”The incompetence of the prosecution of the war has been at times bewildering.
The incompetence of the anti-war effort remains surpassingly bewildering.”

This is the closing sentence to a commentary on the front page of Global Security.
The article talks about Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who is camping out in front of the Shrub’s ranch in the Texas heat.
It turns out, according to this article that the P.R. firm of Fenton Communications who has been allied with Move On.Org is generating a lot of the publicity. It now seems the plight of this woman is part of a larger, national P.R. campaign that may or may not have her best interests at heart.
A look at Move On.Org’s page will find it plastered with Mrs. Sheehan’s image and articles of the vigils that are surrounding her.
The article in Global Security asks;

“Media relations firms serve an essential function in the information food chain, and David Fenton is certainly a fine fellow. But what purpose is served by the high visibility of this PR firm in the Cindy Sheehan matter? After all, the entire point of the Cindy Sheehan phenomena is that she is simply a citizen, speaking truth to power. Now she has been visibly repositioned as simply a pawn in the Washinton spin machine.”

After the march in New York in February before the U.S. went into Iraq the anti-war movement just dried up. The article chronicles Fenton’s involvement with Win Without War which purported to be a not for profit anti-war organization. The article goes on to state;

“On closer examination, Win Without War was revealed as a paid media buy. It was an advertising campaign, hosted at Fenton Communications, with a cast of hundreds of thousands hauled out at demonstrations to give the media buy legitimacy.
Once the war actually started, the paid media buy ended, and the anti-war "movement" as well.”

The point here is that there is no “organic” movement to end the war. By the fact that marches and now Mrs. Sheehan are touted by a P.R. firm once the heat is off and there is no more money paid to the P.R, firm the issue just dies.
This gets back to my post yesterday wondering where the actual anti-war movement is.

The incompetence of the anti-war effort remains surpassingly bewildering.

Indeed.

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A Slight Change

There will be just a slight change to the blog.
I am going to be using a larger font on my posts. I just felt the type was too small against the dark background. I hope it looks better to you. Could be I need another eye exam.

Media And The Truth

My friend Steve has been railing against the lack of courage in the media. There is no question this administration went to war on false pretenses yet the media has acquiesced to the charge that any dissent is un-American.
There are a few voices to be heard. Maureen Dowd (NY Times requires registration) has returned from her book tour and taken up the torch right where she left off. Her writing is witty but trite. I can say she has guts and is unrelenting in her insistence that the administration face the consequences of its actions. And of course there is the ever verbose Andrew Sullivan, a gay, Catholic, conservative. But Steve is right. Where are major media outlets on the Iraq issue? Where are the songs that speak to the hypocrisy? No where. They have stayed with commerce and refuse to budge.
Meanwhile a woman who has lost her son camps in the Texas heat and the Shrub refuses to see her while he has a vacation. His vacation from reality is leaving our country in dire straights and the media hides their collective heads in the sand.

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