Robert Baer wrote:
flipper wrote:
On Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:55:05 -0700, Jim Thompson
wrote:
This will send a chill down your spine...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts...ubborn-Things/
Big brother is watching... big time :-(
Might I suggest an E-mail flood ?:-)
...Jim Thompson
Even scarier is the Administration apparently thinks that hurling
accusations and simply repeating the same thing over and over, while
ignoring the arguments presented, is a 'rebuttal'.
Isn't Hitler who said that if a lie is told often enough that it
becomes believed / the truth?
Sounds likely. =)
"The link between terrorism, Iraq and 9/11
Iraqi agents meeting with 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta
Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons.
Iraq's purchase of nuclear materials from Niger.
Saddam Hussein's development of nuclear weapons.
Aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons
The existence of Iraqi drones, WMD cluster bombs and Scud missiles.
Iraq's threat to target the US with cyber warfare attacks.
The rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch.
The surrender of a 5,000-man Iraqi brigade.
Iraq executing Coalition POWs.
Iraqi soldiers dressing in US and UK uniforms to commit atrocities.
The exact location of WMD facilities
WMDs moved to Syria.
Every one of these stories received extensive publicity and helped
form indelible public impressions of the "enemy" and the progress of
the invasion.
Every one of these stories was false."
http://www.earthisland.org/project/n...77&subSiteID=4
America's Ministry of Propaganda Exposed
By Gar Smith / The-Edge
November 7, 2003
A Strategy of Lies: How the White House Fed the Public a Steady Diet
of Falsehoods
Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Ret.) has identified 50 false news stories
created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus.
Bush administration officials are probably having second thoughts
about their decision to play hardball with former US Ambassador Joseph
Wilson. Joe Wilson is a contender.
When you play hardball with Joe, you better be prepared to deal with
some serious rebound.
After Wilson wrote a critically timed New York Times essay exposing as
false George W. Bush's claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from
Niger, high officials in the White House contacted several Washington
reporters and leaked the news that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.
Wilson isn't waiting for George W. Bush to hand over the perp.
In mid-October, the former ambassador began passing copies of an
embarrassing internal report to reporters across the US.
The-Edge has received copies of this document.
The 56-page investigation was assembled by USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam
Gardiner.
"Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence,
Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic
Psychological Operations in Gulf II" identifies more than 50 stories
about the Iraq war that were faked by government propaganda artists in
a covert campaign to "market" the military invasion of Iraq.
Gardiner has credentials.
He has taught at the National War College, the Air War College and the
Naval Warfare College and was a visiting scholar at the Swedish
Defense College.
According to Gardiner, "It was not bad intelligence" that lead to the
quagmire in Iraq, "It was an orchestrated effort [that] began before
the war" that was designed to mislead the public and the world.
Gardiner's research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had
conspired at the highest levels to plant "stories of strategic
influence" that were known to be false.
The Times of London described the $200-million-plus US operation as a
"meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress,
and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam
Hussein."
The multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign run out of the White House
and Defense Department was, in Gardiner's final assessment
"irresponsible in parts" and "might have been illegal."
"Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies
to come to the right decisions," Gardiner explains.
Consequently, "Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty,
democracy receives collateral damage."
For the first time in US history, "we allowed strategic psychological
operations to become part of public affairs... [W]hat has happened is
that information warfare, strategic influence, [and] strategic
psychological operations pushed their way into the important process
of informing the peoples of our two democracies."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced plans to create an Office
of Strategic Influence early in 2002.
At the same time British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Strategy Director
Alastair Campbell was setting up an identical operation in London.
As soon as Pvt. Jessica Lynch was airlifted from her hospital bed, the
first call from her "rescue team" went, not to military officials but
to Jim Wilkinson, the White House's top propaganda official stationed
in Iraq.
White House critics were quick to recognize that "strategic influence"
was a euphemism for disinformation.
Rumsfeld had proposed establishing the country's first Ministry of
Propaganda.
The criticism was so severe that the White House backed away from the
plan.
But on November 18, several months after the furor had died down,
Rumsfeld arrogantly announced that he had not been deterred.
"If you want to savage this thing, fine: I'll give you the corpse.
There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing
every single thing that needs to be done -- and I have."
Gardiner's dogged research identified a long list of stories that
passed through Rumsfeld's propaganda mill.
According to Gardiner, "there were over 50 stories manufactured or at
least engineered that distorted the picture of Gulf II for the
American and British people."
Those stories include:
The link between terrorism, Iraq and 9/11
Iraqi agents meeting with 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta
Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons.
Iraq's purchase of nuclear materials from Niger.
Saddam Hussein's development of nuclear weapons.
Aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons
The existence of Iraqi drones, WMD cluster bombs and Scud missiles.
Iraq's threat to target the US with cyber warfare attacks.
The rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch.
The surrender of a 5,000-man Iraqi brigade.
Iraq executing Coalition POWs.
Iraqi soldiers dressing in US and UK uniforms to commit atrocities.
The exact location of WMD facilities
WMDs moved to Syria.
Every one of these stories received extensive publicity and helped
form indelible public impressions of the "enemy" and the progress of
the invasion.
Every one of these stories was false.
"I know what I am suggesting is serious. I did not come to these
conclusions lightly," Gardiner admits.
"I'm not going to address why they did it. That's something I don't
understand even after all the research."
But the fact remained that "very bright and even well-intentioned
officials found how to control the process of governance in ways never
before possible."
A Battle between Good and Evil
Gardiner notes that cocked-up stories about Saddam's WMDs "was only a
very small part of the strategic influence, information operations and
marketing campaign conducted on both sides of the Atlantic."
The "major thrust" of the campaign, Gardiner explains, was "to make a
conflict with Iraq seem part of a struggle between good and evil.
