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Sheldon Rampton

John C. Stauber

The Best War Ever Paperback – 14 Sept. 2006

by John C. Stauber (Author)

4.1 8 ratings

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The war in Iraq may be remembered as the point at which the propaganda model perfected in the twentieth century stopped working: the world is too complex, information is too plentiful, and-as events in Iraq reveal- propaganda makes bad policy.

The Best War Ever is about a war that was devised in fantasy and lost in delusion. It highlights the futility of lying to oneself and others in matters of life and death. And it offers lessons to the current generation so that, at least in our time, this never happens again.

As the team of Rampton and Stauber show in their first new book since President Bush's reelection, the White House seems to have fooled no one as much as itself in the march toward a needless (from a security perspective) war in Iraq. As the authors argue, one of the most tragic consequences of the Bush administration's reliance on propaganda is its disdain for realistic planning in matters of war. Repeatedly, when faced with predictions of problems, U.S. policymakers dismissed the warnings of Iraq experts, choosing instead to promulgate its version of the war through conservative media outlets and PR campaigns. The result has been too few troops on the ground to maintain security; failure to anticipate the insurgency; and oblivious disregard, even contempt, for critics in either party who attempted to assess the human and economic costs of the war.

Even now that withdrawal seems imminent, however, the administration and its allies continue their cover-ups: downplaying civilian deaths and military injuries; employing marketing buzzwords like "victory" repeatedly to shore up public opinion; and botched attempts, through third-party PR firms, at creating phony news.

The Bush administration entered Iraq believing that its moral, technological, and military superiority would ensure victory abroad, and that its mastery of the politics would win support at home. Instead, it found a morass of problems that do not lend themselves to moralistic, technological, or propaganda-based solutions.

Print length

243 pages
Language

English
Publisher

J P Tarcher
Publication date

14 Sept. 2006
Dimensions

14.07 x 1.8 x 20.78 cm
ISBN-10

1585425095
ISBN-13

978-1585425099
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Product description

About the Author

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber are the bestselling authors of Weapons of Mass Deception, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!, Banana Republicans, and Trust Us, We're Experts! Stauber is the founder and director of the Center for Media & Democracy. He and Rampton write and edit the quarterly PR Watch.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ J P Tarcher (14 Sept. 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 243 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1585425095
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1585425099
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.07 x 1.8 x 20.78 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 2,587,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 16,187 in Publishing Reference
- 133,644 in Government & Politics

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Balanced, informative and well written, a superb book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 July 2015

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This is the sort of book that makes you angry, it is an almost forensic dissection of the media manipulation, misrepresentation and deception of the US government in relation to the war and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Scrupulously researched and refreshingly free of emotive language the book is actually much more powerful as a result of the even tone. The book picks up where the book "Weapons of Mass Deception" leaves off, although it does follow on logically from the earlier book I do not think it necessary to have read that one to appreciate this one and it stands up well on its own. In a way the authors are kind of like a thinking mans Al Franken as whereas he is very funny and goes for the jugular he is not the most balanced writer and at times is guilty of the same partisan approach as those he criticises (albeit with a lot more wit and style), Rampton and Stauber let the logic of their arguments and analysis make their points for them without recourse to polemics or diatribes. At times the impression of the Bush regime veers between the merely incompetent to the deeply sinister and in particular the Plame Wilson affair is truly shocking. Whilst Scooter Libby took the fall for that episode it is hard to believe he was some loose canon acting on his own. The Iraqi National Congress come out of the book very badly but perhaps not as badly as those in the Administration who seemed to end up believing their own web of propaganda. The medias role is also put under the microscope, what is interesting is that most accounts focus on the less than subtle input of right wing media channels such as Fox News yet this book draws attention to the less than glorious role of the respected New York Times. Overall a first class book, balance, well written, informative and engaging, 5*.

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Dennis Littrell

They mean for Ahmed Chalabi

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 April 2007

Rampton and Stauber are the authors of "Weapons of Mass Deception," which won my personal award for best book title of the decade (so far). Here the irony is a bit over the top. So are these alternative titles I've thought up for them: "Nice Welfare Program for Halliburton," or "Generals Test Toys, Get Bored," or "Don't let the sand get in your eyes; Don't let the shrapnel break your heart," or "Pallets of Hundred Dollar Bills, Forked-Lifted to Eternity!" Or how about "Arabian Nights in the Green Zone, Shooting Pool with My Buds--Not" or "Thank You, Mr. President, I've Been Born Again (In a Flagged-Draped Coffin) and My Eyes Can See Clearly Now: There Is No Light at the End of the Tunnel."

