War / Peace

"Afghanistan's Northern Alliance Junbish Party is using Philip S. Smith & Associates, Washington, D.C., to make sure it plays a leading role in the post-Taliban government," O'Dwyer's PR Daily writes. "Smith is a former Asia policy advisor for the House Republican Research Committee and senior legislative assistant to Rep. Don Ritter (R-Pa). He reports to Gen. Rashid Dostum, a former Communist who switched sides and fought the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan. Dostum is the former warlord who controlled the key Afghanistan city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, " Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi, is attempting a rehabilitation. Top U.S. and Libyan officials have held several unpublicized meetings in England and Switzerland in recent years to discuss improving ties. Public-relations campaigns and lobbying efforts on Libya's behalf are under way, funded in part by oil money and driven by a desire to cash in on future deals or resume business interrupted by sanctions. ... The four American oil companies that were forced by U.S. sanctions to suspend operations in Libya ... are eager to return to Libya.

"The images that streamed from inside Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul were a propaganda dream for the United States government," notes the Independent. "Afghan women, after years of cruel subjugation by the Taliban, were daring to shed their veils and to expose their faces once again to the world and to sunlight." Meanwhile, in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the first woman ever to become a U.S.

"Alexander the Great was one of history's earliest propagandists," writes Matt Labash in a historical overview of military propaganda techniques through the ages, published in the conservative Weekly Standard. He lists examples, some humorous, of psychological ploys used by American, British and Nazi warriors.