In times of war, the business of keeping a well oiled propaganda machine running full steam is a no-holds-barred say anything, do anything, expose anything kind of business.
If you need to tell the people that the enemy are catching Smurfs and smashing them into jelly for a super serum that is what you say.
Like I said, "fuck shame".
The only thing you concern yourself with is the end result. You know why? History is written by the victors. If you win the war then you can come back and clean it up however you'd like.
Just like in traditional commercial advertising no commercial is going to tell you "our service isn't all that great but we'll take your money just the same".
Likewise no one in the war propaganda business is going to shoot straight with you about what your getting into either.
Our casualties are routinely under reported while casualties for the bad guys are routinely exaggerated.
We never knew how many kids were being killed in the jungles of Vietnam until way after that fiasco was over.
War deals in the currency of human life. The government keeps asking for more deposits but no one has the balls to ask what the balance looks like on the account.
Nothing you read or hear has gotten to you without being filtered under a particular light for a certain effect.
All embedded reporting did was really gave the military total control over what you saw, heard and read.
Maybe it's because war is one of those things that most people can't help but chose a side on.
The reason the propaganda business is so ruthless is because there are minds out there to be won over.
Most people don't have a fucking clue where they stand on much of anything.
The job of the war propagandist is to come up with the most sensational way of giving them what they want to hear.
Hitler did it by constantly going off on how sweet he was and how sweet the Germans were by proxy.
Up until the day American troops kicked down Hitler 's front door he was pumping out bullshit about how the Germans were kicking our ass.
I am telling you its totally shameless.
Before the war Donald Rumsfeld was telling the American people that U.S. forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry after we invade Iraq and that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and more importantly we knew where they were .
Now in light of the reality of the situation in Iraq Donald Rumsfeld is now saying that he never made such statements.
On February 20, 2003 Rumsfled never said " There is no question that they (US Troops) would be welcomed. Go back to Afghanistan , the people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and doing all the things that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda would not let them do ."
When he was recently checked on this he responded during one of the testy exchanges with reporters that has become his trademark, " Never said that," he said. "Never did. You may remember it well, but you're thinking of somebody else. You can't find, anywhere, me saying anything like either of those two things you just said I said ."
Maybe if he keeps clicking his heels together he'll wake up and all of this would've been a dream.
When testifying in front of congress in regards to the mountains of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that we were going to find Rumsfeld said Saddam " has amassed large clandestine stocks of biological weapons including anthrax and botulism toxin and possibly smallpox. His regime has amassed large stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX and sarin and mustard gas ."
He even went so far as to point out where the shit was.
" We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat ."
Now he says, " I said, 'We know they're in that area, I should have said, ' I believe we're in that area. Our intelligence tells us they're in that area,' and that was our best judgment ."
Saying things like, " well, that's our best guess " doesn't exactly get the crowd on its feet if you know what I mean?
War propaganda is less honest than commercial advertising which can practically say anything to hawk a product.
I guess the difference between war propaganda and traditional advertising is that in traditional advertising you can practically say anything, while if you are trying to get people hyped up to take over a country you can say anything.