Reply #72: Great articles! Thanks! Especially the PR Watch story - excerpt:

[Stephanie]

http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2002Q4/war.html
War Is Sell
by Laura Miller
4th Qtr. 2002

<snip>The techniques being used to sell a war in Iraq are familiar PR strategies. The message is developed to resonate with the targeted audiences through the use of focus groups and other types of market research and media monitoring. The delivery of the message is tightly controlled. Relevant information flows to the media and the public through a limited number of well-trained messengers, including seemingly independent third parties.

A seamless blend of private and public money and organizations are executing their war campaign in the face of a sinking US economy and increasing public opposition to attacking Iraq. But with a Republican-controlled Congress and a largely pliant corporate media, there is little to challenge the White House agenda. Its diplomatic and political maneuvers have been tightly choreographed in concert with a handful of right-wing think tanks, the newly concocted Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and well connected PR and lobby firms that now dominate media coverage of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

According to the New York Times, intensive planning for the "Iraq rollout" began in July. Bush advisers checked the Congressional calendar for the best time to launch a "full-scale lobbying campaign." The effort started the day after Labor Day as Congress reconvened and Congressional leaders received invitations to the White House and the Pentagon for Iraq briefings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and CIA director George Tenet. White House communications aides scouted locations for the President's September 11 address, which served as a prelude to his militaristic speech to the United Nations Security Council.

The Washington Post reported in July that the White House had created an Office of Global Communications (OGC) to "coordinate the administration's foreign policy message and supervise America's image abroad." In September, the Times of London reported that the OGC would spend $200 million for a "PR blitz against Saddam Hussein" aimed "at American and foreign audiences, particularly in Arab nations skeptical of US policy in the region." The campaign would use "advertising techniques to persuade crucial target groups that the Iraqi leader must be ousted." </more>