Terrorism is evil... we are the good guys.
"The second thrust is what propaganda theorists would call the 'big
lie.' The plan was to connect Iraq with the 9/11 attacks. Make the
American people believe that Saddam Hussein was behind those attacks."
The means for pushing the message involved: saturating the media with
stories, 24/7; staying on message; staying ahead of the news cycle;
managing expectations; and finally, being prepared to "use information
to attack and punish critics."
Audition in Afghanistan
The techniques that proved so successful in Operation Iraqi Freedom
were first tried out during the campaign to build public support for
the US attack on Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld hired Rendon Associates, a private
PR firm that had been
deeply involved in the first Gulf War.
Founder John Rendon (who calls himself an "information warrior")
proudly boasts that he was the one responsible for providing thousands
of US flags for the Kuwaiti people to wave at TV cameras after their
"liberation" from Iraqi troops in 1991.
The White House Coalition Information Center was set up by Karen
Hughes in November 2001.
(In January 2003, the CIC was renamed the Office for Global
Communications.)
The CIC hit on a cynical plan to curry favor for its attack on
Afghanistan by highlighting "the plight of women in Afghanistan."
CIC's Jim Wilkinson later called the Afghan women campaign "the best
thing we've done."
Gardiner is quick with a correction.
The campaign "was not about something they did. It was about a story
they created... It was not a program with specific steps or funding to
improve the conditions of women."
The coordination between the propaganda engines of Washington and
London even involved the respective First Wives.
On November 17, 2001, Laura Bush issued a shocking statement:
"Only the terrorists and the Taliban threaten to pull out women's
fingernails for wearing nail polish."
Three days later, a horrified Cherie Blaire told the London media, "In
Afghanistan, if you wear nail polish, you could have your nails torn
out."
Misleading via Innuendo
Time and again, US reporters accepted the CIC news leaks without
question.
Among the many examples that Gardiner documented was the use of the
"anthrax scare" to promote the administration's pre-existing plan to
attack Iraq.
In both the US and the UK, "intelligence sources" provided a steady
diet of unsourced allegations to the media to suggest that Iraq and Al
Qaeda terrorists were behind the deadly mailing of anthrax-laden
letters.
It wasn't until December 18, that the White House confessed that it
was "increasingly looking like" the anthrax came from a US military
installation.
The news was released as a White House "paper" instead of as a more
prominent White House "announcement."
As a result, the idea that Iraq or Al Qaeda were behind the anthrax
plot continued to persist.
Gardiner believes this was an intentional part of the propaganda
campaign.
"If a story supports policy, even if incorrect, let it stay around."
In a successful propaganda campaign, Gardiner wrote, "We would have
expected to see the creation [of] stories to sell the policy; we would
have expected to see the same stories used on both sides of the
Atlantic. We saw both. The number of engineered or false stories from
US and UK stories is long."
The US and Britain: The Axis of Disinformation
Before the coalition invasion began on March 20, 2003, Washington and
London agreed to call their illegal pre-emptive military aggression an
"armed conflict" and to always reference the Iraqi government as the
"regime."
Strategic communications managers in both capitols issued lists of
"guidance" terms to be used in all official statements.
London's 15 Psychological Operations Group paralleled Washington's
Office of Global Communications.
In a departure from long military tradition, the perception managers
even took over the naming of the war.
Military code names were originally chosen for reasons of security.
In modern US warfare, however, military code names have become "part
of the marketing."
There was Operation Nobel Eagle, Operation Valiant Strike, Operation
Provide Comfort, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Uphold
Democracy and, finally, Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The "Rescue" of Jessica Lynch
The Pentagon's control over the news surrounding the capture and
rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch receives a good deal of attention in
Gardiner's report.
"From the very beginning it was called an 'ambush'," Gardiner noted.
But, he pointed out, "If you drive a convoy into enemy lines, turn
around and drive back, it's not an ambush. Military officers who are
very careful about how they talk about operations would normally not
be sloppy about describing this kind of event," Gardiner complained.
"This un-military kind of talk is one of the reasons I began doing
this research."
One of the things that struck Gardiner as revealing was the fact that,
as Newsweek reported:
"as soon as Lynch was in the air, [the Joint Operations Center] phoned
Jim Wilkinson, the top civilian communications aide to CENTCOM Gen.
Tommy Franks."
It struck Gardiner as inexplicable that the first call after Lynch's
rescue would go to the Director of Strategic Communications, the White
House's top representative on the ground.
On the morning of April 3, the Pentagon began leaking information on
Lynch's rescue that sought to establish Lynch as "America's new
Rambo."
The Washington Post repeated the story it received from the Pentagon:
that Lynch "sustained multiple gunshot wounds" and fought fiercely and
shot several enemy soldier... firing her weapon until she ran out of
ammunition."
Lynch's family confused the issue by telling the press that their
daughter had not sustained any bullet wounds.
Lynch's parents subsequently refused to talk to the press, explaining
that they had been "told not to talk about it."
(Weeks later, the truth emerged. Lynch was neither stabbed nor shot.
She was apparently injured while falling from her vehicle.)
Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers let the story stand during an April 3 press
conference although both had been fully briefed on Lynch's true
condition.
"Again, we see the pattern," Gardiner observed.
"When the story on the street supports the message, it will be left
there by a non-answer. The message is more important than the truth.
Even Central Command kept the story alive by not giving out details."
Gardiner saw another break with procedure.
The information on the rescue that was released to the Post "would
have been very highly classified" and should have been closely
guarded. Instead, it was used as a tool to market the war.
"This was a major pattern from the beginning of the marketing campaign
throughout the war," Gardiner wrote.
"It was okay to release classified information if it supported the
message."