"Following a disastrous 2002 for the public relations industry, the war in Iraq now threatens to blight 2003," Advertising Age writes. "The most immediate problem for PR agencies is the shrinking news hole -- a vital element of campaigns -- now that it appears the war will go on for longer than some expected." Bad news for PR, but advertisers need not worry. "A majority of U.S. consumers say they favor a TV network return to regularly scheduled commercial programming during the ongoing war in Iraq, according to an exclusive Advertising Age survey. In a poll ... 83% of consumers said it is appropriate for the networks to run prime-time entertainment during the first weeks of the war," Ad Age writes. Meanwhile marketers of the largest U.S. brands "are going on the offensive to combat war-related boycotts of American products in hot spots around the globe. In markets from Egypt and Argentina to Europe, U.S. companies are plotting strategy, usually focusing on how to emphasize their ties to local communities and economies," Ad Age writes. Representatives from Procter & Gamble, Heinz, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Xerox and McDonald's met recently with U.S. Embassy officials in Cairo to discuss the boycotts.

"France's Sodexho Alliance is fending off Congressional bids to strip it of its $880 million food service contract with the U.S. Marines because of the French snub of President Bush's invasion of Iraq," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "Edelman is our corporate agency of record, and we use it for crisis work," Bonnie Goldstein, a PR staffer at Sodexho's North American headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., told O'Dwyer's. "Rep. Jack Kingman (R-Ga.) wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking him to consider transferring the Marines contract to a U.S.-based firm. That would send a 'tangible signal to the French government that there are economic consequences associated with their international policies.' The letter was signed by 59 Congressmen," O'Dwyer's writes.

"According to recent leaks from the Pentagon, Gen. Tommy Franks and other uniformed war planners argued with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over how many troops and how much armor to commit to the war," writes Lucian K. Truscott IV. "The soldiers wanted more of both," but "Rumsfeld was reportedly among the influential group on the administration war team who predicted that the Iraqi army would quickly fold after it had been shocked and awed. ... The question is, why didn't the generals insist on the force structure they were correct in thinking would be necessary? The fact that more than two-thirds of senior military officers identify themselves as conservative Republicans - and the true percentage is probably a lot higher than that - might have something to do with the military's lack of backbone. ... The lack of backbone in the top ranks of Pentagon generals when dealing with their Republican friends may cause unnecessary deaths on the battlefield, a high price to pay for a military that is finally happy with the politics of its civilian leaders, but must deal uneasily with their lack of military expertise."

"Clear Channel Communications ... finds itself fending off a new set of accusations: that the company is using its considerable market power to drum up support for the war in Iraq, while muzzling musicians who oppose it. ... The critics ... cite an unusual series of pro-military rallies drummed up by Glenn Beck, whose talk show is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, a Clear Channel subsidiary. ... Thirteen of those rallies were co-sponsored and promoted by local Clear Channel stations, including one held March 15 in Atlanta that was sponsored by Clear Channel's WGST and attended by an estimated 25,000 people. Further plans for rallies include events in Tampa; Lubbock, Tex.; and Dothan, Ala. Clear Channel, which hired Brainerd Communicators, a financial communications and crisis-management firm, last week to help deal with the controversy, did not make Mr. Beck available for an interview."

"It's no coincidence that Americans, and others around the world, are echoing the exact same phrases and news bites at the same times with near-military precision. It's the result of a slickly orchestrated public relations campaign on the part of the military and the U.S. government that is borrowing the best practices of the corporate PR world. ... The PR industry, as many may know, was actually started by the military during World War I, when persuasive techniques were developed to recruit soldiers. 'After the [First World War] a lot of those [PR] people went to work for the private sector and are seen as the grandfathers of PR,' says Laura Miller, associate editor of PR Watch [and author of the article War Is Sell ].... "They were very up front about the fact that [in their opinion] in a democracy, public opinion needs to be controlled by a small number of people who know what's best for the public.' In the case of the war against Iraq, that means that there should be no confusion or dissent about the aims and progress of the war."

Throughout the world, people are witnessing scenes of horror from Iraq on Al-Jazeera, the Arab cable news station. However, Al-Jazeera barely penetrates the United States. The network's newly-launched English-language web site remains down and may not be available for several weeks due to hacker attacks. According to Al-Jazeera correspondent Faisal Bodi, "few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon." Nevertheless, the station has become one of the most sought-after news resources in the world. "I do not mean to brag - people are turning to us simply because the western media coverage has been so poor," Bodi says. "Of all the major global networks, al-Jazeera has been alone in proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an illegal enterprise. It has broadcast the horror of the bombing campaign, the blown-out brains, the blood-spattered pavements, the screaming infants and the corpses. Its team of on-the-ground, unembedded correspondents has provided a corrective to the official line that the campaign is, barring occasional resistance, going to plan."

If you think you remember that we were promised a quick, easy war, your memory is not faulty. Eric Alterman has gone to the trouble of assembling some of those recent quotes in which Bush administration officials and pundits predicted, not that war is hell, but that it would be heaven. "Support for Saddam ... will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder," predicted Richard Perle. The war will be "a cakewalk," said Ken Adelman. According to Donald Rumsfeld, "it will not be long." And Dick Cheney said the Iraqi people "will welcome as liberators the United States."