No tunnel, no eyes, and that's just as well since Halliburton does not do Walter Reed or any other stateside hospital for our guys--don't you know we've got a budget crisis and we need to stimulate the economy with more bit corporation tax cuts.

What Messrs. Rampton and Stauber are all about here however is not satire or cheap noir laughs. The sad truth is the book is just another closely documented, clearly reasoned indictment of the most colossal foreign policy blunder of the twentieth century by an American president, and how it happened.

After an introduction in which the authors recall Tom DeLay enthusing, "We're no longer a superpower. We're a super-duper-power. We are the leader that defends freedom and democracy around the world...When we lead others follow," there's Chapter 1 "The Victory of Spin," in which the war is spun out according to the Cheney-Rumsfeld vision: shock and awe, and garlands of flowers around our heroic necks, and Mission Accomplished! photo ops. We are reminded of just who told what lie and how cowardly were our sycophantic media and cowering Congress.

Chapter 2 is about "Plamegate" (get the SOB's wife!) and the yellowcake road while Chapter 3 gets into the WMDs that were not there and recalls all the lies and misinformation and how the White House and the media kept tantalizingly predicting the imminent finding of same. And then a chapter on how Ahmed Chalabi with help from adorning neocons scammed the US government and made himself and pals rich, richer and--well, not as rich as ExxonMobil or Halliburton execs, but rich enough.

Why do I keep mentioning Halliburton? Well, the book is entitled "The Best War Ever" and if there is anybody in this great big wide wonderful world that might, just might, think the title is purely denotative, it would be Halliburton and subsidiaries.

Chapter 4 celebrates the rewriting of history, George Orwell style. The authors finish up with a couple of chapters focusing on the effect of the war on the Iraqis themselves (huh?). First there was (and is) the dire necessity to under count the civilian dead and maimed. And then there's the melancholy experience of how "victory" faded after the staged fall of Saddam's statue like a ghostly mirage in the desert.

"The new boss, just like the old boss," once sang The Who.

Irony.

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S Wood

Big Lies: Bush, The Media And Iraq

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 February 2010

With the war in Afghanistan-Pakistan becoming the new foreign policy fiasco, the War in Iraq has, along with it's chief "planner" Bush and his wide-eyed assistant Blair, largely retired from public view. This book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Centre for Media and Democracy is a useful reminder of the level of mendacity that was a feature of the lead up to war as well as the war itself.

The opening section of the book picks up from the point their earlier work Weapons of Mass Deception concluded. It covers the activity at the UN including Colin Powell's "give war a chance" spiel. Powell's presentation only seemed to be accepted in the media because, well you know, Powell's a nice guy, he's not Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld: he doesn't tell lies. In effect his PR persona triumphed over the reality of his claims, which were, to quote Powell's initial reaction to the script: "Bulls--t!".

Also covered are the Plame affair in which senior administration figures destroyed Valerie Plame's career in order to punish her husband for debunking the nonsense spoken about Iraqi attempts to purchase Niger Uranium. The case of the "journalist" Judith Miller, who was involved in the administrations outing of Plame's as a C.I.A. agent, is also brought to light. Her links to Ahmed Chalabi and her dissemination of his propaganda in The New York Times both before and after the war with regard to Weapons of Mass Destruction are breathtaking. There is an interesting section where the authors (partially) list the amount of times that Fox News and others reported the finding of WMD with certainty, when in fact nothing was ever found. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad surveys found that 34% of Americans believed that WMD had been found, and a preposterous 22% believed they had been used (though not so preposterous in the unlikely event that they meant depleted uranium). The later efforts of the Bush administration and their media supporters to re-write the history of the conflict are also examined and filed under fantasy.

Despite the cartoons that grace the front of all of Stauber and Rampton's books they are serious, comprehensively sourced works of debunking. In the case of the Bush Administration, the war in Iraq as well as the mainstream media's failings and collusions in the covering of the later stages of the lead up to that war and the war itself. It is disappointing that this book, unlike their other works, never had a British edition when it was published in 2006 and I had to buy it second hand from the U.S. Definitely a work of enlightenment, and well worth getting your hands on if you prefer reality to myths.

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