BAGHDAD - As U.S. forces battle a deepening guerrilla insurgency on the ground in Iraq, they are also waging a major media offensive to try to cast the contested occupation in a more positive light.

The media campaign appears an attempt to convince the public back home and a skeptical press that the occupation is winning results despite evidence of an increasingly sophisticated and well-coordinated guerrilla movement.

The media blitz coincides with a sharp rise in attacks by guerrillas against American interests and comes amid signs that both U.S. troops and the American-led civilian administration are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis.

Last week, the military unveiled a new spokesman for U.S. forces in the country, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, a higher-ranking officer with more media experience than those who have until now been the public face of the occupation.

That followed a redesigning of the podium from which news conferences are held, with two large flat-screen monitors now installed to carry slick Powerpoint presentations the military is using to show off operations and tout successes.

A large, deep-blue seal representing the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority now hangs prominently behind the podium, right in front of TV cameras, with the words "Justice, Freedom, Liberty, Security" written around its border.

"There's definitely a feel of the White House about all this," said a veteran correspondent for a Washington newspaper after Kimmitt held his first news conference with the coalition's civilian spokesman last week.

Others have pointed to similarities with the military set-up in Qatar during the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, from where media-savvy Brigadier General Vincent Brooks presented U.S. Central Command's daily take on events on the ground.

SPIN CITY IN BAGHDAD

In part, the media campaign appears an attempt to convince the public back home and a skeptical press that the occupation is winning results despite evidence of an increasingly sophisticated and well-coordinated guerrilla movement.

Kimmitt himself told reporters at a briefing Friday, after brazen rocket attacks on the Oil Ministry and two hotels frequented by Westerners, that the situation in Iraq was becoming a "psychological game between enemy and adversary."

As if to plug more directly into the media in the United States, side-stepping potentially more jaded Baghdad-based correspondents, one news conference last week was beamed by satellite to the press corps at the Pentagon.

Dan Senor, the senior spokesman for the coalition, has on several occasions expressed his frustration that successes achieved in the reconstruction process are not being reported.

"Some 14,000 projects have been completed since the end of major combat, that's around 100 projects every day," he told reporters at a recent briefing. "Yet it hardly gets mentioned."

The frustration also extends to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the man regarded as the chief architect of the war to oust Saddam, who has repeatedly complained that the Arabic media is biased against the Americans.

In a briefing at the Pentagon last week, Rumsfeld said he hoped new satellite TV programming being developed by U.S. authorities in Iraq would help offset what he called the clear hostility of the main Arabic satellite news channels.

"Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, are, you know, just violently anti-coalition, and were pro-Saddam Hussein in the case of Al Jazeera in such an obvious way," he said.

The new programming is expected to be up and running within a month, according to the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, but it is likely to face strong opposition.

Programming already being broadcast by the U.S.-backed Iraqi Media Network was last week described as "debauchery" by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shi'ite group, which gave IMN two weeks to stop showing it.

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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