"The current war has been called the best-covered war in history, and certainly the visuals and reports from 'embedded' reporters have been spectacular, bringing war into our living rooms like never before," Katie Delahaye Paine writes in her PR firm's publication The Measurement Standard. "[T]he embedded reporter tactic is sheer genius. ... The sagacity of the tactic is that it is based on the basic tenet of public relations: It's all about relationships. The better the relationship any of us has with a journalist, the better the chance of that journalist picking up and reporting our messages. So now we have journalists making dozens -- if not hundreds -- of new friends among the armed forces. And, if the bosses of their new-found buddies want to get a key message or two across about how sensitive the U.S. is being to humanitarian needs or how humanely they are treating Iraqis, what better way than through these embedded journalists? As a result, most (if not all) of the dozens of stories being filed contain key messages the Department of Defense wants to communicate."

Robert Fisk reports that "an Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape, filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad, is raw, painful, devastating. ... It is also proof that Basra, reportedly 'captured" and 'secured' by British troops last week, is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's forces. ... The unedited reports therefore provide damaging proof that Anglo-American spokesmen have not been telling the truth about the battle for Basra."

"Hundreds of chanting demonstrators lined Manhattan's Fifth Avenue on Thursday, and dozens lay down in the street in a 'die-in' to protest the war. ... Anti-war groups also called for other civil disobedience in the city to protest media and corporate 'profiteering from the war.' ... Some protest signs were directed at the media. One protester held a sign showing a picture of parrots and the words, 'Don't Parrot the Right-wing Propaganda.' Another, 44-year-old teacher Lee Whiting, held up a sign that said, 'Embedded? or In Bed?' Embedded, she said, means 'journalists are presenting almost exclusively the military view of this war.' Police and security officers placed a web of barricades at the adjacent Rockefeller Center, home of the GE Building, NBC and The Associated Press, to prevent the protesters from staging their 'die-in" there."

As pundits and the Pentagon try to quantify the number of acceptable US casualties, world-wide opposition to the attack on Iraq grows by the day. The New York Times notes that "the public mood in many countries around the world seemed to become angrier and more sarcastic than ever... . Another day of global protest is being advertised on Web sites and posters for Sunday, April 6. If there was a common image summoned up by the protests and angry commentaries, it was of the United States as an imperial power intoxicated by its military supremacy but receiving a lesson in the price of arrogance by unexpected Iraqi resistance. ... 'The world's only remaining superpower is beginning to suffer from the disease with which every imperial power throughout history has been afflicted: the overestimation and overtaxing of its own capabilities,' Germany's Der Spiegel said. 'Could the Iraq war herald its decline?' "

"Bush planners appear to have left television off the initial [bombing] target list because they wanted to use it to administer Iraq immediately after the war and to limit the damage to civilian infrastructure. Reports from Iraq, however, suggest that the American restraint was seen by many Iraqis as an indication of Mr. Hussein's resilience, undermining the allied message that his days were numbered. There are, in fact, two parallel battles underway. One is the intense assault American forces are mounting to set themselves up for a drive to Baghdad to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. The other, and equally critical, is the struggle to secure the support of Iraqi citizens. The military has a name for its campaign to win over the Iraq population It is called. 'I.O' for 'information operations.' The problem is that during the initial days of the war Mr. Hussein's 'I.O.' has been beating the allied 'I.O.' "

Journalist Joseph L. Galloway, the military affairs correspondent for Knight Ridder, criticized the Bush administration's war fighting plan today on NPR's Fresh Air program. Galloway, the co-author of We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, was recently a consultant to Colin Powell. Yesterday Galloway reported that "the risks of the [Iraq] campaign are becoming increasingly apparent, and ... there may be a mismatch between Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's strategy and the force he has sent to carry it out. ... Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency in favor of reports from the Iraqi opposition and from Israeli sources that predicted an immediate uprising against Hussein once the Americans attacked." The Washington Post reports that "the war is likely to last months ... senior defense officials said today." (Our Disinfopedia analysis warned before the war started of the danger of the Bush administration believing its own propaganda.)

"The English-language and Arabic websites of Qatar-based broadcaster al-Jazeera were forced down this morning after a spate of suspected hacker attacks last night. Neither aljazeera.net, which gets the most hits of any Arabic website in the world, nor english.aljazeera.net, which launched on Monday, were available this morning after suspected attacks crashed both sites. [C]ommunications manager Jihad Ali Ballout told MediaGuardian.co.uk the company was doing everything possible to get the sites up and running.. ... Asked where the attacks originated, Ali Ballout said: "I wish I knew. There are rumors that the attacks originated in the US but at this moment in time we cannot verify that. But it is worrying and an indication perhaps [that] in certain quarters there is a fear of freedom of expression and freedom of the press."

