I wanted to alert everyone to the fact that the man who wrote the
Rolling Stone article "The Man Who Sold the War," James Banford, was interviewed on "Democracy Now" with Amy Goodman this morning.
From the Democracy Now site:
So how did the Bush administration sell the war to the American public? Well a new article in Rolling Stone magazine examines just that. In it, investigative journalist James Bamford looks at the role of one of the most powerful public relations firms in Washington D.C in setting the stage for the Iraq war.
The firm is the Rendon Group and it's founder and CEO is John Rendon - the former Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee.
Bamford writes that the Pentagon secretly awarded Rendon a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda.
More after the fold ...
One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power."
If you haven't read the article in Rolling Stone (link above) it's an absolute must-read, although you might want to take your blood-pressure medicine before starting it.
Here's a dandy little clip:
When it comes to staging a war, few things are left to chance. After Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, it was Rendon's responsibility to make the victory march look like the flag-waving liberation of France after World War II. "Did you ever stop to wonder," he later remarked, "how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American -- and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?" After a pause, he added, "Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then."
This guy's a real piece of work. He's the Goebbels of the Pentagon. A civilian with the highest security clearance you can imagine. Paid millions of dollars, has been involved in every war from Panama to the Iraq invasion with the exception of Somalia. He lives in an exclusive house right around the corner from Rumsfeld.
He's still working on the Iraq war. You can bet the latest Al-Zarqawi stories are all manufactured by him.
We need to do everything we can to get this guy in the public spotlight. The story about how Rendon abused and exploited spurious information, and fed it to Judy Miller and others, is absolutely explosive and damning.
I want to see this writer on The Daily Show, and all the major MSM's interview shows.
Here is the link for the Democracy Now interview:
http://www.democracynow.org/...
