Heinrich Himmler. The Bosnian
Serbs and Croats were alarmed by such Islamic nationalist goals and sought to keep districts
where they were the majorities under their control. The Bosnian Muslims sought to rule
Serbian and Croatian districts because the Slavic Muslims were the largest ethnic group in
Bosnia in 1992. Such Bosnian Muslim hegemony led to the brutal civil war with all three
groups seeking to control districts where they predominated. The Bosnian Muslims realized
that they could not control Serbian and Croatian districts without foreign intervention and
occupation. The Bosnian Muslim leadership thus sought to induce the United States or
Germany or Islamic/Arab states to militarily intervene to occupy the Serbian and Croatian
districts which the Bosnian Muslims themselves could not achieve. The Bosnian Muslim
strategy was concise and simple: Induce a foreign military power, the US or Germany to
militarily intervene against the Bosnian Serbs.
Bosnia, thus, met none of the criteria for recognition as defined in the 1932 Montevideo
Convention. Unilateral and unconditional premature recognition caused the civil war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Krajina and Croatia. Diplomatic recognition was thereby
transformed from a diplomatic gesture into a new form of aggression.

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V. Conclusion
If you forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time;
you may even fool some of the people all the time;
but you cant fool all of the people all the time.
---Abraham Lincoln
The civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was caused and sustained by three principal actors: 1)
the US State Department; 2) US public relations firms; and, 3)the US media. Premature
unilateral and unconditional recognition led to the civil war. Recognition became a new form
of aggression, becoming more normative in nature. Recognition was based not on objective
criteria but on normative ideals and goals, based not on legal principles but on ideology and
self-interest. Thus, the US and Germany supported recognition of states that did not meet
international legal guidelines for recognition. The reality on the ground in Bosnia was that
three ethnic groups, with mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed national and political
agendas, did not envision a multi-ethnic state ruled by leaders from all three groups. The US
State Department, US public relations firms, and the US media waged an infowar in Bosnia
that failed to change the reality on the ground. The Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995 was the
US version of the 1992 Lisbon Agreement. Tens of thousands of lives were needlessly and
senselessly lost only to reaffirm an agreement initially rejected by the US. Such is the nature
of propaganda. Such is the nature of infowar, a war based on "images", based on what Walter
Lippmann called "pictures in our heads", rather than objective factual reality on the ground.
William Randolph Hearst defined the nature of infowar most succinctly: "You furnish the
pictures and Ill furnish the war."

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