- "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce
new products in August," White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card
Jr. told the New York Times in September. Card was explaining what the
Times characterized as a "meticulously planned strategy to persuade
the public, the Congress, and the allies of the need to confront the threat
from Saddam Hussein."
-
- Officially, President George W. Bush is claiming that
he sees war as an option of last resort, and many members of the American
public seem to have taken him at his word. In reality, say journalists
and others who have closely observed the key players in decision-making
positions at the White House, they have already decided on war.
-
- In November, key Pentagon advisor Richard Perle stunned
British members of parliament when he told them that even a "clean
bill of health" from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix would not
stop a US attack on Iraq. "Evidence from one witness on Saddam Hussein's
weapons program will be enough to trigger a fresh military onslaught,"
reported the Mirror of London, paraphrasing Perle's comments at an all-party
meeting on global security.
-
- "America is duping the world into believing it supports
these inspections," said Peter Kilfoyle, a member of the British Labour
party and a former British defense minister. "President Bush intends
to go to war even if inspectors find nothing. This makes a mockery of the
whole process and exposes America's real determination to bomb Iraq."
-
- Even the US Central Intelligence Agency, hardly a pacifist
organization, has come under pressure from White House and Pentagon hawks
unhappy with the CIA's reluctance to offer intelligence assessments that
would justify an invasion.
-
- "The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to
bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war
with Iraq," reported Robert Dreyfuss in the American Prospect in December.
"Morale inside the US national-security apparatus is said to be low,
with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push
for war."
-
- Much of the pro-war information cited by the White House
comes from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a front group established
in the early 1990s by the Rendon Group. (PR Watch's Fourth Quarter 2001
issue detailed the Rendon Group's role in creating the INC.)
-
- "Most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing
with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering
abilities to be nearly nil," Dreyfuss stated. "The Pentagon's
critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape
US decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the
State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual
head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and
public relations, but not much else."
-
- Focus, People, Focus
-
- The techniques being used to sell a war in Iraq are familiar
PR strategies. The message is developed to resonate with the targeted audiences
through the use of focus groups and other types of market research and
media monitoring. The delivery of the message is tightly controlled. Relevant
information flows to the media and the public through a limited number
of well-trained messengers, including seemingly independent third parties.
-
- A seamless blend of private and public money and organizations
are executing their war campaign in the face of a sinking US economy and
increasing public opposition to attacking Iraq. But with a Republican-controlled
Congress and a largely pliant corporate media, there is little to challenge
the White House agenda. Its diplomatic and political maneuvers have been
tightly choreographed in concert with a handful of right-wing think tanks,
the newly concocted Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and well connected
PR and lobby firms that now dominate media coverage of US foreign policy
in the Middle East.
-
- According to the New York Times, intensive planning for
the "Iraq rollout" began in July. Bush advisers checked the Congressional
calendar for the best time to launch a "full-scale lobbying campaign."
The effort started the day after Labor Day as Congress reconvened and Congressional
leaders received invitations to the White House and the Pentagon for Iraq
briefings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and CIA director George Tenet. White House communications aides
scouted locations for the President's September 11 address, which served
as a prelude to his militaristic speech to the United Nations Security
Council.
-
- The Washington Post reported in July that the White House
had created an Office of Global Communications (OGC) to "coordinate
the administration's foreign policy message and supervise America's image
abroad." In September, the Times of London reported that the OGC would
spend $200 million for a "PR blitz against Saddam Hussein" aimed
"at American and foreign audiences, particularly in Arab nations skeptical
of US policy in the region." The campaign would use "advertising
techniques to persuade crucial target groups that the Iraqi leader must
be ousted."
-
- The Bush administration has not hesitated to use outright
disinformation to bolster the case for war. In December, CBS 60 Minutes
interviewed a former CIA agent who investigated and debunked the oft-mentioned
report that September 11 airplane hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi
intelligence official in Prague several months before the deadly attacks
on September 11. "Despite a lack of evidence that the meeting took
place," the CBS report noted, "the item was cited by administration
officials as high as Vice President Dick Cheney and ended up being reported
so widely that two-thirds of Americans polled by the Council on Foreign
Relations believe Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11."
-
- The Battle of the Band
-
- "We're getting the band together," said White
House Communications Director Dan Bartlett in September. The "band,"
explained Newsweek's Martha Brant, refers to "the people who brought
you the war in Afghanistan--or at least the accompanying public-relations
campaign. ... Now they're back for a reunion tour on Iraq." A group
of young White House up-and-comers, the "band" was meeting daily
on a morning conference call to plan media strategy with the aim of controlling
"the message within the administration so no one--not even Vice President
Dick Cheney--freelances on Iraq," Brant wrote. Its main players are
Bartlett, Office of Global Communications director Tucker Eskew, and James
Wilkinson, former Deputy Communications director who has now been reassigned
to serve as spokesperson to Gen. Tommy Franks at US Central Command in
Qatar. Other frequent participants in the planning sessions have included
top Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke, Cheney advisor Mary Matalin,
and Secretary of State Colin Powell's mouthpiece, Richard Boucher.
