Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War Against Iraq
Paul Rutherford
University of Toronto Press, $19.95, 226 pages

Review by Mike Gange

For the life of me, I can not figure out the need to attack Iraq. I have watched the television news regularly and religiously since the attack on New York and Washington in 2001. I have scoured the major papers, both the hard copy and on-line versions. I can even understand, somewhat, the logic of going after terrorists in Afghanistan. I can’t understand, however, the convoluted logic that takes that war into Iraq.

I can understand the need for oil, and if George W. Bush had said, "Our oil needs are being threatened, so we must secure our futures," I would have understood the foreign take-over. If Bush had said, "We need to expand and protect our markets" I would have understood the colonialism. If Bush had said, "I want to finish something my daddy did not get to do," I would have understood the competitiveness. I guess what I really can not understand is how Americans, and indeed the whole world, were sold the idea that the U.S. had to attack Iraq.

Then I read Paul Rutherford’s latest book Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War Against Iraq. Rutherford is a prolific writer, having written many books and articles that explore the role of the media in society, or the history of the media in Canada. In the year 2000, Rutherford wrote Endless Propaganda: The Advertising of Public Goods. In 1994, he wrote The New Icons? The Art of Television Advertising. In this 2004 publication /exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Rutherford%2C%20Paul/102-8721648-0065715
Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War Against Iraq, the University of Toronto history professor takes a little time to get wound up, but once he does, he presents such an interesting point of view that it is worth reading and re-reading.

Rutherford explains in great detail how the Bush administration used the media as a propaganda machine. Bush and his cabinet went on the attack, first through the news media and then with the military, all the while manipulating public opinion by having all of the senior members of the Bush administration delivering televised speeches and making talk show appearances, repeatedly telling their people about the intended campaign of shock and awe – a term borrowed from a 1996 book by Harlan Ullman. Like the simplistic advice senior copywriters used to give to their underlings, the Bush administration told the American public what they were going to do, what they were doing, and then told them what they did.

Rutherford points out that this war was easy to sell to an audience already groomed into a culture of wartime action flicks. Movies such as Rambo, Terminator, Star Wars and Indiana Jones had already made a huge impact with an audience that could readily identify the villain. For the movie literate audience, then, the Bush administration painted the war in Iraq as a true-to-life version of the 1970's movie Apocalypse Now.

Rutherford’s argument is balanced and well documented. He cites his sources as major media news presentations and current magazine articles. Although Rutherford’s overall tone is serious, he lightens some of the book with newspaper editorial cartoons that also prove his point. One of the editorial cartoons he uses shows a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein replaced with Ronald McDonald. Another shows the new target of the U.S. smart-bombs: Iraqi television sets.

Personally, I still can not understand the need for war in Iraq. However, thanks reading Paul Rutherford’s Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War Against Iraq, I understand a whole lot better how it was sold.

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High School.