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Date Posted: 01:27:53 08/05/03 Tue
Author: Weird_Enigma
Author Host/IP: 67.29.246.120
Subject: Weapons of Mass Deception

Weapons of Mass Deception'
Like cars and soap, war is packaged and sold to consumers with propaganda techniques
ALAN BECKER
Special to The Observer

WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq


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By Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. Tarcher/Penguin. 176 pages. $11.95.

Most of us know the phrase "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." Few of us realize that the origin of the phrase was an early 20th-century public relations campaign waged to transform the then-disreputable image of apples, whose common use in making "hard" cider outraged temperance groups.

And few of us know the origins of the information we hear in today's fast-paced news media, especially in times of war when news reports often derive from obscure intelligence sources. In their new book "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq," John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton use careful research to reveal the real sources of much of the war news.

As editors of the journal PR Watch, Stauber and Rampton specialize in this type of investigative journalism, and their book seems unusually timely given the recent controversy over assertions that Iraq sought to purchase material for nuclear weapons.

Despite the book's satiric title, it does not present any direct argument for or against the war itself. Instead, it focuses on how, like cars and soap, war too is packaged and sold to American consumers via a complex web of propaganda techniques.

The book begins and ends by analyzing two of the most memorable media images from the recent war: the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and President Bush's landing and victory speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Both were, of course, real and important events in the war. And both scenes were carefully constructed to reinforce a positive and patriotic story line.

In staging the landing, for example, the aircraft carrier "was so close to shore that [it] had to be repositioned in the water to keep the TV cameras from picking up the San Diego shoreline." Why avoid shoreline imagery? The nearness of San Diego might have suggested that the president's use of a jet and carrier was unnecessary image-mongering.

Such efforts hardly amount to mass deception; they are common in political photo opportunities and even personal photos. These efforts are significant, the authors suggest, as part of a pattern of propaganda to sell the war.

Some of the book's best research comes in the chapter "True Lies," which dispels many of the myths that resounded through the media's echo-chamber in the months leading up to the war -- such as the supposed connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 hijackers, a story that helped generate pro-war sentiment but originated in rumor, not fact.

As for weapons of mass destruction, the authors offer interesting evidence for "the gap between rhetoric and reality about Iraq's weaponry." They survey the discredited reports about Iraq's attempts to purchase nuclear materials and offer more complete background on sources such as defector Hussein Kamei, a former Iraqi weapons director.

Kamei has often been cited as the inside source confirming that Iraq had been making weapons of mass destruction. Stauber and Rampton point out the neglected fact that Kamei also asserted that "all weapons -- biological, chemical, missile, nuclear -- were destroyed" just after the Gulf War ended.

Those looking solely for analysis of recent news coverage will be disappointed. The book instead balances news analysis with repeated investigations into the public relations history behind various groups that were lobbying for or commenting on war in Iraq.

One of the more provocative examples is the authors' analysis of the origins of the Iraqi National Congress (the main Iraqi group opposed to Saddam Hussein) and its leader, exiled Iraqi Ahmed Chalabi, now in the news as a member of the newly formed Iraqi Governing Council. The authors' research reveals that, just after the end of the Gulf War, a Pentagon-hired public relations specialist helped create and name the INC, promoted Chalabi as its head and arranged CIA funding.

Stauber and Rampton deal with "doublespeak," the linguistic sleight of hand used to make warfare palatable to the masses. The term "doublespeak" derives from George Orwell's "1984," which satirizes wartime propaganda through contradictory phrases such as "War is Peace" and "Ignorance is Strength." Stauber and Rampton assiduously deconstruct such propaganda in a quest to distinguish fact from fiction. President Bush's April assertion that "the war in Iraq is really about peace" sums up popular notions about the war; this book offers considerable research that ignorance is not strength.


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Alan Becker teaches English and media literacy at Charlotte Latin School.

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