Propaganda

“For some people, war is terror, disaster, and death. For others, it’s a PR problem” - Norman Solomon

Speaking in 1991, Richard Hass of the National Security Council, called television “our chief tool in selling our policy.”

After being invaded by Iraq on Aug. 2, 1990, the government of Kuwait funded as many as 20 PR, law, and lobby firms to marshal world opinion. For example: a 15-year-old Kuwaiti “refugee” named Nayirah stood before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus. She tearfully described witnessing Iraqi troops stealing incubators from a hospital, leaving 312 babies “on the cold floor to die.”  The story was a hoax. Nayirah’s false testimony was part of a $10 million Kuwait government propaganda campaign managed by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton. Rather than working as a volunteer at a hospital, Nayirah was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. “We didn’t know it wasn’t true at the time,” said Brent Scowcroft, President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser. But, he admitted, “It was useful in mobilizing public opinion.”

One of the firms hired by Kuwait, The Rendon Group, was called on once again after America’s post-9/11 assault on Afghanistan. “We needed a firm that could provide strategic counsel immediately,” Lt. Col. Kenneth McClellan, a media officer at the Pentagon, said. “We were interested in someone that we knew could come in quickly and help us orient to the challenge of communicating to a wide range of groups around the world.”

CNN Chair Walter Isaacson ordered his reporters to downplay casualties from the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan: “It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan,” Isaacson wrote as Operation Enduring Freedom (sic) commenced. “We must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000 innocent people.”

Alternative Radio founder and director, David Barsamian explains: “There’s no context for actions, there’s no background; there’s no history. Things just happen.”

Context. Background. History. These are our weapons in the battle to defend independent thinking. If you’re privileged enough to be reading this article, you’re also privileged enough to do the crucial work of self-education. To have access to information but instead opt to trust our corporate masters is to be complicit. There is no neutral. Which side are you on?

Abridged from a longer article by Mickey Z available here