LONDON, April 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The war-time media campaign being waged by Britain alongside its ground offensive on Iraq has suffered severe setbacks and eroded the authority of Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, charged a British propaganda expert.

"The British propaganda operation has been a litany of blunders, it's been lamentable," Tim Crook, a media studies lecturer at the University of London, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Tuesday, April 1.

Twelve days into the war, the British authorities "reached what is known as credibility fatigue, in other words there is non-consistency, their distortions and exaggerations are too obvious," Crook stressed.

The manipulation starts from the vocabulary used, like the word "coalition", added the expert.

"Close analysis reveals it's primarily a military alliance of the United Kingdom and the United States. The idea is that they want to pretend that the wider world is supporting" the war, Crook said.

He charged that the propaganda techniques employed by Britain include the use of strong statements based on information from a vague origin such as unnamed intelligence sources.

"When inconsistencies appear, the authorities can then say they had never made a direct claim themselves," noted the expert.

Distortion & Exaggeration

Crook said that the war briefings coming daily from Downing Street and the U.S. Central Command in Qatar are not to-the-point, adding that American and British officials were beating about the bush.

Citing an example, he recalled the Downing Street as saying: "We are not saying definitively that these explosions were caused by Iraqi missiles. But people should approach this (Iraqi claim) with due scepticism," which was made by Downing Street.

For Crook, this style of response lacks credibility and has a "boomerang" effect, reflecting a "decay in trust and authority" of the government.

In another case, he added, Blair said last week at a press conference in Camp David after a war summit with U.S. President George W. Bush, that two dead British soldiers had been "executed" in southern Iraq.

Crook said Blair was guilty of a "dangerous high-risk distortion and exaggeration. He went too far. (It was) a significant mistake."

The expert said claims that there was some sort of popular uprising in the strategic southern Iraqi city of Basra, and that there were Al-Qaeda fighters present in Iraq, have also been met with scepticism.

In another high-profile case of manipulating information, even before the war started, Britain produced a report which insisted that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction. The report was praised at the U.N. Security Council by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.