Reply #62: Bush and his Cronies Lied America into War...

[Octafish]

Thank you for the kind reminder, regarding Col. Gardiner.

The man is a real patriot who has stood up to the Bush Crime Family.

An Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner

The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the US Public

By KEVIN ZEESE
CounterPunch June 22 , 2005

Sam Gardiner has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College. He was recently a visiting scholar at the Swedish Defence College. During Gulf II he was a regular on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer as well as on BBC radio and television, and National Public Radio. He authored “The Enemy is Us” an article describing how the Bush Administration used disinformation and psychological warfare – weapons usually used against the 'enemy' – against the American public in order to support the war in Iraq. He has done an extensive analysis of the media coverage before the war, during the war and during the occupation as well as of the statements of Administration officials. His conclusions are startling and of great concern. He has put his findings in a report entitled: “Truth from These Podia.”

EXCERPT...

Zeese: What is: "Truth from These Podia"? How did you conduct this media analysis?

Gardiner: It is a paper I published on the web that reflected four months of heavy research.

I had followed press reports of the war closely as it unfolded because of a job I had. During the first couple months of Gulf II, I was under contract with the Newshour with Jim Lehrer. With another retired colonel, we did an almost daily on-air analysis of how the war was going.

As the war unfolded, I became increasingly uneasy about what was being reported out of the White House, Pentagon and Central Command. I was hearing things that just did not make sense with what I knew and what my intuition was telling me. I began tracking some of the stories. It was just a matter of going over what we were told and connecting that with the truth as it emerged later.
One of the first items that made me uneasy was when I heard we were encountering “terrorist death squads.” I was very familiar with the Iraq military forces. There were no terrorist death squads. It became obvious the Pentagon wanted us to connect Iraq with 9/11. Terrorists did 9/11. There are terrorists in Iraq. Iraq must have been behind 9/11.

Zeese: Regarding the management of information about Iraq, I'd like to focus on the build up to the Iraq War initially. There has been growing indications from a series of memoranda and meeting minutes from Great Britain that U.S. intelligence was “fixed” to support the war. In your analysis of media management before the war do you see any indication that the United States Congress and public was manipulated into supporting the invasion of Iraq by misinformation?

Gardiner: Kevin, I find it amazing that there is now a growing interest in the marketing the war. There is absolutely no question that the White House and the Pentagon participated in an effort to market the military option. The truth did not make any difference to that campaign. To call it fixing is to miss the more profound point. It was a campaign to influence. It involved creating false stories; it involved exaggerating; it involved manipulating the numbers of stories that were released; it involved a major campaign to attack those who disagreed with the military option. It included all the techniques those who ran the marketing effort had learned in political campaigns.

Zeese: Can you give some examples of false or exaggerated stories put out by the Bush administration in the build-up to the war?

Gardiner: In the summer of 2003, we know from the Downing Street Memo that the Administration was talking about justifying a war by arguing that Iraq was the nexus of terrorism and WMD.

The terrorism argument was what propaganda literature would refer to as the big lie. The Administration’s objective was to make enough arguments connecting Iraq to terrorism and Bin Laden that the American people would believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. They used a technique called the excluded middle. Iraq supports terrorists. The attacks were by terrorists. Iraq must been behind the 9/11 attacks.

We the WMD story fairly well. We know the story of the uranium from Niger. We know about the aluminum tubes that were not for uranium enrichment. We know the biological labs Powell showed to the UN did not exist.

Beyond these there are many exaggerations that have gotten very little notice. Let me mention just a few.

A New York Times reporter was told by the Administration that Iraq was buying excess quantities of atropine to get ready for chemical warfare. It turns out the quantities were consistent with the Iraq use of the substance for routin(e) medical purposes.

The President told us in a speech in Ohio that Iraq had drone aircraft that could possible deliver chemical weapons into the United States. When that facility was found, the officers reported that it looked more like a school project than a serious military program.

The Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the Council on Foreign Relations that Iraq had the capability to attack US computers. They did not.

We were lead to believe a Navy pilot shot down during the first Gulf War was alive and being held in Baghdad. He was not.

We were told on the State Department web sit that Iraq was forming units of children to fight the United States. Iraq did not do that.

We were told the French were supplying air defense missiles to Iraq. That was not true

There were many more

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese06222005.html

Gardiner is a man of integrity. He spotted what Bush's illegal invasion was built on the Big Lie sold to the American people.