“A lie told often enough becomes truth.” – Lenin

“A lie told well, often enough, and supported by actors, journalists, academics, think tanks, institutes and charities becomes truth.” – Lance

Each and everyday, Americans process and act on information. Our computers, our televisions, our radios and our print media work tirelessly to influence us to purchase something, to join something, to donate money or to buy into an idea. They want us to believe what they tell us; this car is safer and more fuel efficient, this book will make you happy, this diet will make you thin, this cosmetic will make you beautiful, this drug will prolong your life.

We realize most of these claims are false, or we find out through our friends and family, or we discover the truth by trying the product. The consequences are usually not great. Through this process, we develop a buyer’s wariness. We learn to filter information. We ignore the glitzy and the glib, growing savvy to advertisers’ tactics and tools. Sometimes, however, a message is so well hidden that we do not realize we have been influenced. We accept something with no critical analysis and no “buyer beware” reaction. It bypasses our defenses by exploiting a chink in our information armor.

Many groups exploit our vulnerability; they work to insert ideas, beliefs and attitudes without our realizing we are the target of manipulation. With varying degrees of culpability, they seek to control the public mind, from popular music to sexual mores, from religion to politics. Far from participating in the debates that energize any society or culture, they use deceit and trickery much as an unscrupulous salesman pressures a reluctant customer. They try to circumvent the public’s innate suspicion and sense of caution by coming in a side door, by using disinformation and partial truth as a foundation to spin messages that have no actual truth but do have enormous consequences.

How do they funnel disinformation into the collective psyche of the American people? How do they give propaganda the stamp of legitimacy and rationality? How do they ensure journalists and editors will validate their message? It is simple really. Get big money donors like George Soros, Harriett Crosby, Arthur D. Lipson, Donna Mae Litowitz, Fred and Alice Stanback, the Streisand Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Annenberg Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund and dozens of other foundations, trusts and wealthy individuals to fund institutes, think tanks and charities.

Give these front groups important titles that carry weighty ethical messages such as The Center for Public Integrity and The Fund for Independence in Journalism. Call them “nonprofit” and “bipartisan” and staff them with people who are ideologically allied, but not open radicals. You must be careful to maintain the façade. Wild-haired fringe types attract the wrong sort of attention. A core group handles the messages and the luminaries that are listed as board members and staff lend their names, their accolades and awards to establish the credibility the credulous public will accept. A recent article carried by the mainstream networks from the Associated Press is a case in point.

“A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.” – Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press

Mr. Daniel of the Associated Press did not mention that the “two nonprofit journalism organization” he wrote about are funded by the who is who of leftist politics and causes. The mainstream press commits this sin of omission everyday. Mr. Daniel is not a neutral news gatherer and reporter. He is an ideologue helping put false messages into the news stream, disinformation to program the public into accepting a specific idea regardless of truth, with no context or analysis. On its face, the article is about a study which claims President Bush is a liar. The study’s supposed non-profit origins (bipartisanship insinuated) sets a credible source thread which makes the ensuing article a propaganda tool precisely of the type The Center for Public Integrity and The Fund for Independence in Journalism were established to propagate. The inevitable idea association spreads and tarnishes other groups; conservatives are liars; Republicans are liars, and so on. Repeat it in multiple venues that mutually support each other and you have programmed the public with an idea that will impact it at every level, and most particularly in an election year. In this way, we are deceived, and those of us who do not have the time or skill to dig deeper will unfortunately accept or give weight to the idea of the article and of the study.

Dictatorships and radical groups the world over use the same disinformation and propaganda techniques. It is one thing to distort the efficacy of a cosmetic, it is quite another to misrepresent what an elected leader and decision maker has said or done. The study does not stand up to honest intellectual scrutiny, but that does not matter. The original idea was a political weapon planted long ago. The AP article was designed to encourage its growth. It spread to hundreds of newspapers and major news networks worldwide.

Agency France Presse’s headline also carried by Yahoo:

Top US officials declared war on truth when it came to Iraq: report

Associated Press, BBC, CBC, Al Jazeera and MSNBC Headline:

Study: False statements preceded war. Hundreds of false statements on WMDs, al-Qaida used to justify Iraq war

The Study

In False Pretenses, Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith preface their “study” with the following statement:

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

A single quote says it all, this is the perspective they wish us to swallow:

“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda.”

“It is beyond dispute” in the propaganda of the left only, the facts tell a very different story. The US military has found and destroyed tons of WMD from mustard gas to Sarin nerve agent and has transported uranium to the US for processing. These facts are not secrets, but a press that cares not a whit for the truth ignores them.

The New York Times has a particularly short memory. James Glanz, in an article published on May 22, 2004, wrote:

The United States has informed an international agency that oversees nuclear materials that it intends to move hundreds of tons of uranium from a sealed repository south of Baghdad to a more secure place outside Iraq, Western diplomats close to the agency say.

That is a great deal of nuclear material for an oil rich nation with no peaceful nuclear program and history of WMD use against its neighbors and its own citizens.

Of the uranium, 500 tons is naturally occurring ore or yellowcake, a slightly processed concentrate that cannot be directly used in a bomb. Some 1.8 tons is classified as low-enriched uranium, a more potent form but still not sufficient for a weapon.

