How the Iraq war was sold to the American public through professional P.R. strategies.
"The First Casualty": Lies that were told related to the Iraq war.
Euphemisms and jargon related to the Iraq war, e.g. "shock and awe," "Operation Iraqi Freedom," "axis of evil," "coalition of the willing," etc.
"War as Opportunity": How the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq have been used as marketing hooks to sell products and policies that have nothing to do with fighting terrorism.
"Brand America": The efforts of Charlotte Beers and other U.S. propaganda campaigns designed to win hearts overseas.
"The Mass Media as Propaganda Vehicle": How news coverage followed Washington's lead and language.
The book includes a glossary — "Propaganda: A User's Guide" — and resources to help Americans sort through the deceptions to see the strings behind Washington's campaign to sell the Iraq war to the public.
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As government officials and observers battle over whether or not the Bush administration exaggerated intelligence reports of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify war, there should be a ready audience for this new book by the authors of Believe Us, We're Experts! Professional debunkers of media manipulation, Rampton and Stauber unmask the impact of "information warriors and perception managers" (as one PR consultant described himself) on Bush's attempt to turn public opinion in favor of war on Iraq. The authors deconstruct the PR campaign to promote the U.S. in the wake of September 11: the State Department's hiring of ad exec Charlotte Beers ("the queen of Madison Avenue") to direct the campaign; how PR execs and lobbyists helped construct the government's anti-Iraq message; the administration's alleged misinformation and distortion of facts and reliance on rumor to influence public opinion. Anyone skeptical of the reasons for the war against Iraq will find their suspicions enhanced here. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"The authors brilliantly expose an interconnected web linking some of the country's largest public relations and advertising firms, the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House." —San Francisco Chronicle
In this extremely well researched book, authors Sheldon Rempton and John Stauber argue that the Bush Regime generated public support for the invasion of Iraq by using a calculated public relations campaign and a series of flagrant lies. The authors base their argument on easily verifiable documents from the media, the PR industry, and a variety of respected government and research organizations. Whether or not you agree with the invasion or Iraq it is important that you understand that the Bush Regime felt the only way it could get support for this policy was to lie. There is simply no question, as this book proves, that the Bush Regime deliberately set out to lie to the American people and to the world about why it wanted to invade and occupy Iraq.
BRANDING AMERICA The first chapter of this book explains how the Bush Regime set out to change public opinion about the America in the Middle East by running a brand campaign. The regime hired a PR specialist essentially to brand America and to promote that brand in the Middle East the same way one might promote Budweiser or KFC. The problem with Brand promotion strategies, however is that they are more about manipulation and forceful persuasion than about understanding and working with your target audience. Is it any wonder that this policy failed so spectacularly?
WAR IS SELL The book's second chapter describes the numerous mechanisms of persuasion the Bush Regime employed to convince you and me that the war on Iraq was necessary. These included timing the drive to war like a product launch, publicizing the invasion-friendly views of right-wing think tanks that were recast as foreign policy experts, promoting the CIA funded Iraqi National Congress as liberators.
... Funny how none of these strategies had anything to do with telling the truth.
TRUE LIES As it's title implies, the book's third chapter provides the nuts and bolts of Rempton's and Stauber's argument. Here the authors demonstrate how the Bush Regime falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein had direct ties to al Quaeda (he and bin Laden are sworn enemies), lied about Iraq's weapons capability, and created the false impression that Iraq is a major sponsor of global terrorism. Oddly enough our principal Middle Eastern ally, Saudi Arabia provides much more sponsorship for global terrorism than Iraq. Fifteen of the nineteen September 11th hijackers were Saudi and none were Iraqi. Let me repeat that for you: none were Iraqi.
THE USES OF FEAR Perhaps the most important part of this book is it's fifth chapter entitled "The Uses of Fear." Here, the authors argue that the mass media, PR industry and advertising-all of which were used by the Bush Regime to promote the war in Iraq-and terrorism all share a common mindset best described as "the propaganda model." This model, according the authors aims to indoctrinate the audience with a pre-defined set of beliefs rather than to engage in the kind of critical thinking and communication that characterize a democracy. Put another way, the process that the Bush Regime used to persuade you and me that invading Iraq was a really cool thing was anti-democratic in nature. Where democracy is based on the premise that the people are capable of rational self-governance, argue Rempton and Stauber, propagandists regard rationality as an obstacle to efficient indoctrination. In other words, the Bush Regime could not permit a reasonable national discussion to take place about the invasion of Iraq. Instead it needed to indoctrinate us with the same false themes again and again and again, until by virtue of consistent reinforcement they became a truth in themselves. The most distressing part of this process, as the authors point out, is not only how the Bush Regime used fear to promote false concepts to the American people but also how they did so to justify withholding information from us.
