Now Showing (Again): Bush Does Propaganda

It's as predictable as Debbie Does Dallas. Many of us were squawking about it during the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Remember that? It's called 2002. In fact, we saw the White House propaganda paint on the wall within hours of the 9/11 attacks. I wrote numerous op-eds about propaganda and war for Common Dreams Web site that led to a book, Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech & Opinion Control since 9/11. My first book, Propaganda, Inc., took the lid off the U.S. Government efforts to market America to the world -- not for war -- but for commercial appeal.

This is why I'm having a hard time with the so-called "bombshell" (poor choice of words) revelations by turncoat Scott McClellan. He left the White House in 2006 and in 2008 re-emerges as a hero to some for reinforcing what so many of us were saying when it wasn't politically expedient, just truthful. Here's a guy who had the option as White House press secretary to either resign in protest or raise objections to the "political propaganda campaign" surrounding the selling of the war in Iraq. He chose neither path.

McClellan stayed at the White House as long as it served his interests. If he had cared about the public interest or the public need to know about such manipulation in marketing war then he should have spoken up when it had a personal cost. That is courage. We're lacking a lot of it these days. Instead we have a person like McClellan who takes a stand after most everyone else in the room has already stood, shouted, and exited stage left.

"I believed the president when he talked about the grave and gathering danger from Iraq," McClellan said on NBC's Today show, to explain why he didn't question when it might have mattered. McClellan was deputy press secretary as the winds of war were blowing. He said nothing because it wouldn't have been profitable for him then.

Outside his home yesterday McClellan looked downright gleeful at the buzz surrounding his book.

This is a guy whose personal charisma as press secretary made Ari Fleischer seem like George Clooney meets I, Robot.

We all know there were plenty of others who had a heart about Bush's unnecessary war when McClellan was still the Tin Man.

I'll never forget the December 2002 C-SPAN live showing of several women shouting down propaganda czar Charlotte Beers. They unfurled a banner that read: "You're selling war and we're not buying." Beers was speaking at the National Press Club about the State Department ad campaign "Shared Values," designed to convince that America had the best intentions, especially toward our Muslim and Arab sisters and brothers. Beers later resigned and Shared Values was pulled from distribution before that other production known as the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Been there, done that. Just where have you been, Mr. Press Secretary, in the last six years?! A personal conscience may have been picked up from the Lost and Found but it's all too late for me.

Imagine if McClellan had left the White House before Bush's reelection. He could have gone on a national speaking tour to detail what he now illustrates in his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, particularly in the chapter "Selling War." It might have actually shaken things up. Now we're just picking up the pieces of a war that long ago sold us down a river swollen with bodies and debris.

I'm already seeing the film version of the book and imagining the high-paid speaking engagements Scott McClellan is lining up. The PR man talks about the PR of war. His publisher PublicAffairs must be just thrilled at the eyebrow raising response to his revelations. Ka-ching. A publishing industry that caters to political profiteers like McClellan ignores the real story when it can still make a difference.

Bottom line, it wasn't sexy or profitable in 2002 to be against the war in Iraq. That's why so many of us had no other outlet than independent presses like Seven Stories to point out the obvious spin machine in Washington. I can't say whether my books made any difference to the political discussion. I'm not a celebrity or a former White House press secretary, but my conscience is still weighted by the reality of lives lost in vain. For that I'm not going to welcome Scott McClellan into my tree house of skeptics. And I hope that anyone reading this will think twice about personally enriching McClellan and his publisher by buying this too late to tell-all book. Go to the library, if you must, but recognize the public relations profit behind the government propaganda narrative.

Follow Nancy Snow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpersuasion

Comments

[JBS]

If you take some of McClellan's statements at face value, about the most charitable conclusion you can come to is he's dumber than a box of rocks. If he really is so stupid he didn't understand his own role in the propaganda campaign until Bush admitted point blank "Yeah, I did" to selective leaking of "intelligence", it's no wonder it took him 2 years to write a book.

He probably spent most of it trying to decide whether to use a red crayon or a blue crayon.

[iratior]

All the masks are off now. The war in Iraq is being fought purely for conquest. The idea is to set up Nouri al-Maliki so he is at once dictator of Iraq, yet puppet of Bush and successors. The government of Iraq will be a police state, where Sunni Muslims are treated as second-class citizens at best, and targets for ethnic cleansing and murder otherwise. The economy of Iraq will be based on oil, though the Iraqi people will see little of the profits from it. No, the profits will be reserved for the oil companies and their service providers -- security contractors for example. The Iraqis may get to work for the oil industry, provided they don't have to be paid any more than would foreign workers brought in. Yet the official line will be to brag that Iraq is "democratic" and an "ally" in the "war on terror".

[sk7326]

Ok, I can't agree here. I watched Olbermann's interview with McClellan, and what comes out is a guy who basically was a dumb kid from a political family who was in the family business. He was smitten by George Bush's charisma -- which, while lost on me, has impacted enough people that I have to accept that it must exist -- and then got to be in the inner circle of someone he perceived as a great man. He basically just got caught up in it all. Now this may not be right, but it is certainly understandable. Picture the part of every "Behind the Music" ever made where the band has its druggy, party bingy stage.

Is it not possible that he simply a couple years later actually had a sense of what was actually happening? That a guy he idolized let him down, and he fully understood he was being lied to. It makes sense.

And, at the end of the day, he sat live for nearly an hour, for a no holds barred interview, with a guy who hates the administration he worked for. There were no places questionwise that seemed restricted. And he took the questions, and answered quite a bit. He seemed authentic.

[dadw5boys]

Imagine how many poor Iraqi's would be alive not the mention American Soldiers if Scot had the balls he seems to have grown away from the Whitehouse!!!!!

Those poor people our country invaded flying FLYING A BANNER OF LIES AND DECEPTION!!!!!!

[NorCalNative]

Propaganda is the cork in the asshole of truth.

[Malarcus]

The fact is, even if McClellan took a stand and resigned while actually serving BushCorp., the amount of bile, lies, revulsion and character assassination arising from the White House would have been ten-fold than what is now being thrown his way .

[Susanfrom29]

And is that some kind of reason for him waiting until now?

No one ever claimed that principles were cheap or integrity easy.

What he is getting from the Bush administration now is nothing compared to the contempt that many of us feel for him for waiting.

[sk7326]

Better now than never. And, he was just caught up in it, and there was hero worship there. Does not make him a hero, but it makes him human. And he did not restrict where for instance, Olbermann could go as an interviewer.

[Henry]

The question, of course, gets to be: who does Colin Powell work for, the American People or the Bushwa Cabal (the one that has usurped the democracy, pissed on the constitution, and raped the public)? It appears that the "people" have been left at the station and the Press gets to be on the train, but only as long as they flatter the mobsters. Little George has been getting by with "murder" for quite awhile now. The question: Is Little George another unwitting slo card like Scotti or is he the mobster in control? I think Little George and Scotti are two peas in a pod, both of whom were abused by a cabal that is bigger than them. Just wait for the book little George pens. Is Dead-Eye Dick, the Managing Agent of the PNAC bought and paid for by the slime that runs this country? Beginning to look a lot more real to me.

[BADEN]

I also went through many a "tinfoil hat".

Kudos to the true Cassandras....may they scream in the ear of power loud and often.