Propaganda methods that Bush uses in his speech on Iraqi threat and fact checking his speech - Research Paper Example

?Table of content Topic Page nos. I. Introduction A. Overview of War propaganda---------------------------------------------------------2-3 II. President Bush’s Speech -------------------------------------------------------------------3-5 III. The propaganda method used by Bush in his speech A. Half Measures 1. Hitler usage of half measures to sway the crowds towards him----4 2. Example of Bush using half measures.--------------------------------4 B. Ignorance of the mass. 1. Bush on using the ignorance of the mass to justify the war-------------4 C. Emotions of the plain folks. 1. Bush on using the emotions of plain folks to win over the support----5 D. Demonizing enemy 1. Bush on how he demonized Iraq and its president.------------------------5 E. Angel like appearance 1. Machiavelli’s take on appearing humane and angelic. ------------------5 2. Bush usage of the angelic appearance.-------------------------------------5 F. Fear 1. Machiavelli on fear.-----------------------------------------------------------6 2. Bush using the method of fear to sway people.----------------------------6 IV. Fact Check--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6-8 A. link between 9/11 attack and Al-Quaeda…………………………….……….6 B. Legal cover……………………………………………………………………7 C. CIA Information to UN………………………………………………………..7 D. Saddam’s progress with uranium…………………………………………….8 V. Conclusion----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------8 VI. References Name Course Professor’s name Date Introduction Convincing people is an art and convincing people regarding a series of lies is mastery. A base that the mass consider as neutral is of utmost importance before the process of convincing a mass through a general address gets started. Besides, highlighting the negative points of the opponent acts as a positive catalyst that slowly but surely moulds the crowd in favour of the speaker. This action was followed by Hitler as a justification of the Second Great War and echoed in his vein vaunt regarding the superiority of German race over others. The Junior Bush taking the cue from the leaders who initiated war on the false ground, created a background to attack Iraq that eventually erupted like a volcano on Iraqi people and proved once again that war mostly happens owing to economic reasons rather than due to security ground. The paper makes an effort to evaluate the speech given by President Bush on the basis of facts that were revealed by the popular media houses of the nation (Bush). After summarizing and evaluating, a comparison has been drawn between the propaganda that Bush uses and the propaganda that has been used by leaders like Hitler and Machiavelli. Summary- President Bush’s speech President Bush emerged as a great craftsman with his words in his speech that he delivered on Iraq in Cincinnati, Ohio. An air of fellow feeling spread quickly around the hall when he addressed the present audience as “Thank you all. Thank you for that very gracious and warm Cincinnati welcome. I’m honoured to be here tonight; I appreciate you all coming” (Bush). Without any further back ground Mr. Bush moved directly to the grave danger that is looming large on the world peace and generating from the old enemy of America and thus the rest of the peace loving world. Whoever can it be other than Iraq? He moves on to state the time frame of violation that Iraq has been indulged in following the first gulf war. Whether it is biological weapon or nuclear weapon; Iraq has vested least faith on the maintenance of the 11 years old treaty. Bush also harped the 9/11 disaster and once again disclose the vulnerable situation of the Americans from attacks generating from the Middle East. His main point of attack was the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein whom Bush thinks to be disarmed with utmost importance. The uniqueness of Iraq regarding its threat to the global peace loving community; according to Bush emerges from the fact that it is a combination of a sadist tyrant with a bunch of mass destructive weapons and those are already tested on people. He moves forward to state “By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique” (Bush). Bush also warned not to wait till Saddam grows stronger and unleash an attack on America in reality. Citing several deadly devices that might be called the messenger of death such as mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas; Bush portrayed the Iraqi President as a menace to the human society. Bush also claimed till now more than 20000 people have died out of these deadly gases. According to Bush more alarming is the fact that the surveillance photos have revealed fresh activities in all these prohibited arenas in Iraq that seeks immediate attention. The missiles that are present in Iraq’s arsenal are capable of targeting UAE, Israel, Turkey and many other nations where more than 135,000 American civilians live (Bush). More alarmingly, Iraq has been found to posses manned and unmanned aircraft capable of leading substance or organic warfare against USA. These ways of war are cheap to manoeuvre and thus exposes USA to higher amount of risk. Propaganda method analysis One of the propaganda strategies that Hitler suggests is not to give the “half- measures” to the audience (Hitler). As Hitler mentions that the majorities are not professors or high educated people who can distinguish which side is better by given cases. On the contrary, they are constantly affected by others and waving between both sides. As long as the enemy is said to be brutal, and merciless as Bush says in the speech, Bush can avoid the ambiguous part of the justice the masses might have been questioned. For example, if a friend has an argument with someone and he keeps saying his friend’s fault, one would have no doubt standing on his side because he would not know his friend anyway. However, if he said these bad things along with a little good thing about him, one would think his friend is not that bad and there must be a little misunderstanding amongst each other. However, Bush has outlined Iraqi threat so clearly that he did not leave any room for people to show mercy towards Iraq by asserting that Iraq uses terror to control his people as well as owns and produces massive horrible weapons that threaten the world peace. He also reminded the history of Gulf War and concluded that Iraq has “deception and bad faith” of the history, and the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein must be removed, thus portraying absolute one-sided attitude against