*Ø* Blogmanac | How the war was spun

"... How do you persuade an outraged public that the war is progressing when there are few signs of it?

"The answer, in a word, is "spin". Not spin as people usually think of it, like a press release or advertisement hyping the virtues of some product or government initiative, but spin as it has grown up in America over the past couple of decades, where giant firms and government combine to mould reality. To cite just one pertinent example, the Iraqi National Congress, which was marketed as the alternative government to Saddam Hussein's, was substantially the creation of the Rendon group, a PR organisation connected to the CIA and contracted to the Pentagon ...

"Rumsfeld was forced to admit a couple of weeks back, when he told Congress: "The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder. We acted because [after September 11] we saw the existing evidence in a new light ..."

"You have to admire Rumsfeld's form. Even when he sounds like he's confessing, he's still spinning. The fact is the Bush foreign policy hawks had not seen anything in a "new light". They had wanted to make war on Iraq for more than a decade before the World Trade Centre attack. September 11 provided the pretext, and the post-Afghanistan hiatus added PR urgency."
Source

This article from the August 2 Sydney Morning Herald reviews Weapons of Mass Deception -- our Current Pick book ... check out the Amazon.com link in the left-hand column (20% discount)