An eye-opening report by the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism (not to be confused with the spooky
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists of Panama Papers fame) appeared yesterday. "
Fake News and False Flags: How the Pentagon paid a British PR firm $500 million for top secret Iraq Propaganda," by Crofton Black and Abigail Fielding-Smith, describes how Bell Pottinger, the firm responsible for crafting Margaret Thatcher's persona, worked with General David Petraeus to produce Al Qaeda video shorts.
Bell Pottinger’s output was signed off by the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, according to Wells. “We’d get the two colonels in to look at the things we’d done that day, they’d be fine with it, it would then go to General Petraeus," he said.
Some of the projects went even higher up the chain of command. “If [Petraeus] couldn’t sign off on it, it would go on up the line to the White House, and it was signed off up there, and the answer would come back down the line’."
So the fact that the United States is working with Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria Jabhat al-Nusra (re-branded in July as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham,"Front for the Conquest of the Levant") should come as no surprise. The U.S. has been promoting Al Qaeda for quite some time.
The US was promoting and arming al Qaeda when it was the Mujahadeen in the 70s. But to understand how vast and effective the Mighty Wurlitzer is I recommend reading Christopher Simpson's book on America's post-WWII nascent propaganda system. On PDF: https://historicalunderbelly.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/0195102924.pdf
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bob. I'll check it out. I received two gift books recently -- Thomas Frank's LISTEN, LIBERAL and a fictive reconstruction of the Manson Family, Emma Cline's THE GIRLS -- and now I have fulfilled my obligation and finished them I'm ready to finish the Mae Brussel reader I picked up thanks to that link you provided of THE REALIST. She convincingly establishes that the SLA was a spook show. It makes me want to get a copy of Establishment intellectual recent Patty Hearst biography to see how he explains away Colston Westbrook and the Black Cultural Association. It will take some "magic bullet"-level sophistry; either that, or stone cold silence.
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