Here is a vital account of what transpires when a government believes its own deceptions and the news media fails to challenge them. The Best War Ever

is about a conflict 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.

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.

As the team of Rampton and Stauber illustrate 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 needles (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. Repeatedly, when faced with predictions of problems, policymakers dismissed the warnings of Iraq experts, choosing instead to promulgate their own version of the war through conservative media outlets and PR campaigns.

Even now that public opinion is turning against the war, the Bush administration and its allies continue their attempts at cover-ups: downplaying civilian deaths and military injuries, to the extent of keeping injured soldiers and their families out of the news; employing marketing buzzwords like ''victory'' again and again to shore up public opinion; and failed efforts, through third-party PR firms, at creating phony news.

Now that even U.S. generals agree that war critics were right in the first place, Rampton and Stauber show us how to wake up and not be misled again.

 

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber are the bestselling authors of Weapons of Mass Deception, Toxic Sludge ls Good for You!, Banana Republicans, and Trust Us, We're Experts! Stauber is the founder and director of the Center for Media and Democracy. Rampton is the founder of the website www.Sourcewatch.org.They both work in Madison, Wisconsin, for the Center for Media and Democracy( www.preatch.org ).