THE AIR WARS The authors also demonstrate that the Bush Regime-largley through corporate cronies-used the air waves both to promote the war and to censor or punish any pubic opposition to it. Pro war rallies were launched by Clear Channel a radio monopoly owned by a long time Bush business partners and campaign contributor.
After reading this book, I hope that people-regardless of their political beliefs-will ask themselves some hard questions about what they know about their government and more importantly, how they know it. Now, more than ever, it is essential for us to distance ourselves from our personal feelings, and especially our sense of fear, in order to take a good hard look at the facts. We may not have the authors' resources or expertise, but we can read this book and others like it and we can verify its source material most of which is publicly accessible. It may not be a fun or easy process, but when we do this, we begin to take control of our lives and to see things as they are instead of how powerful interests want us to see them. This book and others like it do much more than exposing the mendacity of the Bush Regime's drive for war. It shows us how we can begin to think for ourselves and in the process it frees us from indoctrination.
Do not be deceived by the cover of this book, whose cartoon may suggest that this is light reading or comic level stuff. It is not. This book is a professionally-prepared, well-documented catalog of the "platform of lies" that the incumbent (2000-2004) US Administration has pressed upon the public in the course of executing six wars (two public) and two occupations, both of which are going *very* badly, at great expense.
I have to give very high marks to the authors and their employer, the Center for Media & Democracy, for this book represents a "must read" for every voter.
Among the highlights (please note that all references to the US government actually refer to the political administration, which is abusing the good faith and loyalty of the millions of loyal Armed Services members as well as the civil service):
1) Documentation of US government manipulation of images coming out of Iraq
2) Documentation of how US government emphasis on manipulating the truth for the US public has actually left it unable to listen and hear and understand the truth as spoken by the Iraqi and Afghan people.
3) Documentation of the clear and present need to restore the US Information Agency (USIA) as an independent organization with a considerably expanded budget--in the age of information America is losing the mindwar, the culture war, because it is overspending on a heavy metal military and underspending on information power--what Joe Nye calls "soft power...."
4) Documentation of what the author's call America's "astonishing historical amnesia," assuming they can go into the Middle East without reference to the history of British and US imperialism, including the deposition of the legitimate rulers of Iran and the continuing acceptance of Israeli disrespect for UN resolutions.
5) Documentation of why Charlotte Beers failed America, in two parts:
a) She did not know how to, was incapable of listening to, Arab voices. According to the New York Times, cited by the book, those who spoke to her "came away shaking their heads, saying American officials do not appreciate [their circumstances and views].
b) The product she was selling, the US "brand", is simply too defective, too unilateralist, too arrogant, too brutal, too harmful to multi-cultural and multi-national interests, to survive in the marketplace of the real world. This is "unsafe at any speed" writ very large, very global, very angry.
6) Documentation of the blatant (and expensive) manner in which the US government manipulated the message to the US public (if CIA had done this they would have been in violation of the law--when Hill & Knowlton does it is called "public relations" even though everything is a complete fabrication and a betrayal of the public trust). The authors excel at one point in contrasting how Washington listens to a handful of talking heads on the Middle East, while ignoring "the 1,400 full time faculty members who specialize in Middle East studies at American Universities."
7) Documentation of US government plans, under the abusive grip on power of the neo-conservatives, to carry out future "over-whelming, non-surgical, nonproportional military force" actions against the governments of Iran, Libya, Syria, and Sudan, as recommended by Richard Perle and his colleagues.
8) Documentation, over the course of the book, of both specific lies told to the US public and the world by the US government, and of the vast underlying insinuations, not quite the truth, misleading, and generally deceptive statements of all the senior political appointees, and especially Dick Cheney. The authors essentially compare George Bush and his team to Orwellian vision of governments controlling the people through doublespeak, and they label this US government as being intellectual dishonest, through and through.
9) Documentation (continuing from 8) of how this government's manipulation of the truth can be compared with Hitler's. They quote Goering to make this point: "but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in every country." Sound familiar? Remember Bush (and Clinton) saying that dissent is treason? People, we have a problem here.
