Reviews and Interviews about "The Best War Ever"
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's new book, The Best War Ever (Tarcher/Penguin), was published in September 2006. The following is a sample of reviews and press coverage the book has received.
BuzzFlash.com Reviews
". . . In a reign of government propped up by propaganda, deception and fantasy, Rampton and Stauber are keen guides into understanding how so many Americans are misled over and over and over again. In short, they are experts in unraveling 'spin.' One of our favorite conclusions in The Best War Ever is, 'The question of whether they were liars or fools, however, is less important than the question of whether they have shown themselves qualified to lead. Clearly, they have not.'"
Publishers Weekly, October 2, 2006
"Having dissected the events and reporting that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003's Weapons of Mass Deception, Rampton and Stauber now unravel the Bush administration's 'web of disinformation' around its handling of the war. In the tradition of Austrian journalist Karl Wiegand, who observed after WWI that 'Politicians lie to journalists and then believe those lies when they see them in print,' the authors detail the work of Bush's PR apparatus and the media's uncritical response. They provide elegant, effective analysis of examples including the media's approach to Colin Powell's now infamous UN speech affirming the existence of Saddam Hussein's WMDs, the politics behind the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent, the Pentagon's use of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi as an inside source, and the complicated relationships New York Times reporter Judith Miller (who also reported on Iraq's possession of WMDs) had with the high ranking people in the administration. Rampton and Stauber make their argument with verve while carefully documenting their claims; this is muckraking without mudslinging."
FAIR/Counterspin, interview with John Stauber, September 15-21, 2006
"Every administration seems to take propaganda to a new level. . . . I think what's so frightening about the current situation is that what worked in selling the Iraq war was something called the big lie tactic. . . . The people in power state the most audacious sorts of information, that they know to be false, but that they know will incite the public: 'Saddam was behind 9/11. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Saddam is in league with Al Qaeda.' . . . Because the mainstream media echoed and repeated those statements in the United States, and because the mainstream media refused to challenge those lies and deceptions, the big lie tactic was allowed to work. There's not much more you can say that's a worse indictment of a nation's news media."
Willamette Week (Portland, Oregon), interview with John Stauber, September 20, 2006
"We need a lot more critical thinking and media criticism taught in schools at a very early age. What we see happening with people not being skeptical and not demanding good journalism, not being held accountable for their lies, is that we're really losing our democracy -- which is ultimately ironic, because the basic claim that the administration makes is that they're pursuing the war on terror to preserve freedom and democracy."
Bill Berkowitz, "Is it the PR, or the Policy?" Working for Change, September 21, 2006
"'The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on media campaigns that have been spectacularly ineffective,' Rampton told me in a telephone interview. "'That the enemy has been more effective in communicating its message to the world is not so much a reflection of their media savvy as it is on the ineffective message of the United States.'"
