War Againsts Iraq: The Media, Its Portrayal of the War and the Effect of Its Perspective

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War against Iraq By Olivier Gaudreau
When the US initiated the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it gave the justification that the Iraqi dictator, Saddam aided the perpetrators of the September 11 attack on United States soil. The Bush administration also accused Saddam of engineering a nuclear program and amassing destructive weapons. All the US justification and the entire war have been highly criticized on many fronts. The media has taken the lead on shaping public opinion on both sides of the war, that is, the US or rather North America and the Middle East. It is a fact that citizens get to understand an issue such as the Iraq war through the perspective of the media (Al-Rawi, 2013). This paper focuses on the media, its portrayal of the war and the effect of its perspective.
North American Media’s Portrayal on the Iraq War
The Bush administration claimed that they intended to protect the American people from the imminent or future attacks by Saddam from the weapons of mass destruction. They further claimed that their goal was to install the much needed democracy in Iraq. What surprises is the fact that these arguments were not questioned as it should in the US media. The Iraqi war was depicted as USA verses Iraq or Bush verses Saddam. The perception assumed that the only players were Bush and Saddam and the goal being to win the war.
Media coverage only displayed the fact that Saddam`s regime was a threat to world peace and that the only solution was to go to war (Miller and Gordon, 2002). It failed to highlight past relations between the US and Iraq such as the 1991 war and its consequences on the Iraqi people over the decades. Coverage only focused on the past relations between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda. The US media could have consid...

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Kumar, D. (2006). Media, War, and Propaganda: Strategies of Information Management During the 2003 Iraq War. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 3(1). Pp. 48-69.
Luckhurst, R. (2012). In War Times: Fictionalizing Iraq. Contemporary Literature, Vol. 53(4). Pp.713-737.
Miller, J. and Gordon, M. R. (2002). Threats and Responses: Baghdad’s Arsenal; White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons. New York Times.
Rosenberg, D. (2013). The Faces of the Iraq War, Ten Years Later. Slate.
Sachs, S, (2003). A Nation at War: Mideast Coverage; Arab Media Portray War as Killing Field. New York Times.
Soroka, S., Loewen, P., Fournier, P. and Rubenson, D, (2013). The Impact of News Photos on Support for Military Action. Canadian Election Study Working Papers Series, Vol. 2. Pp. 25-26.
Szoldra, P. (2014). Tell Me Again, Why Did My Friends Die in Iraq? Slate.

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