RollingStone.com:The Man Who Sold the War: Politics

Everyone in the world should read thisRollingStone.com
article. It is a real eye opener into how and through what means the war in Iraq waas sold to the American people. It talks about how the propaganda effort was outsourced to the Rendon Group, a politically connected PR frim that specializes in "psyops" style PR to effect our national opinion.

The Rendon Group is a shadowy "perception management" firm that has, among other things, created such entities as the Iraq National Congress. A relevant quote:

...[T]he Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.


"They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor of the industry trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "It's all cloak-and-dagger stuff."

It is a very twisted tale that is laid out in this article. I commend the author, James Bamford, for getting what seems like unprescedented access to the workings of a very secret system of government controll over media branches large and small. Perhaps this will lead to some fundamental questions being asked.