Paul Krugman notes that "by and large, recent pro-war rallies haven't drawn nearly as many people as antiwar rallies, but they have certainly been vehement. ... Who has been organizing those pro-war rallies? The answer, it turns out, is that they are being promoted by key players in the radio industry - with close links to the Bush administration. ... Until now, complaints about Clear Channel have focused on its business practices. Critics say it uses its power to squeeze recording companies and artists and contributes to the growing blandness of broadcast music. But now the company appears to be using its clout to help one side in a political dispute that deeply divides the nation."

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post asks, "Why did so many people think this would be a cakewalk? You'd have to say the media played a key role. The pre-war buildup was so overwhelming that it seemed like the war should be called off as a horrible mismatch. There were hundreds of stories about America's superior weaponry, the Bradleys and Apaches and Mother of All Bombs, the superbly trained forces. There were so many 'shock and awe' stories that Americans could be forgiven for thinking they were in for another video-game conflict. There were stories about how Iraqi units would quickly surrender, how Iraqi citizens would hail the advancing Americans and British as liberators. Some of this was driven by the more than 500 embedded reporters, who naturally reflected the confidence of the commanders and troops they were covering."

"The start of the war caused business at movie theaters to drop by 25 percent on Wednesday as people stayed home to watch the war, and snack-food sales and restaurant deliveries thrived. The opening salvos of the war had taken the place of prime-time entertainment, and television stations did their best to serve up gaudily produced coverage: the war in Iraq as the ultimate in reality television, as the apotheosis of every favorite Hollywood genre, from the combat thriller to the coming-of-age tale to the blow-'em-up, special-effects extravaganza. ... Happy-talk anchors ... giddily tossed around terms like "MOAB" (Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or the "mother of all bombs") and "B.D.A." (bomb damage assessment), while fashionistas debated who was this war's hottest Scud Stud and Studette. ABC featured ... video-game-like tours of Iraq from the air. Fox ran exclamatory headlines like 'The Ultimate Sacrifice' and 'Weapons Scandal.' "

"The eruption of war in Iraq last week set in motion a massive global PR network, cultivated by the Bush administration during the months-long buildup of forces. The network is intended not only to disseminate, but also to dominate news of the conflict around the world," PR Week writes. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer sets "the day's message with an early-morning conference call to British counterpart Alastair Campbell, White House communications director Dan Bartlett, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, Pentagon spokesperson Torie Clarke, and White House Office of Global Communication (OGC) director Tucker Eskew.... The OGC will be key in keeping all US spokespeople on message. Each night, US embassies around the world, along with all federal departments in DC, will receive a 'Global Messenger' e-mail containing talking points and ready-to-use quotes.... In a dramatic shift from past conflicts, administration officials have made it clear they'll rely on independent journalists, 'embedded' by the Pentagon with military units, to act as one of their most reliable PR vehicles," PR Week writes.

"Last week I found out that National Public Radio wants the opinions of antiwar activists -- as long as we follow the right script," writes University of Texas journalism professor and co-founder of the Nowar Collective Robert Jensen. "After the first question, it was clear [NPR's Scott] Simon expected me to follow a script that would go something like this: Yes, I'm against this war, but I know that Saddam Hussein is such a monster that nothing short of war can deal with him. Yes, I'm against this war, but now that the president has made this decision we should unify as a nation. Yes, I'm against this war, but -- in the end -- I realize that I should acknowledge that I am a naive and foolish person who can't deal the harsh realities of a harsh world.' Well, I didn't follow the script, and it wasn't long before it was clear in Simon's voice that he wasn't pleased. ... Simon should acknowledge that millions of people around the country and the world share a radical analysis of this war for oil and empire. And they are growing increasingly weary of the condescension of liberals."

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh asks, "Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq's nuclear program?" How did the misinformation end up in the President's State of the Union address, and who has been fooling whom to make sure the US attacked Iraq?

" Exxon Mobil ... issued a call to arms on Monday, asking other energy firms to work harder to help it combat Big Oil's dirty reputation. The oil giant's vice president of public affairs, Kenneth Cohen, told attendees at the annual National Petrochemical and Refiners Association conference in San Antonio that ... 'In truth our industry has not done nearly enough to communicate the essential role we play and how we go about providing energy and products that contribute to economic growth ... and help improve the lives of millions of people around the world,' he said. ... More recently, the industry has suffered through accusations from anti-war activists that the U.S.-led attack on Iraq was motivated by a desire to control oil wealth..."

"These demonstrators wore shorts and ball caps, pushed strollers and carried American flags, but what most set them apart was the support they displayed ... for the American-led war in Iraq. ... It was meant as ... an angry protest against the antiwar sentiment that has been more visible elsewhere, particularly in large cities. 'Don't let these peace protesters confuse you,' Glenn Beck, a conservative radio host from Philadelphia, told the crowd estimated at 10,000 here today. ... Over the last few weeks, Mr. Beck, whose three-hour program is heard five days a week on more than 100 stations, has helped promote many similar demonstrations under the banner of Rally for America. Some have been financed by radio stations owned by his employer, Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest owner of radio stations, in an arrangement that has been criticized by those who contend that media companies should not engage in political advocacy."

