p 78 - How did the Bush administration introduce a link between Saddam and 9/11, when there was no evidence that Saddam had been involved in planning the 9/11 attacks? White House communications strategists set out, instead, to suggest a "relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda. Every high official of the administration delivered the same message to journalists. Condoleeza Rice, national secuirty advisor, claimed that al Qaeda "clearly has had links to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said "There is no question but that there have been interactions between the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials and al Qaeda operatives." Vice President Cheney noted that while there was no evidence that Saddam helped plan 9/11, "there is a pattern of relationship going back many years." And President Bush claimed that "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade." Even though outside experts tried to point out that there was littler or no hard evidence to support these claims, and that there was a good deal of evidence that Saddam was one of the secular Arab regimes that Osama opposed, the high volume of repeated administration messages primed the news for months leading up to the war.
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"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels
"Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda"
(for Hitler)
