Selling a war

“Even the most brilliant propaganda technique will yield no success, unless one principle is borne in mind: the message must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over,” said former Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels may have committed suicide on May 1, 1945, but his golden rule of “simplicity and repetition” is still the backbone of any effective mass communication campaign, regardless of whether or not the slogans are true. As Goebbels said: “A message repeated a thousand times becomes the truth.” So too was the case with Iraq. Time and again we were told that the war was needed to protect our freedom and security.Saddam had nukes, was in contact with Al Qaeda and threatened the stability of the world. Today, we know that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction, was not connected to Al Qaeda and that the intelligence on which