U.S. Government

Big Lie On Iraq Comes Full Circle

"Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief (director of communications, in the current parlance), once said that if you are going to lie, you should tell a big lie," Chicago Sun-Times' Andrew Greeley writes. "That may be good advice, but the question remains: What happens when people begin to doubt the big lie? Herr Goebbels never lived to find out. Some members of the Bush administration may be in the process of discovering that, given time, the big lie turns on itself. ... 'War on terror' is a metaphor. It is not an actual war, like the World War or the Vietnamese or Korean wars.

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No Proof Connects Iraq to 9/11, Bush Says (Finally)

"President Bush said Wednesday that there was no proof tying Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, amid mounting criticism that senior administration officials have helped lead Americans to believe that Iraq was behind the plot," the Los Angeles Times' Greg Miller writes. "Bush's statement was the latest in a flurry of remarks this week by top administration officials after Vice President Dick Cheney resurrected a number of contentious allegations about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda in an appearance on NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday. ...

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Republicans Highlight 'Progress' In Iraq

"Determined to change the tone of the national debate over Iraq, the White House and Republicans in Congress launched a tightly coordinated effort last week to begin providing the media with stories of American progress in the still-turbulent country," PR Week's Douglas Quenqua reports.

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The Incredible Shrinking Big Impact

In August, the White House announced what it called a "big impact" plan to overwhelm and silence critics of its failure to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, with former UNSCOM inspector David Kay assigned to compile a big, impactful report that would answer questions once and for all. According to a Monday report on ABC News, however, a draft version of Kay's report provides no solid evidence that Iraq had such arms when the United States invaded.

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Homefront Confidential

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has released an updated report chronicling the effects the war on terrorism has had on the public's right to know. The 89-page report, called "Homefront Confidential: How the War on Terrorism Affects Access to Information and the Public's Right to Know," outlines actions taken over the last two years by state and federal government agencies that limit the ability of journalists to do their jobs.

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Branding America, One More Try

"After a failed advertising campaign in the Middle East and then the war in Iraq, which most people in the region opposed, the Bush administration is struggling to find a better way to communicate," reports Sonni Efron. "Plans call for new messages as well as new messengers - including launching an Arabic-language satellite television station to compete with Qatar-based Al Jazeera. The administration's critics argue that the United States can do little to improve its image without major changes in unpopular policies, especially its close alliance with Israel.

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Belated Courage

Following recent revelations that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency misled the public about air quality in New York following the 9/11 terrorist attack, the New York Daily News has been crowing about how columnist Juan González "was the first to sound the alarm" that ground zero was a toxic dump after 9/11. As Cynthia Cotts points out, however, the newspaper "was not always so crazy about González's scoop.

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Operation Army Advertising

"Just like in the old days, the military wants you," writes Beth Snyder Bulik. "But these days, Uncle Sam has a better pitch. With the help of big-time ad agencies and sleek messages, the stalwart armed services have modernized their marketing and advertising o and attracted a new generation of recruits in the process." Tactics used to promote its "Army of One" slogan have included interactive games on the Internet and sponsorship of a NASCAR race car.

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Flooding the Zone

"Some time in the next two weeks, David Kay, head of the Iraqi Survey Group, is expected to finally release a crucial report on his findings so far in his search for weapons of destruction," writes Greg Mitchell. "Since no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have been found in Iraq, close observers now report that Kay is likely to drop on the media a massive weapon of his own: hundreds or thousands of pages of summaries and documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. ...

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