After reading about Propaganda and war, today I would like to sum up the lecture we had on last Wednesday on War and Spin.

I decided to take the reverse route of reading first , understanding the word propaganda in terms of public relations and then see if we the ordinary civilians could decipher the word propaganda correctly in the class.

Well I can say we sure were successful. I think Iraq war farce was on everybody’s mind and we had that example at the back of our minds when we discussed propaganda. Iraq the mother of all Lies!!!! has taught us all an important lesson once again....NEVER trust a political leader. They manipulate and they spin and most of all politics has given a BAD name to PR.

As I was reading the strategy used in propaganda it appeared to me that Bush sat down with a good book on Propaganda and followed every word. (Should we stop the authors of such books to write?? So we can avoid other wars???)

Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. . Did this agency forget the Code of Ethics? So when Bush picked up a good book on Spin, Hill & Knowlton put down or may be hid the best book ‘Code and Ethics for PR professionals.’

A conservative estimate of the likely overall cost of the war and its aftermath is carefully projected in Joseph Stiglitz' and Linda Bilmes' 2008 book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Amy Goodman interviewed Stiglitz and Bilmes on February 29, 2008. You may read the transcript as well as watch and/or listen to this interview at http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/29/exclusive

_the_three_trillion_dollar_war.

How many hospitals, schools and vocational training centres could have been made with this huge amount of money?

On second thoughts (frivolous of course) propaganda cannot be so bad because an agency calls itself Propaganda PR!!!!!!!!!!!

Books ref.

1. PR power by Barry Amanda

2. PR A Social History of Spin by Ewen Stuart

Stages of Propoganda in war

Ottosen identifies several key stages of a military campaign to “soften up” public opinion through the media in preparation for an armed intervention. These are:

The Preliminary Stage—during which the country concerned comes to the news, portrayed as a cause for “mounting concern” because of poverty/dictatorship/anarchy;

The Justification Stage—during which big news is produced to lend urgency to the case for armed intervention to bring about a rapid restitution of “normality”;

The Implementation Stage—when pooling and censorship provide control of coverage;

The Aftermath—during which normality is portrayed as returning to the region, before it once again drops down the news agenda.

O’Kane notes “there is always a dead baby story” and it comes at the key point of the Justification Stage—in the form of a story whose apparent urgency brooks no delay—specifically, no time for cool deliberation or negotiating on peace proposals. Human interest stories … are ideal for engendering this atmosphere

Build up of Iraq War - A propoganda caught red handed

The propaganda by Bush worked like charm on the people of America. The time was post 9/11 and America was vulnerable after the fall of the twin towers. They wanted the villain and Bush named him as Saddam Hussain the president of Iraq.

The reasons given were that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction and might help Al- Qadea and therefore pose a threat to the American people and the world.

The strategies and tactics used by the Bush administration were what PR people are generally accused of in political scenario -- spin and manipulation.

The three weeks of Iraq war will go down in history where the entire world was taken for a ride by USA and its greatest ally UK .

Just a few examples of manipulation and spin used during the Iraq war...

1. The Bush administration bought the scientists who said the Saddam will use chemicals to contaminate and bring mass destruction. Of course they were not speaking the truth.

2. Embedded journalists who gave a sanitized picture of Iraq war.

3. Maximum imagery was shown with minimum insight

4. Setbacks and atrocities of the coalition army were glossed over.

5. Only military coverage of Jessica Lynch was shot and edited version handed over to the media.

6. Towns which were not won over were falsely reported as seized.

we Weapons of mass destruction !!!!!!!! Have they been found as yet?????

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02E7DC1738F937A35757C0A9659C8B63http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/03/18_iraqmedia.shtml

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/nov/06/broadcasting.Iraqandthemedia

I came across this very interesting site on Nazi Propaganda.

http://www.historians.org/Projects/GIroundtable/Propaganda/Propaganda1.htm