Weapons of Mass Deception

John Nichols: Unveiling Bush's mass deceptions

"Weapons of Mass Deception" is thick with case studies and meticulously footnoted examples of how the administration sold a fantasy called "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The book's most important sections detail the administration's preparations for what White House aides referred to as the war's "product launch" last fall, and the propaganda techniques employed by the administration to successfully create the false impression that there was a link between Iraq's secularist Baath Party leadership and the fundamentalist al-Qaida network.

As the president's use of false "evidence" in his State of the Union address leads to calls for an independent investigation of the White House spin cycle in the weeks and months before the war began, "Weapons of Mass Deception" is arguably a more credible intelligence document than anything put together by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. And this book could well turn out to be the essential road map through the burgeoning scandals of the Bush White House.

But the most revealing sections of this book are those that deal with the "postwar" era that we are supposedly in. Stauber and Rampton's deconstruction of the president's "mission accomplished" flight onto a returning aircraft carrier to film "Top Gun"-style 2004 campaign commercials, for instance, serves as a powerful indictment of the administration's ethics and judgment..."