War Propaganda: “Planting Stories” in the News Chain

• War Propaganda: “Planting Stories” in the News Chain
  by Prof Michel Chossudovsky, http://www.globalresearch.ca/  
  Author’s Note
  This article was first published in January 2003, two months before the invasion of Iraq. It was subsequently integrated into my book entitled America’s “War on Terrorism”, Global Research 2005.
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  The buzzwords of media disinformation at the time of writing were “Osama bin Laden” and “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. The central buzzwords of war propaganda have shifted since the “official death” of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Today the media buzzwords are the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL, jihad, Islamic terrorists.
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  Michel Chossudovsky, May 23, 2015
  Military planners in the Pentagon are acutely aware of the central role of war propaganda. Waged from the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA, a fear and disinformation campaign (FDC) has been launched. The blatant distortion of the truth and the systematic manipulation of all sources of information is an integral part of war planning. In the wake of 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created to the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), or “Office of Disinformation” as it was labeled by its critics:
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  “The Department of Defense said they needed to do this, and they were going to actually plant stories that were false in foreign countries — as an effort to influence public opinion across the world.1
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  And, all of a sudden, the OSI was formally disbanded following political pressures and “troublesome” media stories that “its purpose was to deliberately lie to advance American interests.”2 “Rumsfeld backed off and said this is embarrassing.”3 Yet despite this apparent about-turn, the Pentagon’s Orwellian disinformation campaign remains functionally intact: “[T]he secretary of defense is not being particularly candid here. Disinformation in military propaganda is part of war.”4
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  Rumsfeld later confirmed in a press interview that while the OSI no longer exists in name, the “Office’s intended functions are being carried out” 5 (Rumsfeld’s precise words can be consulted at http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/11/dod111802.html ).
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  A number of government agencies and intelligence units –with links to the Pentagon– are involved in various components of the propaganda campaign. Realities are turned upside down. Acts of war are heralded as “humanitarian interventions” geared towards “regime change” and “the restoration of democracy”. Military occupation and the killing of civilians are presented as “peace-keeping”. The derogation of civil liberties –in the context of the so-called “anti-terrorist legislation”– is portrayed as a means to providing “domestic security” and upholding civil liberties. And underlying these manipulated realties, “Osama bin Laden” and “Weapons of Mass Destruction” statements, which circulate profusely in the news chain, are upheld as the basis for an understanding of World events.
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