Pundits have depicted the U.S. military strategy of "shock and awe" in largely sanitary terms, suggesting that the high accuracy of laser-guided "smart bombs" will make it possible to decapitate the Iraqi command and control structure while leaving the country's infrastructure intact and limiting civilian casualties. Like other examples of doublespeak, however, this term obscures the human cost of war even as it contemplates the massive use of deadly force. As we document in the PR Watch "Disinfopedia," the strategy of "shock and awe" is based explictly on past military strategies such as the Nazi blitzkriegs and the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"Sir Ray Tindle, the editor in chief of over 100 weekly newspapers across Britain has informed all his editors that they can no longer report any anti-war stories in their newspapers," reports Andy Rowell. Jeremy Dear of the UK's National Union of Journalists, condemned the move: " So much for the right to know, free speech and all those other rights which our forefathers fought to establish and which Sir Ray Tindle seeks to demolish at the stroke of a pen," Dear stated.

"Critics of the war ... blame the news media, asserting that they failed to challenge the administration aggressively enough as it made a shaky case for war. In an interview, Eric Alterman ... argued, 'Support for this war is in part a reflection that the media has allowed the Bush administration to get away with misleading the American people.' ... The strongest indictment of the press, many of these critics argue, are recent polls that suggest many Americans see Iraq as being responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. The Bush administration's assertion of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda was an important part of its case for military action against Saddam Hussein, but that link was a matter of some dispute. Still ... nearly half of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks" and "half said they believed at least some of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Iraqis. None were."

"Weeks before the first bombs dropped in Iraq, the Bush administration began rebuilding plans," reports ABC News, which has obtained a copy of a 99-page contract worth $600 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) - the most money the agency has ever spent in a single country in a single year. Among the companies believed to be bidding are Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons, the Washington Group and Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm," ABC reports. "All are experienced. But in addition, all are generous political donors - principally to Republicans."

Independent weblogs are "changing not only the way the new war will be waged, but also the way citizens can get information about the conflict," reports Dan Fost. Christopher Albritton, an independent journalist who used to work for AP and the New York Daily News, is offering independent reporting on the war on his weblog, including a well-written recent essay titled "War - What's This One Good For?" Another journalist, CNN correspondent Kevin Sites, posted chatty accounts from Iraq on his personal "warblog" until March 21, when CNN asked him to suspend writing. However, archives of his earlier writings are still available. And while foreign correspondents have mostly fled Baghdad, someone who lives there is posting vivid accounts of life in that city before and during the outbreak of war."

The Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press has issued an updated report showing "how the war on terrorism affects access to information and the public's right to know." The report includes sections on "covering the war," "military tribunals," "domestic coverage," and "the USA PATRIOT Act." The World Press Institute has just issued a similar report. "The situation for journalists has become even more dangerous," states its 2002 World Press Freedom Review.

The movie musical "Chicago" may be in line for the Best Picture award at this year's Oscars, but it gets a "Thumbs Down" Hackademy Award from the American Lung Association (ALA) for its numerous scenes involving cigarette or cigar smoking. Two of the main stars of the movie smoke regularly throughout the film. Catherine Zeta-Jones smokes even while dancing, even though very few women actually smoked during the period when the movie was set. "Thousands of girls are going to start smoking because of that movie," said physician and anti-tobacco activist Stanton Glantz citing the "That's going to go down as one of the classic pro-smoking movies in history. If they had eliminated every single bit of tobacco from that film it could have been just as good." Glantz believes that tobacco company "product placement" - where corporations pay producers to include their products in films - has helped fuel a cinematic tendency to depict smoking as glamorous.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia banned broadcast media from his speech on March 19 at an appearance where he received an award for supporting free speech. "That was one of the criteria that he had for acceptance," said James Foster, executive director of Cleveland's City Club, which gave Scalia its "Citadel of Free Speech Award."

"The Bush administration has frequently compared the level and scope of international support for its military operations in Iraq to the coalition that fought the first Persian Gulf War," reports Glenn Kessler. "But the statements are exaggerations, according to independent experts and a review of figures from both conflicts." The so-called "coalition of the willing is almost entirely a U.S.-British campaign, with virtually no military contribution from other countries except Australia. "It's a baldfaced lie to suggest that" the coalition for this war is greater than that for the 1991 war, said Ivo H. Daalder, a former Clinton administration official who supports the war against Iraq. "Even our great allies Spain, Italy and Bulgaria are not providing troops."

"Bush administration officials once referred to Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite network based here, as 'All Osama All the Time' for its regular showings of Al Qaeda video tapes and frequent appearances by anti-American commentators," write Jane Perlez and Jim Rutenberg. Last week, however, several U.S. officials accepted an invitation to a barbecue in at the home of Al-Jazeera's news director. "The party was one sign of how aggressively the Bush administration has embraced Al Jazeera as Washington fights the propaganda front of the Iraqi conflict. With all but one of the major American television networks now out of Baghdad - only CNN remains - Al Jazeera is likely to become a major source for Baghdad coverage."

