War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death

Let us pray that peace

be now restored to the world

and that God will preserve it always.

These proceedings are closed.

The final United Nations

victory has been won.

The war is over. Peace is here.

The crowd of two million

review the greatest

parade of victorious

arms ever witnessed.

This is the news that

electrified the world.

Unconditional surrender

of a new world of peace.

Today the guns are silent.

The skies no longer rain death.

The entire world lies

quietly at peace.

On the way American

infantrymen once again

hit the road toward Korea's

capital city of Seoul.

US Marines were ordered into

the Dominican Republic.

The US Marines have also taken

center stage in South Vietnam.

This is what the war in

Vietnam is all about.

The first wave of marines

landed in Grenada.

Twelve hundred US Marines would

land in Grenada for several days.

Most of the Libyans were terrified

with last nights heavy bombing raid.

President Bush's

decision to neutralize

Panama's General Manuel Noriega.

Saddam Hussein's reign

of terror is over.

The war in Iraq.

Narrator:
Since World War II, we

have seen a dramatic escalation

in the United States' military

actions around the globe.

Ranging from missile strikes

and rapid troop deployments

to all out wars and occupations.

The reasons for these military

interventions have varied,

each involving complex

geopolitical interests in

different parts of the world at

different times in US history.

But the public face of these wars

has not reflected this complexity.

Over the past five decades

the liberation and debate

about US Military actions

have largely been left

to a closed circle...

of elite Washington policy makers,

politicians and bureaucrats

whose rationals...

for war have come into public view

only with the release of leaked

or declassified documents,

often years after the

bombs have been...

dropped and the troops

have come home.

In real time, officials

have explained...

and justified these

military operations

to the American people by

withholding crucial information

about the actual reasons and

potential costs of military action.

Again and again choosing to present

an easier version of war's reality.

A steady and remarkably consistent

story line designed not to inform

but to generate and maintain

support and enthusiasm for war.

Nationally syndicated

columnist and...

author Norman Solomon

began to notice the

basic contours of this official

storyline during the war in Vietnam.

Norman Solomon:
As

a teenager I read...

about the war in

Vietnam as it escalated.

I saw the footage on television.

In combat there are no niceties.

A dead enemy soldier is simply an

object to be examined for documents

and then removed as quickly as

possible - sometimes crudely.

Solomon:
People that I knew

began to go to Vietnam

in uniform of the US military and

as time went on I began to wonder,

particularly as I became draft age,

about the truthfulness of

the statements coming from

the White House and top

officials in Washington.

We fight for the principal

of self-determination,

that the people of

South Vietnam should...

be able to choose their own course.

Choose it in free

elections, without...

bias, without terror

and without fear.

Solomon:
And through that

process I began to really wonder

about whether we were

getting more truth or lies.

Narrator:
In the years since,

Solomon has focused his attention on

a set of striking

parallels between the...

selling of the Vietnam

War and the way

Presidents have rallied

public support...

for subsequent military actions.

Solomon:
Looking back on the

Vietnam War, as I did many times,

I had a very eerie feeling that while

the names of the countries changed

and of course each

circumstance was different

there were some parallels that

cried out for examination.

Rarely if ever does a war just

kind of fall down from the sky.

The foundation needs

to be laid and the...

case is built - often with deception.

In the background was

the growing struggle

between two great powers to

shape the post-war world.

Already an iron curtain

had dropped around Poland,

Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria.

It can't happen here? This is

what it looks like if it should.

Chief of Police is

hustled off to jail.

Public utilities are seized

by fifth columnists.

Editor who operates under a free

press, he goes to jail too.

This will account for

some of the enemy,

but some will get

through to your home.

Narrator:
The use of

propaganda to arouse...

public support for war is not new.

Leaders throughout

history have turned...

to propaganda to

transform populations

understandably weary

of the costs of...

war into war's most

ardent supporters.

Invoking images of nationalism

and channeling fear and anger

towards perceived

enemies and threats.

And in the United States

since World War II,

government attempts to win public

support for military actions

have followed a similar pattern.

We are living in an era marked

by the growth of socialism.

Its basic Godless philosophy.

Lying. Dirty.

Its goal of world conquest.

Shrewd. Godless.

Its insidious tactics.

Murderous. Determined.

And its cunning strategy.

It's an international

criminal conspiracy.

Solomon:
It's the same sort of

message that's utilized today

and often identical techniques.

States like these and their terrorist

allies constitute an axis of evil,

arming to threaten the

peace of the world.

These are barbaric people.

Servants of evil. The cult of evil.

A monumental struggle

of good versus evil.

But good will prevail.

Solomon:
Whether it's the

Soviet Union or Al Qaeda,

it provides a way to

legitimize US plans for war.

You have the comparisons between

the enemy leader and Hitler.

President Bush calls Saddam Hussein

a little Hitler again today.

We are dealing with Hitler revisited.

Bin Laden and his terrorist

allies have made their intentions

as clear as Lenin and

Hitler before them.

Solomon:
We don't get

information that...

would help us put the

images in perspective.

This mad dog of the Middle East.

I find that he's not only a

barbarian but he's flakey.

The drug indicted, drug-related

indicted dictator of Panama.

And to support their claim that

Noriega was out of control,

ghoulish evidence of Satanic

practices with dead animals

that one official called kinky.

Saddam Hussein is a

homicidal dictator

who is addicted to weapons

of mass destruction.

Solomon:
And as Aldous

Huxley said long ago,

it's more powerful often to leave

things out then to tell lies.

For instance, quite

often the US government

directly helped the dictators

that were now being told

must be overthrown and it's

that selectivity of history

that's a very effective

form of propaganda.

Narrator:
This selective

view of reality,

buttressed by these

fear-based appeals

represents a larger pre-war pattern.

The repeated claim that the

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