"Prop-agenda"

The article in the LA Times last weekend on the choreographed Saddam statue event started a discussion on the use of Army Psy-Ops in the Iraq war. The fall of the Saddam statue early in the Iraq war was carefully staged propaganda primarily for U.S. consumption. The propaganda started long before the was itself. Miren Gutierrez goes into the history of war and pre-war propaganda in this commentary in the Asia Times.

Although the Bush administration refined the use of propaganda leading up to the Iraq war it is not new.

Throughout history, propaganda has been used in warfare to do exactly that; and the US has also practiced it extensively, but with its own twist, that of a democracy that has a free press and therefore has to disguise propaganda better.

It is one of history's ironies, for example, that former US president Woodrow Wilson, who was re-elected as a peace candidate in 1916, soon thereafter led the US willingly into World War I. That was achieved thanks to propaganda.

Of course the Bush administration carried pre-war propaganda to new heights, finding new ways to co-opt the "Free Press".

....An embedded, Internet-age propaganda, piggybacking on brand name credibility. Real-time transmission, real-time deceit.

It means that if you use CNN or The New York Times to selectively present segmented realities, then the effectiveness of propaganda is tremendously increased by these trademarks.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their book Weapons of Mass Deception show how the administration used 9-11 to justify the invasion of Iraq. Richard Clarke makes similar claims in his book Against All Enemies.

Propaganda expert, Nancy Snow puts it nicely:

Propaganda is still used more as an antecedent to war; in other words, if war is the paint, then propaganda is the paint primer that makes possible the total devotion of the public to the just cause of the state in wartime.

Of course Dick Cheney and other republicans have a new tactic; tell a lie often enough and the people will believe it. If people believe it, then it's not a lie. Cheney continues to this day to use this tactic in regards to an Iraq/al Quida connection.