"As the first bombs rain down on Baghdad, CorpWatch has learned that thousands of employees of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, are working alongside United States troops in Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a billion dollars. According to US Army sources, they are building tent cities and providing logistical support for the war in Iraq in addition to other hot spots in the 'war on terrorism,'" CorpWatch writes. "While recent news coverage has speculated on the post-war reconstruction gravy train that corporations like Halliburton stand to gain from, this latest information indicates that Halliburton is already profiting from war time contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars."

"The new US war on Iraq has begun: arguably the greatest moral tragedy of a generation, an unprecedented failure of diplomacy and international order, and a profound crime against the principles of democracy," the Independent Media Center wrote in a statement calling on citizens to seek out news from and create news stories for their nearest IMC. "The Bush administration pushed relentlessly towards this war with a long series of incredible lies about virtually every aspect of the current conflict--US intentions, international law, weapons inspections, Iraq's likely military status and the amount of international support for Bush administration aims. Applauded by American corporate interests and cheered on by media institutions, the Bush administration's unilateral drive to war has been actively opposed by most of the world's people, governments and international institutions. Nobody on Earth will wake up safer tomorrow than they did today."

"Once the war starts, the [Bush] administration plans to fill every information void in the 24-hour worldwide news cycle, leaving little to chance or interpretation," writes the Washington Post's Karen DeYoung. In a detailed article, DeYoung outlines a media strategy, involving conference calls with TV networks and wire services, top US and UK spokespeople setting "thematic story lines for the day," supper-time television news fed by the Pentagon's "video images from targeted bombs," and the White House Office of Global Communication's "Global Messenger." The daily email of "talking points and key quotes from Bush and senior officials" goes out to U.S. government workers and officials in Washington and around the world. "More useful than any political experience, the official said, are the lessons they learned in communicating about the war in Afghanistan. U.S. and British officials were initially taken aback by the flood of quotable rhetoric that flowed from the Taliban's diplomatic office in Pakistan. Once the Pakistanis closed it down, new stories emerged from Afghanistan itself, as reporters crisscrossing the country on their own heard stories of bombs gone astray, friendly Afghans killed by mistake and military missions that looked different on the ground from the way they were described at the Pentagon," DeYoung writes.

The CEO of the Business Council of Australia, Katie Leahy, citing Nike and McDonalds as examples, said that companies could be forgiven for wondering why they should make philanthropic contributions if they only became the subject of increased community criticism. "There is a concern among businesses that they don't necessarily receive the acknowledgment they think their efforts should bring them. ... I think some businesses got into philanthropy to improve their reputation and yet there is enough evidence around now to say that the reputation of big business is going backwards," she told a conference organised by Philanthropy Australia.

"The Justice Department is demanding that the nation's biggest cigarette makers be ordered to forfeit $289 billion in profits derived from a half-century of fraudulent and dangerous marketing practices. Citing new evidence, the Justice Department asserts ... the major cigarette companies are running what amounts to a criminal enterprise by manipulating nicotine levels, lying to their customers about the dangers of tobacco and directing their multibillion-dollar advertising campaigns at children. ... The tobacco industry said the charges were without merit, asserting in new filings of its own that its public pronouncements about cigarettes were free speech protected by the First Amendment. ... [Attorney General] Ashcroft, who opposed the lawsuit when he was in the Senate, has demonstrated occasional resistance to it since becoming attorney general in 2001. ... But with the Justice Department's senior officials preoccupied with terrorism for the last 18 months, Mr. Ashcroft let it go forward ... ."

"The 'powerful odor of mendacity' (to borrow Tennessee Williams' phrase) hung over George Bush's primetime virtual declaration of war Monday night," TomPaine.com commentator Doug Ireland writes. "When Bush proclaimed that 'The Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,' that was a lie. ... Bush asserted that Iraq 'has aided, trained, and harbored terrorists, including operatives of Al Qaeda.' The last part of that was a lie. ... By asserting the United States' right to invade whomever it likes whenever it likes, Bush's speech brought the world to the most dangerous moment in its history since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962."

After a temporary outage beginning early this morning, our new "Disinfopedia" web site is back up and running. We apologize for any inconvenience. (An unexpectedly large volume of visitors caused the site to crash. Hopefully we've fixed the problem.)

In the run up to war in Iraq, foreign news websites are seeing large volumes of traffic from America, as U.S. citizens increasingly seek news coverage about the coming war. "Given how timid most U.S. news organizations have been in challenging the White House position on Iraq, I'm not surprised if Americans are turning to foreign news services for a perspective on the conflict that goes beyond freedom fries," said Deborah Branscom, a Newsweek contributing editor, who keeps a weblog devoted to media issues.

With the help of various PR and advertising gurus the Bush administration has waged an expensive Brand America campaign to change global perception of the world's only superpower. Many critics have pointed out that "America's image is not a product that can be pushed with hype and ads," predicting that such an effort "will end up a box-office flop." Adbusters, the Canadian "culture jamming" magazine, has also critiqued the branding of America. With a US and British attack on Iraq looming, Adbusters has launched a global boycott of Brand America, and already thousands are pledging their participation. Why? "The world struggles to fight global warming, and its biggest polluter thumbs its nose. The world calls for an international criminal court, and 'the global supercop' rejects it out of hand. ... It's the new global arrogance. ... And like it or not, the world gets a war. ... Here's an idea: we hit the superpower with a boycott the whole world can see, and that American power can really feel. ... So we empty the McDonald's, the Niketowns and Hollywood cinemas. We clear out Disneyland. We turn off Fox, CNN and MTV. We shut down Esso and Texaco, Gap and Starbucks."