Even here, they obfuscate, “cannot be directly used in a bomb” conceals its potential. The uranium was not yet processed. Iraq did not need it for peaceful purposes. The press is curiously incurious on where this uranium came from or for what it was intended. We may never know what munitions, nuclear and chemical, were moved to Syria, though former officers in Saddam’s army claim significant quantities were transported there just prior to the US invasion. We know Saddam intended to rekindle his nuclear program. We know that The Center for Public Integrity is flat wrong. They know it also.

As for “meaningful ties to Al Qaeda,” captured documents have revealed extensive ties to dozens of terror organizations including Al Qaeda. Those ties included funding, training, material support and weapons. These same documents, part of a massive collection of documents from several Iraqi ministries, also revealed Saddam had anthrax and the intention to make or purchase more. It will take many years to translate and correlate these documents. It will be a long time before we fully unravel Saddam’s perfidy.

Pre-war intelligence available to decision makers after 9-11 clearly categorized Iraq as a WMD and terror threat. Saddam’s behavior reinforced that suspicion. Much of the intelligence was collected and analyzed under the Clinton administration. Most of the Democrat leadership echoed the Clinton administration assessment that Iraq was a major threat and eventually voted to support President Bush, being for the war before they were against it. Many Democrats and every member of President Clinton’s cabinet spoke about Iraq; from Madeline Albright to Sandy Berger, they made definitive and dire statements.

Bill Clinton: "If Saddam rejects peace, and we have to use force, our purpose is clear: We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."

Madeleine Albright (Clinton Secretary of State): "We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and the security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction."

Sandy Berger (Clinton National Security Advisor): "[Saddam will] use those weapons of mass destruction again as he has ten times since 1983."

Dick Durbin: "One of the most compelling threats we in this country face today is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Threat assessments regularly warn us of the possibility that…Iraq…may acquire or develop nuclear weapons."

John Kerry: "If you don't believe…Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn't vote for me."

John Edwards: "Serving on the Intelligence Committee and seeing day after day, week after week, briefings on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and his plans on using those weapons, he cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, it's just that simple. The whole world changes if Saddam ever has nuclear weapons."

Nancy Pelosi: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

Now The Center for Public Integrity and The Fund for Independence in Journalism want you to believe that those same words, based on the same information from Republican lips were a lie.

There is a thread of commonality between the two organizations, a relationship with National Public Radio, either as employees or as guests or commentators. This is an example of the American taxpayer funding its own disinformation. If you dig into the biographies of the contributing journalists and editors, you find a long history of writing for The New York Times, The Nation, Mother Jones and blogs like the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos and other venues openly on the far left.

The boards of both organizations include Bill Buzenberg of NPR fame with various luminaries (Hodding Carter III, Jimmy Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs for one) and writers with interchangeable relationships between the two as donors, contributors or board members. All have easily identifiable bias. While their criticism can be and often is bi-partisan, their projects and “investigations” taken in totality invariably make the current administration, conservatives and Americans in general look bad. Their journalist’s perspectives are overwhelmingly leftist.

Accolades from The New York Times, the Daily KOS, Keith Olberman and, of course, NPR are listed down the left hand side of The Center for Public Integrity’s website. Also included are links to False Pretenses articles on the Associated Press, Reuters and Agency France Presse. The original press release comprised much of the wording found in ensuing press articles. Its authors saved intrepid journalists worldwide from the tiresome work of actually reading, assessing and validating the claims made in it.

The False Pretenses study is a deceitful weekend project of socialist progressives without integrity or intellect meant to pile on to the volumes of tired boilerplate already used to undermine the Bush administration. It was part of a remarkably well choreographed disinformation campaign to reinforce the leftist chant of “Bush lied.” Written by thinly veiled ideologues, it is meant to alter and influence our perceptions, not in open discussion and debate, but in a shadowy, misrepresented, deceitful way.

False Pretenses is an information weapon that adds to the arsenal of our enemies, foreign and domestic. It is part of a larger, coordinated effort to alter the nature and spirit of the United States, to defeat its power and chip away at its foundations, to make it a socialist communitocracy.

Many groups like The Center for Public Integrity and The Fund for Independence in Journalism work to influence you. Soros and other leftist donors fund the following groups that sound harmless and moderate, but support leftist or radical agendas and have no problem using disinformation and propaganda:

America Coming Together

American Family Voices

American Immigration Law Foundation

American Prospect

Center for American Progress

Democracy Alliance

Emily’s List

Free Press

Human Rights Watch

Independent Media Institute

Institute for Policy Study

Media Fund

Migration Policy Institute

National Council on La Raza

People for the American Way

Public Citizen

Schumann Center for Media and Democracy

Sojourners

Think Progress

Tides Foundation

And many, many more

Most Americans have no idea that the think tanks or institutes referred to on their nightly news are feeding them disinformation, or that the headlines they see in their morning paper are biased manipulations, or that the polls they hear about are propaganda tools. Many would not believe it even if you showed them the evidence. The problem worsens as we sit idle. Every time we let untruth slip by without confronting it, it grows, and the steady leftward creep that is destroying American character and strength moves inexorably on.

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;
And thus do we of wisdom and reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.

--William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”