Rampton and Stauber can now reveal in detail how public relations experts in the Bush administration acted deliberately to distort the news, to suppress the facts and to push an America still shocked by the attacks of 9/11 into war on Iraq. Worse, they build a damning case against the mainstream media, and its failure to challenge the White House over its most blatant lies and evasions. From the outset, the invasion of Iraq was branded and packaged like a commercial product. When asked why the build-up to the war began in September 2002, the White House Chief of Staff had this to say, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August".
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Concise, Readable, Powerful:
Authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber provide a concise but powerful expose of the Bush White House and its attempts to "sell" the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Readers see how Bush, Cheney and Company used a questionable propaganda campaign to pave the way, including using (or rather misusing) the 911 terrorist attacks as justification. Bush and company were aided by right-wing talking heads, Fox News, and other media deceivers. They were also were unshy about branding skeptics as unpatriotic - a ploy that... more info
Essential Resource:
This book is an short, entertaining but very sophisticated overview not only of how Bush and Co. sold the war, but how propaganda works in this country and in all other free-press countries. I used it as a research source for my novel, The Army of the RepublicThe Army of the Republic: A Novel and it makes an excellent companion piece to Neal Postman's enlightening analysis of modern media culture, Amusing Ourselves to Death Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Can't... more info
facts revealed:
One of the best excerpts from this book is Rumsfeld being confronted by a journalist about his visit to Iraq, denying it and then shown a videotape from the CNN archives. This is a good book to read to get away from the Bush spin of things and see things a little clearer.
Madison Avenue waged war on Iraq---and our troops:
When factual evidence did not reveal that Saddam Hussein had "Weapons of Mass Destruction" the Bush administration simply hired the country's best media consultants to engineer support for the war: anybody who was thus questioning the administration found themselves labeled as contributing to the terrorist threat. Because reality did not give them what they wanted, the White House fabricated data. This book, written by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton is not one of the reccent anti-Iraq war books, but... more info
