Selling the War

(CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller) To hear Bill Moyers tell it last evening on his PBS program “Buying The War," the White House press corps was a willing participant in its own deception about the President’s case for war in Iraq. He portrays us as easily-manipulated stooges on bended-knee to the President and his top aides. Moyers charges in his opening sentences that the press “largely surrendered its independence and skepticism” and joined with the Bush Administration in marching to war. To portray reporters as mindless conduits of White House policies is unfounded. To charge that the White House press was “compliant” and cheered the President’s arguments for war plainly misrepresents the facts.

Noller is wrong. The White House press specifically and the press in general were compliant, credulous stooges. The orchestration of the mass media was both impressive and duplicitious. There are news reports that the former CIA Directory George Tenet said that his phrase "slam dunk" that many people took as a green light to invade Iraq was actually a reference to effectively propaganderizing the war. Frankly, I don't know which interpretation is worse.

As Moyers showed in his documentary, the process the administration used to sell the Iraq war and arouse public support was as follows:

1. Pass to reporters false "evidence" in leading liberal publications, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
2. Cite that evidence in the Sunday talk shows.
3. Weave that evidence into a dog and pony show for Congressional leaders and the United Nations.
4. Use simple powerful images such as a mushroom cloud in all speeches.
5. Rhetorically associate at every opportunity in every speech Iraq with 9/11.
6. Co-opt the most influential reporters and columnists with private briefings, parties, and requests for advice.
7. Ruthlessly crush dissent in the intelligence services and the military.
8. Demonize or trivialize the skeptical.
9. Make it mainstream by enlisting actors and other famous people to spread the word.
10. Keep the message simple ("Iraq has WMDS") and repeat it continually, making the decision for war a foregone and popular conclusion. (The administration spin today is just as simplistic, but I don't think the public are now buying what the administration is selling: "If we don't stay, there will be genocide." )

In some hellish pit, Joseph Goebbels is smiling.

What is the antidote for simpletons like Noller?

1. Get away from the New York - Washinton, D.C. fishbowl, if not physically, at least mentally. David Halberstam, who died last week, wrote an influential book in 1972 The Best and the Brightest, an ironic reference to the intellectuals that led us into the Viet Nam quagmire. In it he refers to the incestuous relationship between press and power. I think the only way to look at the big questions clearly is to separate yourself from those people. The invitation to Georgetown parties, Lincoln Center concert, and White House briefings erodes the tough-mindedness needed to separate lies from truth.

2. Do your homework. The newsprint as well as the cable and web media are basically trascriptionists and there is nothing that flagship media outlets like more than to transcribe the words of the powerful. But it isn't from the Commander in Chief or the Secretary of Defense where you will get the truth. It's from the mid-level bureaucrats and majors. Propaganda is a bottom down process. The agonizing search for truth is a ground up process.

3. Grow a backbone. This is true for everyone-- the media, the legislature, and voters. In photographs of people the start of war-- it doesn't matter if it's WWI or WWII and it doesn't matter if it's Germany or America-- there is a commonality in expression in the crowds. It's the faces of ignorant glee. But war has a way of teaching us reality-- slowly and painfully. And it is for this reason that courageous questioning is the highest patriotism.