-
- Meanwhile, the State Department is providing media training
to Iraqi dissidents to "help make the Bush administration's argument
for the removal of Saddam Hussein," reported PR Week on September
2. Muhammed Eshaiker, who serves on the board of the Iraqi Forum for Democracy,
was one of the State Department trainees. "Iraqis in exile were not
really taking advantage of the media opportunities," he said during
an interview on National Public Radio. "We probably stumble and wait
and say well, I mean what's the use--everybody knows [Hussein's] a criminal,
so what's the use if we just add another story or another crime? But everything
counts! ... If we keep hammering on the same nail, the nail is going to
find its way through."
-
- US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has used an
informal "strategic communications" group of Beltway lobbyists,
PR people and Republican insiders to hone the Pentagon's message. Pentagon
public affairs head Victoria Clarke, who used to run Hill & Knowlton's
DC office, is reported to have assembled the Rumsfeld group. Participants
"intermittently offer messaging advice to the Pentagon," reported
PR Week on August 26. One of the Rumsfeld group's projects is linking the
anti-terrorism cause with efforts to convince the public "of the need
to engage 'rogue states'--including Iraq--that are likely to harbor terrorists."
-
- According to military analyst William Arkin, Rumsfeld's
group is doing more than merely spinning rationales for attacking Iraq.
Writing for the November 24 Los Angeles Times, Arkin called Rumsfeld's
communication strategy "a policy shift that reaches across all the
armed services," as "Rumsfeld and his senior aides are revising
missions and creating new agencies to make 'information warfare' a central
element of any US war."
-
- "Information warfare" blurs the line between
distributing factual information and psychological warfare. During the
current buildup against Iraq, for example, the Bush administration's statements
have been calculated to create confusion about whether an actual US invasion
is imminent. Such confusion can be a useful weapon against an enemy, forcing
Saddam Hussein to divide his efforts between diplomatic initiatives and
military preparations. The confusion is so complete, however, that even
the American people have little idea what their leaders are actually planning.
-
- The Committee for the Invasion of Iraq
-
- The anti-Hussein public relations work is also being
done by a number of front groups and pundits with close ties to the Pentagon
and White House. These private-sector war boosters are making the rounds
of TV news programs and newspaper editorial pages. What won't be apparent
to the average US media consumer are the many tangled connections that
exist between them. The newly-formed Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
(CLI) sits at the center of the PR campaign, which is coordinated closely
with other groups that are actively promoting an attack on Iraq, including
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, Project
for a New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute,
Hoover Institute, and the clients of media relations firm Benador Associations.
-
- CLI sends its message to American citizens through meetings
with newspaper editorial boards and journalists, framing the debate and
providing background materials written by a close-knit web of supporters.
CLI also works closely with Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials
to sponsor foreign policy briefings and dinners.
-
- "It is also encouraging its members to hold lectures
around the US, creating opportunities to penetrate local media markets,"
reported PR Week on November 25. "Members have already been interviewed
on MSNBC and Fox News Channel, and articles have appeared in the Washington
Post and the New York Times."
-
- The CLI's mission statement says the group "was
formed to promote regional peace, political freedom and international security
by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that
respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community
of nations." CLI representatives have made it clear that they plan
to focus the debate on regime change, regardless of what weapons inspectors
find or don't find inside Iraq. Although CLI uses humanitarian buzzwords
on its web site and strives for a bipartisan look, its leadership and affiliations
are decidedly right-wing, militaristic and very much in step with the Bush
administration.
-
- CLI president Randy Scheunemann is a well-connected Republican
military and foreign policy advisor who has worked as National Security
Advisor for Senators Trent Lott and Bob Dole. He also owns Orion Strategies,
a small government-relations PR firm.
-
- CLI is ostensibly "an independent entity,"
although it is expected to "work closely with the administration,"
the Washington Post's Peter Slevin reported on November 4. "At a time
when polls suggest declining enthusiasm for a US-led military assault on
Hussein, top officials will be urging opinion makers to focus on Hussein's
actions in response to the United Nations resolution on weapons inspections--and
on his past and present failings. They aim to regain momentum and prepare
the political ground for his forcible ouster, if necessary."
-
- According to former Secretary of State George Schultz,
who chairs CLI's advisory board, the committee "gets a lot of impetus
from the White House," essentially serving as a public outlet for
some of the Bush administration's more hawkish thinking.
-
- CLI also has a number of direct connections with the
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and other conservative think tanks
that focus on the Middle East. According to reporter Jim Lobe, it "appears
to be a spin-off of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a front
group consisting mainly of neo-conservative Jews and heavy-hitters from
the Christian Right, whose public recommendations on fighting the 'war
against terrorism' and US backing for Israel in the conflict in the occupied
territories have anticipated to a remarkable degree the administration's
own policy course."