There are many other important points documented in this non-fiction work--it is NOT humorous nor should the cover suggest it is told in comic fashion--but I will end with the ultimate point of it all: the author's document, on the pages leading up to page 195, that the US public is hearing and seeing and reading perhaps one tenth (1/10th) of the truth as it is available to European, Asian, Middle Eastern, and other audiences where the media is not under political and corporate control to the extent that exists in the USA. At the end of this book, I was reaffirmed in my view that real patriotism, real national unity, comes from tough love and the full truth, nothing but the truth. Against that criteria, and as documented by the authors of this book, George Bush Junior, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and all of their politically-appointed minions are liars who have betrayed the public trust and deserve to be impeached before or after they are thrown out of office in 2004. This is a non-fiction work of vital importance to the future of the Republic.
In French academic Jacques Ellul's classic tome on the nature and uses of propaganda, Ellul warns against the arrogant and misguided assumption in most social democracies to discount the use of such unobtrusive means of political persuasion in their societies. According to Ellul, all of the Western democracies are every bit as vulnerable to propaganda's sinister anti-democratic effects as any other sort of `less sophisticated' (read "totalitarian" here) culture. As Ellul persuasively argues, no such invulnerability pertains. Indeed, in a modern society characterized by a powerful, affluent, and resourceful central government, one that is highly influenced by the predominant voices of industry and the economically powerful, the means of such `friendly persuasion' are both more prevalent and more dangerous than anywhere else. In this book, "Weapons Of Mass Deception", we have a literal case study of how the authors, Sheldon Rampton and John C. Stauber, have observed the current Bush administration blatantly attempt to subvert the democratic process by foisting such a propaganda campaign in support of a war of aggression against the Iraqis.
Indeed, shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, members of the current administration hired advertising executives to direct a media campaign to convince the populace of the need to conduct a preemptive attack of Iraq in pursuit of eventual security against perceived potential terrorist threats. President Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was quoted as pointedly requesting position papers from her White House staffers as to how the administration could immediately begin using the events of 911 to further the administration's domestic and foreign policy goals.
... Other public relation advisors were brought in to help construct the Bush administration's on-point approach toward justifying and selling the idea of the preemptive strike to a public both disoriented and frightened by the terrorist attack on 911. A variety of different attempts to forward this action were taken and `floated' in various ploys to judge what specific combinations of reasons and justifications would best `play' to sell the war to the aggravated and anxious populace.
Thus we had an initial attempt by the organs of government to use the realtively straightforward idea of simple `regime change' as a justification for moving against Iraq, which clearly failed to elicit the desired positive effect on public opinion. Next on the sheet of potential arguments that the Bush administration was auditioning was a rather tortured attempt to use the United Nations as a forum to drag out old unresolved charges against Iraq involving international inspections, an issue which had both they and the Clinton administration hasd allowed to lay fallow for the previous four years. When this argument also failed as the rest of the civilized world reacted in horror to the procoative notion of immedaitely attacking Iraq, the Bush administration began to thread together a more independent and more substantive (though circumstantial) set of `smoking gun' notions linking Iraq to terrorist groups like Osama Bin Laden's Al Quaida on the one hand, and suggesting renewed attempts to gain a significant new capability to develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on the part of Saddam Hussein's government, on the other. Evidently the Bush White House staffers and the analysts with both the Defense Department and intelligence agencies didn't allow themselves to be unduly hamstrung by the available evidence. Instead, they exaggerated, misinterpreted, and even prevaricated about both the nature of and the validity of such "evidence" in constructing their arguments suporting intervention to the public.
This is obviously a book that will be seen as exteremly controversial and politically provocative, one that the various pundits on either side of the political aisle will rush to either endorse or assail in order to gain immediate advantage, and to attempt to put the best `spin' on long before the public has a chance to evaluate it on their own. In this way, even the argument about the way this administration has used a cynical, subversive and anti-democratic propagandist approach to explain and justify the war against Iraq may become yet another weapon in the ongoing media effort to persuade and describe the public perceptions of and interpretation of, events the powers that be want to manipulate for public consumption. This is a wonderful book, and one that is sure to soon be the talk of the pundits. Move over, Ann Coulter, your fifteen minutes in the spotlight's glare is over. Enjoy!
