Saturday, November 19, 2005

The Man Who Sold the War or Rendon and gnashing of teeth

Go read this story in full. It is fascinating. Bamford is exposing the people who packaged and marketed the lies Bush wanted to make his case for war.
This is how our "perceptions were managed."

How remarkable to have the whole world believing in Saddam's WMD. If this guy Rendon stays out of jail he will have every corporation on earth wanting his services.

Meanwhile Cameron is too busy to reply to my emails.
I guess the old ladies in curlers and the retired colonels are the only constituency that matters.

The Man Who Sold the War: "Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as 'perception management,' manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the 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."

1 comment:

Deb said...

In time, perhaps Americans will one day refer to Rendon in casual conversation.

"He's such a Rendon"

rather than, "He's such a Benedict Arnold"