Here's some Memory Lane stuff--Call it war by public relations:
They had this guy dead, then alive, then dead, then captured:
atimes.com
Here's another one they had dead, then alive, then captured:
guardian.co.uk
And yet another one dead, then alive, then dead, then whereabouts unknown, then captured:
cbsnews.com
And, of course, still another one dead, then alive, then dead, then alive and now whereabouts unknown:
usainreview.com
I followed this war buildup and started a daily international press service for SI participants on a thread entitled DON'T START THE WAR; I followed the daily progress of the war once it had begun and continued with near-daily international press updates for SI participants on a thread entitled Stop the War.
And, to my memory, it appeared every time the Administration needed to boost its approval ratings, one of the above guys was theorized as being dead. Were the Administration not releasing a news feed of this kind, the public was getting from it a dose of fear over what kind of WMD Iraq had, how it could be used, how Iraq was deceiving us and tremendous exaggerations over the smallest discovery (i.e., the missles that went 50 miles beyond the proscribed range, the two supposedly mobile labs, the drones, etc.).
It turns out that nothing was truthful. It was a Bush-Cheney led web of deceit, a war waged almost entirely on public relations. And the media lapped up every bit of it.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit to some day learn that the media got early Administration feeds that the media would be able to embed its reporters in the actual war campaign, thus creating a scenario whereby the media just couldn't refuse--it couldn't say no to the war! |
