America's Ministry of Propaganda Exposed

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/news/AMOP1.htm
excerpt:
The 56-page investigation was assembled by USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner. "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" identifies more than 50 stories about the Iraq war that were faked by government propaganda artists in a covert campaign to "market" the military invasion of Iraq.

Gardiner has credentials. He has taught at the National War College, the Air War College and the Naval Warfare College and was a visiting scholar at the Swedish Defense College.

According to Gardiner, "It was not bad intelligence" that lead to the quagmire in Iraq, "It was an orchestrated effort began before the war" that was designed to mislead the public and the world. Gardiner's research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had conspired at the highest levels to plant "stories of strategic influence" that were known to be false.

The Times of London described the $200-million-plus US operation as a "meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein."

The multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign run out of the White House and Defense Department was, in Gardiner's final assessment "irresponsible in parts" and "might have been illegal."

"Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to the right decisions," Gardiner explains. Consequently, "Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage." For the first time in US history, "we allowed strategic psychological operations to become part of public affairs... hat has happened is that information warfare, strategic influence, strategic psychological operations pushed their way into the important process of informing the peoples of our two democracies."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced plans to create an Office of Strategic Influence early in 2002. At the same time British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Strategy Director Alastair Campbell was setting up an identical operation in London.

The criticism was so severe that the White House backed away from the plan. But on November 18, several months after the furor had died down, Rumsfeld arrogantly announced that he had not been deterred. "If you want to savage this thing, fine: I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done -- and I have."

...then "killed himself"? He was one of the world's leading experts on biological weapons. I'm not exaggerating. Perhaps the #1 Western expert on Iraq's biological weapons.

Link to BBC coverage of Kelly

"Mauer also told his fellow perception managers that "We hope to make more use of Hollywood and Madison Avenue in the future." The overall goal remains the same Mauer explained: to allow the men who now control Washington to "disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial... decision-making."

Gardiner finds that the future envisioned by Rendon and Mauer is fundamentally "frightening." The phrase "adversarial... decision-making will be disrupted" reportedly was added by Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. What it means, Gardiner warns, is that "we will even go after friends if they are against what we are doing or want to do."

Criticism, questioning and debate are now defined as "adversarial" and the new watchword out of Washington is: "If you don't agree with us, you could be the target of an information attack." The new reality is that "punishment of those who disagree is a dimension of the strategy."

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won't happen again

<snip>
Rumsfeld arrogantly announced that he had not been deterred. "If you want to savage this thing, fine: I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done -- and I have."

"might have been illegal."

"we allowed strategic psychological operations to become part of public affairs... hat has happened is that information warfare, strategic influence, strategic psychological operations pushed their way into the important process of informing the peoples of our two democracies."
<end>

I'm glad that the military is getting a clue that standing a psychological army against the people isn't any better than a physical one. In either case, it destroys our freedom.

:kick:

dole out as information may not be adequate anymore.I would say a warning should be attached to each item coming from governement sources that believing them could be hazardous to your mental health.

also appears here: http://www.agitprop.org.au/nowar/20031107_smith_us_propaganda_ministry.php Nov 7, 2003.

The exposure of the propaganda made squat difference during the election campaign. I find it quite depressing to look back and realise it.

...and our situation today:

Bush's 'Perception Management' Plan

By Robert Parry
November 18, 2004

George W. Bush has been criticized for disdaining fact in favor of faith in his own instincts. But he is savvy about the dangers that information can present to his authority over the government and the American people.

That is why the first priority of his second term has been the elimination of the few government sources of information that could challenge the images he wants to project to the public. Bush doesn’t want the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency portraying his Iraq and other foreign policies as abject failures or reckless adventures.

So, by attacking these remaining pockets of analytical resistance, Bush is moving to ensure that his administration can keep much of the U.S. population seeing a near-empty cup as almost entirely full, a concept known in the intelligence world as “perception management.”

On a personal level, Bush appears to have found in his electoral victory a validation of his public-relations strategy of casting his foreign policy as a black-and-white war between good and evil. In this tough-talking approach, Bush has been helped immeasurably by the powerful conservative news media, ranging from AM talk radio to Fox News, from right-wing newspaper columnists to Internet bloggers.

Indeed, it is impossible to understand why Americans have grown so detached from reality without appreciating the combined impact of this conservative media – built over the past quarter century – and Bush’s personal insistence on loyalty over almost all other values. These two factors have made the United States a kind of ultimate test for the Orwellian intelligence theories of “perception management.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/111804.html

don't care if their glorious leaders lied to get them to approve an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation and murdered over 1000,000 of "those people" and many thousands more in the next few years and thousands of Amerikan troops killed &/or maimed. Freedom must be spread to the world as God has ordained.