The "Who Twists the Helix" international conference taking place at the University of Cambridge this week is one of many meetings around the world marking the 50th Anniversary of the discovery of DNA. The conference bills itself as "a trans-disciplinary exploration of the powers that could decide our genetic futures" that includes a "Genetic Futures Jury," a panel of non-specialist citizens who will vote on the key issues discussed at the conference. British journalist Andy Rowell will be presenting a talk looking at who is spinning the pro-GM agenda in the UK, based on research to be published in PR Watch's First Quarter 2003 issue.

Ruth Ozeki's second novel, All Over Creation, is praised today in separate reviews in both the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. Her first novel, My Year of Meats, skewered the beef industry's PR efforts to promote its product in Japan and examined the health hazards of growth hormones. This time Ozeki again looks at food and PR, specifically the the genetic engineering of potatoes. The lengthy, entertaining and educational novel features a number of frightening flacks working for a company much like Monsanto.

As PR Watch reported last year, the Bush administration has always intended to attack Iraq no matter what the results of UN inspections. The US's expensive post-911 propaganda and PR campaign to win foreign friends and change minds about US policy has predictably failed given Bush's bullying insistence on going to war. The Washington Post notes that "Six months after President Bush first appeared before the United Nations and urged a confrontation with Iraq, the United States appears to have lost diplomatic ground, not gained it, leaving it in a precarious international position as it prepares to launch a war. A resolution authorizing military action has been blocked at the United Nations not only by permanent members with veto power such as France and Russia but also by close U.S. neighbors such as Chile and Mexico. Some of the president's closest allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair foremost among them, are in desperate political straits over their support of Bush's Iraq policy ... ."

The United States and France were the source in the 1980s for "all the foreign germ samples ... used to create the biological weapons that are still believed to be in Iraq's arsenal, according to American officials and foreign diplomats who have reviewed Iraq's latest weapons declaration to the United Nations. ... The bioweapons declaration was obtained by Gary B. Pitts, a Houston lawyer who is representing ailing gulf war veterans in a lawsuit claiming that their illnesses were explained by exposure to chemical or biological weapons that were known to be in Iraq's arsenal in the war." Commenting on the disclosure, former UN weapons inspector Jonathan Tucker said the 1980's "were a more innocent time. ... At the time, the U.S. government was tilting toward Iraq, was trying to improve relations with Iraq, and the tendency was not to scrutinize these requests."

A new website combining community activism and investigative reporting is up and running here in PR Watch's home state of Wisconsin. FightingBob.com is named after reformer, peace campaigner and Wisconsin Senator Bob La Follette who served in the US Senate from 1906 to 1925, running for president in 1924 on the Progressive Party ticket. Fightingbob.com features articles relevant to environmental, peace and justice struggles in the Badger state, such as the ongoing fight to expose the deceptive PR greenwashing efforts of the ethanol industry trying to build plants in Wisconsin communities but being thwarted by informed opposition at the grass roots. Fightingbob.com is one more example of the innovative ways that progressive voices, typically marginalized in mainstream corporate media, are using the web to communicate and organize.

So confident is the U.S. military about a swift victory in Iraq that plans are already afoot to fly a CNN correspondent and a BBC reporter to the southern Iraqi city of Basra the moment it falls. "I'm not doing this so that the CNN correspondent gets another $100,000 in their salary," he said. "I'm doing it because the regime watches CNN. I want them to see what is happening." The plan is part of a psychological warfare campaign that the British officer called "white pys-ops." "Yes, we are using them," he said. "We use everything we have." Among some of the media accompanying military units, there is a palpable gung-ho attitude. Many reporters have decked themselves out in uniforms virtually indistinguishable from those of the soldiers they will be covering, some even going so far as to have their names and the word "Correspondent" embroidered on their breast pockets.

"MTV has refused to accept a commercial opposing a war in Iraq, citing a policy against advocacy spots that it says protects the channel from having to run ads from any cash-rich interest group whose cause may be loathsome. ... 'It is irresponsible for news organizations not to accept ads that are controversial on serious issues, assuming they are not scurrilous or in bad taste,' said Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. 'In the world we live in, with the kind of media concentration we have, the only way that unpopular beliefs can be aired sometimes is if the monopoly vehicle agrees to accept an ad.' ... Broadcast operations with blanket no-advocacy policies include CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox Broadcasting, along with cable channels like CNN and MTV, a Viacom subsidiary. The policy at CBS protects the integrity of its news department, the public discourse and local sensibilities around the country, said Martin Franks, executive vice president. ... 'On the CBS television network,' he added, 'we think that informed discussion comes from our news programming.' "

Yesterday the PR Watch staff launched a new website - an "open source" encyclopedia of propaganda that we have dubbed the "Disinfopedia." The Disinfopedia lets people like you contribute your knowledge about PR front groups and propaganda to a growing, ever-improving database that will serve as a resource for citizens and journalists. Users have already added dozens of new articles to the Disinfopedia. We have also received a number of questions that we have tried to answer in the Disinfopedia's FAQ section, including:

• What if someone tries to insert false information into the Disinfopedia itself?
• How do I edit a page?
• Who came up with that cool Disinfopedia logo?

