A friend forwarded me this article -- a book review in "Al-Gardhiyan" for Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq.  It annoyed me enough to shoot back.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America. According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their new book Weapons of Mass Deception , it was used to engineer a state of emergency that would justify an invasion of Iraq. Rampton and Stauber expose how news was fabricated and made to seem real. But they also demonstrate how a coalition of the willing - far-Right officials, neo-con think-tanks, insanely pugilistic media commentators and of course well-paid PR companies - worked together to pull off a sensational piece of intellectual dishonesty. Theirs is a study of modern propaganda.

What occurs to me in reading their book is that the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's 'prop-agenda '. It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'.

What's worst is the absolute certainty with which they assert "propaganda" as an objective / obvious fact.   Unfortunately, in this case, it's a charge levied when one group (the media elite represented by the Guardian and authors of the book) doesn't like how another group (the majority of the American public) feels about some issue (Iraqi intervention).  

We the annointed media are so much smarter than the rest of you, surely we're detecting something that you can't!   Somehow, they've got better BS detectors than the rest of us.

Aside from the incessant 'weapons of mass destruction', there were 'regime change' (military invasion), 'pre-emptive defence' (attacking a country that is not attacking you), 'critical regions' (countries we want to control), the 'axis of evil' (countries we want to attack), 'shock and awe' (massive obliteration) and 'the war on terror' (a hold-all excuse for projecting American military force anywhere).

What the Guardian wants to whisk away is the fact that phrases like "pre-emptive defense" ARE more accurate than their suggested "attacking someone not attacking you".    "Someone not attacking you" is a broad category that potentially includes Canada, Mexico, the UK, France and so on alongside Iraq, NK, and Iran (well, not so sure about France  ).   And this is precisely the connotation that the Guardian wants to leave you with - the underlying idea that every / any nation is at risk from US hegemony - big & small, West and non-West.   "Pre-emptive defense" - even with the ambiguity still manifest in that phrase - is far more prescriptive about the group of nations and actions we're talking about.  There's more truth in "pre-emptive" rather than less (thus failing a key acid test for propaganda) -- it's just a truth that doesn't fit the Guardian's world view.  

I could just as easily accuse Guardian & Co. of engaging in propaganda -- in the above case, who's more guilty of using words / phrases to say one thing while implying something far bigger and more sinister?

The review also treads on the old / tired argument of government "Media control" --  an absurd argument in this day of a massive number of news outlets (3 fulltime cable news networks?   5 major TV networks?  Radio?  100s of newstand magazines?  100s of thinktanks, nonprofits & NGOs? International press at the click of a mouse?   And yes, of course, blogs).   If Guardian is correct that there is a massive propaganda blanket, surely a few of these folks have managed to crawl outside of it as valiantly as the Guardian?  Don't get me wrong, I think there's a "pro-spiracy" at work, but I also clearly recognize that American media is far far more diverse than, for example, the home of the Guardian - the UK, or almost all other developed nations.

In fact, by almost all measurements, the media is MORE decentralized, diverse, and 'open' now than at anytime in history.   Narrow measures like the fact that some large companies own more radio stations than they did before ignore the "man on the street" facts - you have more news outlets available to you than your parents did.

Perhaps most of all, as someone who supports Iraqi intervention, I find the whole thing just plain insulting.   Clearly I'm a mindless sponge just soaking up whatever the secret / sinister NeoCon Cabal feels like feeding me....  Rags like the Guardian are quick to point out (correctly) how polarizing Bush's "With Us or Against Us" rhetoric is but NEVER in turn acknowledge how polarizing their "we-the-smart" vs. "you-the-stupid/brainwashed" polemics are.