-
- PNAC was founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan,
both of whom sit on PNAC's board of directors. Kristol edits the conservative
Weekly Standard and is also a CLI advisory board member. Kagan was George
Shultz's speechwriter during his tenure as President Reagan's Secretary
of State. CLI is chaired by another PNAC director--Bruce P. Jackson, a
former vice president at Lockheed Martin who also served as an aide to
former Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney.
-
- Other CLI advisory board members include:
-
- * former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
-
- * former Senator Bob Kerrey
-
- * Teamster President James Hoffa, Jr. retired Generals
Barry McCaffrey, Wayne Downing and Buster Glosson
-
- * Jeane Kirkpatrick, a White House and Pentagon advisor
under former presidents Reagan and Bush who is currently an AEI senior
fellow
-
- * Danielle Pletka, AEI vice president for Foreign and
Defense Policy
-
- * former CIA director James Woolsey
-
- * top Pentagon advisor and AEI fellow Richard Perle,
who helped sell the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf as co-chair of the Committee
for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG). According to journalist Jim
Lobe, CPSG "worked closely with both the Bush Sr. administration in
mobilizing support of the war, particularly in Congress, and with a second
group financed by the Kuwaiti monarchy called Citizens for a Free Kuwait.
CPSG also received a sizable grant from the Wisconsin-based Lynde &
Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of both PNAC and AEI."
-
- * former New York Democratic Representative Stephen
Solarz, who was Perle's former co-chair at CPSG
-
- Trust Us, We're Experts
-
- A number of Iraq hawks, including Perle and Woolsey,
are clients of Eleana Benador, whose PR firm, Benador Associates, doubles
as an "international speakers bureau." Other Benador clients,
many of whom have a prior history of advancing aggressive military policies
and promoting dirty wars, include:
-
- * conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer,
who criticized the New York Times in August for reporting that prominent
Republicans were dissenting from Bush's Iraq war plans
-
- * dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist Dr. Khidir Hamza
-
- * Alexander Haig, former US Secretary of State under
Ronald Reagan
-
- * Michael Ledeen, another AEI fellow and a prominent
figure in the Reagan administration's Iran/Contra scandal who helped broker
the covert arms deal between the US and Iran.
-
- In an October 14 article for WorkingForChange.com, Bill
Berkowitz reported that Benador's "high-powered media relations"
company gets her clients "maximum exposure on cable's talking-head
television programs and [places] their op-ed pieces in a number of the
nation's major newspapers." Benador and her clients have assumed a
prominent role in shaping the public debate over US Middle East policy.
-
- Benador Associates lists 34 speakers on its web site,
at least nine of whom are connected with the American Enterprise Institute,
the Washington Institute and the Middle East Forum. "Although these
three privately-funded organizations promote views from only one end of
the political spectrum," notes British journalist Brian Whitaker,
"the amount of exposure that they get with their books, articles and
TV appearances is extraordinary."
-
- The Washington Institute publishes books, places newspaper
articles, holds luncheons and seminars, and testifies before Congress.
Whitaker calls it "the most influential of the Middle East think tanks."
Its board of advisors include Alexander Haig, along with CLI advisory board
members Richard Perle, George Shultz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick.
-
- The Washington Institute "takes credit for placing
up to 90 articles written by its members--mainly 'op-ed' pieces--in newspapers
during the last year," Whitaker writes. "Fourteen of those appeared
in the Los Angeles Times, nine in New Republic, eight in the Wall Street
Journal, eight in the Jerusalem Post, seven in the National Review Online,
six in the Daily Telegraph, six in the Washington Post, four in the New
York Times and four in the Baltimore Sun."
-
- The Middle East Forum (MEF) is headed by Daniel Pipes,
a frequent guest on TV public affairs shows. It publishes Middle East Quarterly
and Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, an email newsletter sent free to
journalists, academics, and other interested groups.
-
- MEF also sponsors Campus Watch, a project that "monitors
and critiques Middle East studies in North America, with an aim to improving
them." What this means in practice is that Campus Watch attacks university
professors and departments that are perceived as harboring pro-Arab sympathies,
"working for the mullahs" or encouraging "militant Islam."
Its web site provides a form to report on "Middle East-related scholarship,
lectures, classes, demonstrations, and other activities relevant to Middle
East studies" and lists academics that "Campus Watch has identified
as apologists for Palestinian and Islamist violence."
-
- Like Benador, MEF provides its own "list of experts
... to guide television and radio bookers" and to speak in other venues.
Three of MEF's experts, in fact, are also listed on Benador's list: Khalid
Dur·n, director of the Council on Middle Eastern Affairs; Michael
Rubin, a AEI visiting fellow and Pentagon advisor, and Meyrav Wurmser,
director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the conservative Hudson
Institute and the former executive director of the Middle East Media Research
Institute. MEF's list of experts also includes two staff members from the
Washington Institute as well as PNAC/CLI's William Kristol.
-
-
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Ave., Suite 310, Madison, WI 53703; phone (608) 260ñ9713; email
editor@prwatch.org
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