Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 3 - 2004 (mainly Iraq)
Bush Feeds Off the 'Big Lie' That Iraq a Response to 9-11 by Nicholas F. Benton 
Bush Feeds Off the 'Big Lie' That Iraq a Response to 9-11 By Nicholas F. Benton In all the Vietnam area smokescreens and confusion that followed the Democratic National Convention and has persisted for an excruciatingly valuable six weeks of prime campaign time, the Big Lie that has been the key to the Bush campaign success to date remains unscathed and intact. The Big Lie is so noxiously simple but so gigantic and egregious it is mind boggling. It is simply this: the Bush campaign is being primarily fueled and energized by the patently false notion that the invasion of Iraq was a response to 9-11. It's that simple. It's that false. And it's killing the Democrats. Every speaker at the Republican Convention - from McCain to Giuliani to Schwarzenegger to Miller to Cheney to Bush - pounded away at that lie, turning what should be Bush's Waterloo into his Red Badge of Courage. It was an astounding achievement of rhetorical trickery that worked because it was so outrageous. That's the key to the notion of the Big Lie dating back to Joseph Goebbels his Nazi propaganda machine. The Democrats still don't know what hit them, in part because the Republicans then quickly shifted the subject to Vietnam swift boats. To take one's greatest vulnerability and turn it into one's greatest strength is no mean achievement. You have to hand it to the GOP for that. When it comes to lying and deceit, they're good. As for the Democrats, their reaction has been like a sucker at a shell game. They keep losing and they can't figure out why. The look is one of confusion. Now, Democrats are telling themselves to ignore the Iraq issue altogether, because Bush has it in his corner. "Let's concede it and focus on jobs and the economy," they say. They did that in the mid-term elections of 2002 and were crushed. The reason it won't work is simple: if Bush can continue to sell Iraq as a bold response to 9-11, then he can sell himself as the stronger leader. That's what the public wants in times of danger. The question is whether or not it is too late to deconstruct the Bush Big Lie in time for the election. It was only January when former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill came out with his blockbuster tell-all book, "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill." The most damning information in it concerned the plans that the Bush administration began making to invade Iraq within the days after Bush moved into the White House. Bush's cronies who formed the Project for a New American Century policy group in the 1990s, including Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and his brother, Jeb, had invading Iraq as a documented priority since 1997. They were the crowd that was the GOP's right wing "lunatic fringe" in the Reagan and Bush Sr. years. The likes of Richard Perle and friends lashed out at Bush Sr. for not chasing the Iraqis back to Baghdad and getting Saddam back in 1991. But Bush Sr. was not willing to torpedo the broad-based alliance he'd built to support Desert Storm. That's the difference between the present Bush administration's "neo-conservative" lunatics and more traditional Republicans, who after World War II constituted the party of fiscal responsibility (i.e. no deficits) and military alliances (to prevent the U.S. from bearing the full burden and cost of being the "world's policeman"). Those traditional Republicans know this difference, but few are willing to speak out because they still by and large prefer Bush to Kerry and will bite their tongues until after the election when the succession fight in their party begins. At any rate, all the documentation exists to prove that George W. and his cronies planned the invasion, lied to the American public and world community about their motives, and executed a murderous action that has killed far more people than 9-11, cost a thousand American lives and $200 billion to date, triggered a deadly civil war, and done nothing to root out the terrorists responsible for 9-11. On the contrary, it has aided and abetted al Qaeda's ability to regroup, grow and deepen its resolve and capability to strike against innocent citizens and targets on U.S. soil again. The only hope for a way out of all this is a regime change in the U.S. The prospect that this president might carry this monumental debacle as a badge of courage to victory in November would constitute not only one of the greatest deceptions in history, but also the greatest failures of those who know better. |