Propaganda Still Sells Wars

During the fall 1990 run-up to the 1991 invasion of Kuwait to oust Iraqi forces, known as Desert Storm, the U.S. main stream media reported a story by a 15-year old Kuwaiti girl know as Nayirah. She testified before Congress and described how she saw Iraqi troops storm the Kuwaiti hospital where she worked as a volunteer, and steal incubators leaving 312 babies "on the cold floor to die." Seven senators referred to the incubator story during the debate to authorize the use of force. President George H.W. Bush mentioned the story five times, characterizing the supposed incident as "ghastly atrocities" and "Hitler revisited."

Several weeks before the U.S. dropped bombs on Iraqi forces in January 1991, a few reporters began to question the validity of the incubator story. It later turned out that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. and never volunteered in the Kuwaiti hospital she mentioned in her story. The famous public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton coached her and others in a $10 million contract with the Kuwaitis to sell Desert Storm to the American people and Congress.

President George H.W. Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft said the incubator story was "useful in mobilizing public opinion" although they "didn't know it wasn't true at the time." Scowcroft served as Bush's Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2005.

President Lyndon B. Johnson's Propaganda Groups

The Vietnam War was not popular, to say the least. In order to sell the war to the American public, by 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson created two groups: the White House Information Group and Citizens Committee for Peace with Freedom in Vietnam. The two groups worked "to consolidate favorable news coverage," according to historian David Brinkley.

The White House Information Group consisted of White House staff members who provided "more effective and better coordinated information to those seeking to defend U.S. policy," as William Conrad Gibbons stated in his book The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War. The role of the group was to "gather information" and work with "information officers at the State and Defense Departments to coordinate and improve the flow of information." The Citizens Committee was "a citizens' organization to campaign for the administration's policy."

WWI's Committee on Public Information

While Europe was embroiled in World War One, President Woodrow Wilson asked journalist George Creel to head up the Committee on Public Information (CPI) in 1971, commonly referred to as the Creel Commission. The purpose of the CPI was to market the war to the American people who were reluctant to get involved, or in the words of historian Howard Zinn, "It was a massive effort to excite a reluctant public."

In order to market the war, the CPI enlisted the help of the entertainment and advertising industries. The CPI developed and trained a nationwide group of public speakers dubbed the "Four-Minute Men" who went into movie theaters or other public places and delivered four minute speeches urging their listeners to support the war effort by donating to the Red Cross, joining the military, or buying Liberty Bonds. The Four-Minute Men delivered 7,555,190 speeches in 1917 and 1918, according to the CPI's records.

The CPI produced a multi-media marketing blitz. Filmmakers were recruited to produce pro-war films. Pamphlets called "Red, White and Blue Books" were published which contained essays in support of the war. Posters were created which urged people to support the war effort by buying Liberty Bonds or enlisting in the military. The most famous poster featured Uncle Sam sternly pointing his finger, with caption, "I Want You." CPI issued over 6,000 press releases and 200,000 "lantern slide" shows." Boy Scouts delivered copies of Wilson's speeches door-to-door. Churches, schools, and other organizations were used to disseminate CPI brochures and other literature.

In Creel's 1920 account of the CPI, titled How We Advertised America, he wrote that the "war was not fought in France alone...It was the fight for the minds of men, for the conquest of their convictions." He noted that "there was no part of the great war machinery that we did not touch, no medium of appeal that we did not employ."

"It was in recognition of public opinion as a major force that the Great War differed most essentially from all previous conflicts," Creel wrote in a 1922 essay. Since then U.S. presidents have made use of the weapon called the main stream media to manipulate public opinion. In the words of Noam Chomsky, presidents like to "manufacture consent" for war.

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