The Disinfopedia is a self-conscious experiment in alternative forms of information-gathering and publication. We hope you like what you see, and that you'll become one of our regular contributors!

Defense Department officials are warning reporters to clear out of Baghdad, saying this war will be far more intense than the 1991 gulf war. "If your template is Desert Storm, you've got to imagine something much, much different," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Pentagon says it is warning journalists in the interest of their safety, but some critics see the heads-up as an attempt to control the news, with the goal of minimizing politically damaging images of suffering Iraqi civilians. "It's not a friendly warning," said John MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine and author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War. "They don't want witnesses. The information-control game is all about keeping people back home uninformed so they don't question the policy. And the first thing to make you question a policy is casualties."

"In an effort to burnish its tarnished image on Wall Street and Main Street, McDonald's has formed a partnership with ... Paul Newman. Mr. Newman ... has agreed to sell McDonald's a line of salad dressing, similar to the bottled dressing made by his company, Newman's Own. Under the same philanthropic principle that guides Newman's Own, Mr. Newman said, all after-tax profits from the deal will be given to charity. ... The partnership does give an aura of wholesomeness to McDonald's and its food, said the food and science writer Michael Pollan, the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World. 'All this is about buying the image of Paul Newman,' Mr. Pollan said. 'McDonald's is in the hole. It is trying to freshen and go upscale. It's redoing its flavor profile and making it more sophisticated and giving it an aura of health-consciousness and virtue, and this is a way to connect with virtue. If McDonald's did what was politically correct, humanely correct and nutritionally correct and sophisticated,' Mr. Pollan said, 'if they did all those things, they wouldn't be McDonald's.' "

Have you heard journalists and commentators using the term "market crash?" Neither have we, and we wonder why not given the facts. Reuters reports today that British "blue-chips slumped ... as investors bailed out of financials and oils and fretted over the outlook for firms like Canary Wharf and Reuters. Heavyweight banks, insurers and pension funds -- formerly prime supporters of equities -- sold each others' stocks to move deeper into the safety of cash and bonds, while oil giant BP sagged after a downgrade of oil companies. Traders struggled to find buyers willing to snap up bargain-value stocks ... ." On February 24, USA Today noted that in the past three years the S&P 500 is down more than 40%. The Nasdaq composite has plunged more than 70%. Most people who bought stocks five years ago are sitting on losses -- and waiting for a good rally to get out. That's a trend that will continue for years to come, if history is a guide." But, both Reuters and USA Today and other economic reporters carefully avoid using the "C" word preferring to cast the market crash as "a terrific time to buy."

"Five years ago ... The Weekly Standard made the broad, seemingly preposterous assertion that America was entitled and even compelled to engineer regime change in Iraq. But under the current administration, driven by 9/11, that contention has become conventional wisdom. ... 'I am impressed by their success,' said Senator John McCain, whom The Weekly Standard supported for the presidency. ... In June 1997 [founding editor William Kristol] formed the Project for a New American Century, which issued papers supporting essentially unilateralist efforts to police the world. ... Signers at the time included many people who are now in a position of power, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, along with ... Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle ... . ... The Weekly Standard's willingness to domesticate and Americanize the globe, at gunpoint when necessary, gives a shiver of delight to most conservatives... . ... The man who runs News Corporation [which owns The Weekly Standard], Rupert Murdoch, has seen his Fox News morph from a running joke to a runaway success, and he is ... pleased to match its mass with the class - and growing cachet - of The Weekly Standard."

Within six months of going on the air Radio Sawa -- Sawa is the Arabic word for "coming together" -- has more listeners than BBC and local stations in Jordan according to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. government agency that oversees Radio Sawa and the Voice of America. The station broadcasts 24 hours-a-day from seven transmitters throughout the Middle East and features a mix of Arabic and Western pop music with news headlines every half-hour. According to the Free Press, BBG Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Radio Sawa "may be the star of our efforts in the war on terrorism." He added that: "In an age when Arab boycotts of American products are widespread, a U.S. government-run radio station almost overnight has become the most popular voice of its kind in major portions of the Middle East, including Baghdad." But "the BBG rejects charges that Radio Sawa is a propaganda tool," the Free Press writes.

News outlets are gleefully reporting the renaming of French Fries in Congressional cafeterias, now to be called "Freedom Fries." (Parents are no doubt telling their kids, "Behave and get those Freedom Fries out of your nose or we're leaving right now!") The TV media are running with this story as part of the cheerleading buildup for a US attack on Iraq. No word yet whether European governments will retaliate by renaming All-American Hot Dogs as "Dogs of War."

