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The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq ReviewAs the promise of a quick victory in Iraq fades on the horizon, and the reality of a long, messy and costly occupation emerges, authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's timely book "The Best War Ever: Lies Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq" examines the details behind the propaganda and the headlines that led to the war in Iraq. The authors' main point is that the wave of propaganda and lies continues, and while this is a multi million business that successfully 'sold' the war to Americans, the campaign isn't reality. Those who created the war, coveted the war, profit from it, and sold it are immersed in an incredible, dangerous fantasy of 'victory' 'liberty' and the spread of 'democracy.' Meanwhile those who chose to read this book are likely to be those who haven't drunk the cool-aid and are probably already opposed to the war for a variety of reasons. While I'd like to imagine that the book would help change the pro-war opinion, it probably won't happen. Nonetheless, the facts presented here will stun and sicken those already opposed to the war, and by the time the last page is turned, the anti-Iraq war reader will feel their opinions solidified.
The book details the PR campaign ($300 million over a 5 year period) launched before the war. It takes a particularly cynical mind to conduct surveys with a focus on "casualty aversion" in order to analyze how a war can be 'sold' to the people, but those surveys were conducted with the conclusion that Americans would swallow the Iraq war without too much squawking if they believed the war would "ultimately succeed." Experts on the pre-war Future of Iraq Project urged the administration to consider back up plans in case it didn't go smoothly and even predicted looting and the emergence of insurgency. This team was replaced, and the invasion of Iraq sailed ahead with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz predicting that Iraq could "finance its own reconstruction." Fat chance of that happening. By late 2003, the occupation was costing America 1 billion a week, and by the end of 2005, 5.9 billion a month!
The book also examines specific linguistic choices made by the speechmakers and the media spokespeople in order to present a united, positive front on the subject of Iraq, and hand-in-hand with the word choices is the "bloodless" approach to the war--the suppression of photos, the lack of coverage of the horrendous wounds some of our soldiers are coming home with--plus the lack of coverage of the deaths of Iraqis.
There's a lot of 'old' material here--the Valerie Plame outing, the smear campaign against Wilson, the forged documents detailing the purchase of uranium oxide, etc. But in spite of the fact some of this is old news, the authors plug the material into the book to illustrate an overall pattern of the media burying stories and retractions while hyping rumours of supposed weapons findings in Iraq. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) for example, with their "big impact" project and a generous budget of 300 million hunted for WMD in Iraq but couldn't discover anything. But no matter--because the lack of weapons led to a U.S. intelligence theory that Saddam deliberately acted suspicious to 'dupe' America. The twists and turns of the propaganda used for this war would be hilarious if it were fictional--but it's not--it's real--and people are dying because of it.
One of the best sections of the book covers the arguments that led to the war, and includes quotes from those who predicted invading Iraq would be a piece of cake ("I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators"- Cheney). New arguments have been created for remaining in Iraq, and once again by putting this all in print, the authors illustrate an insidious pattern of shifting propaganda. The authors successfully debunk all the arguments for the war--including the flypaper theory, and instead argue that it's time for damage control. The book includes scrupulous footnotes and an index--displacedhuman
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