Thursday, October 21, 2004

"Intelligence officials were convinced that American soldiers would be greeted warmly when they pushed into southern Iraq, so a C.I.A. operative suggested sneaking hundreds of small American flags into the country for grateful Iraqis to wave at their liberators. The agency would capture the spectacle on film and beam it throughout the Arab world. It would be the ultimate information operation...The land forces command printed 100,000 maps of the southern Iraq oilfields, which the Marines were to secure."