"A Cold War-era office with a shadowy name and a colorful history of exposing Soviet deceptions is back in business, this time watching Iraq," reports Connie Cass. "The Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team's moniker is more impressive than its budget. It's a crew of two toiling in anonymity at the State Department, writing reports they are prohibited by law from disseminating to the U.S. public. The operation has challenged some fantastic claims over the years -- a U.S. military lab invented AIDS, rich Americans kidnapped foreign babies for their organs, the CIA plotted to kill Pope John Paul II. Since the office reopened in October, it's been responding to Iraqi claims about America, which tend to be more plausible and sometimes remain in dispute." The White House Office of Global Communication has produced a report, titled "Apparatus of Lies: Saddam's Disinformation and Propaganda."

U.S. Military public affairs officers at Central Command in Qatar are putting the finishing touches on their media center. USA Today reports that a $250,000 briefing stage has been shipped in from Chicago at a cost of $47,000. "Painted battleship-gray and backed by a 38-foot repeating world map, the set has five plasma screens, two rear screen projectors, two podiums and five digital clocks, including one giving Baghdad time. Behind the set is a state-of-the-art control room that requires at least three service members to operate," USA Today writes. "It's much cheaper than one bomb, and it can do a lot more. It is the face of the military," George Allison, who designed the Defense Department set, told USA Today. The Pentagon is expecting 1000 journalists at its daily briefings in Qatar. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that "images of that war are likely to follow not long afterward at the local multiplex - all shot in the latest high-definition digital video. ... From the military point of view, the project 'is intended to maintain a strong connection with the American public ...' "

Largely unnoticed by the press, "hacktivists" like Eli Pariser have used the Internet to create what George Packer calls "an instantaneous movement. ... During the past three months it has gathered the numbers that took three years to build during Vietnam. It may be the fastest-growing protest movement in American history. ... Internet democracy allows citizens to find one another directly, without phone trees or meetings of chapter organizations, and it amplifies their voices in the electronic storms or 'smart mobs' (masses summoned electronically) that it seems able to generate in a few hours. With cellphones and instant messaging, the time frame of protest might soon be the nanosecond."

A $100 million lawsuit against Bayer Corp. has yielded e-mails and internal documents that suggest the drug company let marketing and PR concerns trump safety, disregarding disturbing research on the cholesterol drug Baycol before it was pulled off the market because of dozens of deaths. "There have been some deaths related to Baycol. ... So much for keeping this quiet," said one E-mail. Another message wondered, "How will marketing spin this?" Other documents show that Bayer executives worried about studying possible side effects of the drug because any results would have to be reported to the FDA.

Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter and author of a regular Commondreams.org feature "Ari & I: White House Briefings," was at George W. Bush's first primetime news conference in over a year and a half. He says, "Last night's [press conference] might have been the most controlled Presidential news conference in recent memory. Even the President admitted during the press conference that 'this is a scripted' press conference. The President had a list of 17 reporters who he was going to call on. He didn't take any questions from reporters raising their hands. And he refused to call on Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House press corps, who traditionally asks the first question." According to White House communications director Dan Bartlett, the Bush administration rarely uses news conferences, because "if you have a message you're trying to deliver, a news conference can go in a different direction." However, "In this case, we know what the questions are going to be, and those are the ones we want to answer." ABC correspondent said administration's hyper-management left the press corps "looking like zombies."

Minneapolis FBI agent Colleen Rowley, who last year exposed the agency's mishandling of warning signs prior to September 11, has written a new letter to FBI director Robert Mueller, warning that "the diversion of attention from al-Qaeda to our government's plan to invade Iraq ... will, in all likelihood, bring an exponential increase in the terrorist threat to the U.S., both at home and abroad. ... It is altogether likely that you will find yourself a helpless bystander to a rash of 9-11s. The bottom line is this: We should be deluding neither ourselves nor the American people that there is any way the FBI ... will be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq." Rowley also alludes to "immense pressures you face as you try to keep the FBI intact and functioning amid persistent calls for drastic restructuring. You have made it clear that the FBI is perilously close to being divided up and is depending almost solely upon the good graces of Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush for its continued existence." She hints broadly that recent FBI statements about al-Qaeda and its alleged link to Iraq are "largely the product of a desire to gain favor with the administration," and states that government detentions of more than 1,000 illegal alients following 9/11 were done "for what seem to be essentially PR purposes."

An employee at England's top-secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been arrested following the London Observer's publication of a leaked U.S. National Security Agency memorandum written by a top official calling for "aggressive surveillance" of UN Security Council delegations. The story received much media attention worldwide, but the US media has shown little interest in the story. Media Beat columnist Normon Solomon writes, "Several days after the 'embarrassing disclosure,' not a word about it had appeared in America's supposed paper of record. The New York Times -- the single most influential media outlet in the United States -- still had not printed anything about the story. How could that be? 'Well, it's not that we haven't been interested,' New York Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale said on the evening of March 5, nearly 96 hours after the Observer broke the story. 'We could get no confirmation or comment' on the memo from U.S. officials."

"Canada's military has launched a major e