Iraq The speech revealed how the orator has appealed to the ignorance of the mass. The propaganda of the speech was to work with the emotions of the plain folks. The speech emphasized the supposed link between 9/11 and the Iraq President Saddam Hussein repeatedly, which the propaganda theorists opined to be a “big lie”. The things were staged in a manner so that Americans trusted that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attack. This is a pure case of false analogy. While analysing President Bush’s speech one can draw a parallel between the speech of Hitler and Bush, as both of them tried playing with the emotions of ignorant masses. After the attack on 9/11 when the Americans were in a state of shock and remorse it was the idle time to leave them in a state of hysteria by mentioning them the supposed ties of Saddam Hussein with the attack, the same way in which Hitler drove the crowd hysteric and evoked them in such a way that they were ready to do anything that Hitler suggested. In his speech Bush made sure that the people know elaborately about their enemies and hence he went on harping on the examples of Gulf war and their supposed involvement in developing the nuclear weapons. According to Gardiner, “It was an orchestrated effort [that] began before the war.” (Smith) Bush in his propaganda worked towards proving the enemy to be the greatest evil and at the same time placed himself in the position of a guardian angel of human kind when he said “we will meet the responsibility of defending human liberty against violence and aggression. By our resolve, we will give strength to others. By our courage, we will give hope to others. And by our actions, we will secure peace, and lead the world to a better day.” (Bush) This propaganda reminds one of Machiavelli’s observations, “It is good to appear merciful, truthful, humane, sincere and, religious.” (Wolberg, 105) It is a situation which Hitler describes as propagating one’s own good qualities and mentioning none of the enemies. Bush just acted in this way by repeatedly harping on the threat of Iraq and their alleged connection with the Al Qaeda. As suggested by Machiavelli in his work Prince, the resources of power are fear, love and dependency. He believes that fear is better to instil in people rather than love and dependency. However, Machiavelli observes that “a prince should make himself feared in such a way, that even if he gets no love, he gets no hate either” (Machiavelli 507). Going by that principle Bush was able to sow the seed of fear in the people America against Iraq. The essential thing is the power and Bush loads his words and phrases about the supposed evils of Saddam Hussein, thereby swaying the supports in favour of him. When the President talked about Iraq it is only half facts that were being revealed and people were not smart enough to know the actual facts. In this context one may mention the false propaganda of Bush speech about the information like supposed possessions of chemical and biological weapons by Iraq and the purchase of nuclear materials from Niger, all of which is false. Bush rightly used the false events in a skilful presentation of speech that he used to sway people’s support in declaring war against Iraq. Fact Checking According to a newspaper source, USA Today, the Bush administration lawyer claimed of the alleged link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to legally justify the US President’s military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The whole idea was to avoid the supposed debate that would have been raised following the military action. Hence the administration thought it to be safe to draw a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attack so as to provide a legal ground of the military action in Iraq. The first days after the 9/11 attack the administration have gone on drawing a link between the al-Qaeda and Iraq which made them project their military action on legal grounds. Sources reveal that UN resolution affirms “the inherent right of individual or collective self defence” (Diamond) by nations which is under the threat of terror attack. A situation like this authorizes a nation to battle the threat by every possible means. Hence the need was to link the 9/11 terrorist attack with the al-Qaeda, that would enable the President to take military action and avoid the debate in the Congress. The administration has been able to draw a tenuous link between the al-Qaeda and Iraq but has failed to provide any evidence to support their allegations. As opined by a senior intelligence official, the mere finding of the al-Qaeda men hiding in Iraq is not sufficient enough to provide a legal cover for the actions. The Republican of the Senate Armed services Committee and the 1991 resolution author, Warner clearly stated that the existing resolutions do not meet the legal requirement of a war, it to an extent suffice the political requirement. When approached a White House spokesperson refused to comment on the matter which essentially implies that there was no valid ground for the war that had been initiated in Iraq. King Abdullah, the Jordan’s king opined that the U.S intrusion in Iraq will be “somewhat ludicrous” as the Middle East at that time was going through a turmoil (Diamond). The 21st February issue of New York Times reveals the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency has not provided the United Nations with the information regarding 21 sites out of the 105 sites that have been supposedly singled out as housing illegal weapons. The acknowledgement by the Central Intelligence was expressed in a letter in January 20, addressing the Senator Carl Levin; the acknowledgement was is in contradiction to the public statement that was made by Bush before the war (Jehl and Sanger). The comment instigating contradiction is noteworthy as the opponents in the Congress was going on arguing for a year so as to provide the inspectors of United Nations more time to carry on the work of investigation properly. But before the search was over the United States and its allies started the invasion. It was assured in the daily briefing of the White House that the administration was cooperating with the inspectors and that they were provided with adequate information. In a telephonic interview Senator Levin revealed his belief that Mr. Tenet has deceived the Congress. The senior administration officials when contacted revealed that Ms. Rice had relied on the information provided by the intelligence agencies and hence the decision of Iraq invasion was taken. Hence when an investigation is made on the truth in the matter and that makes the whole world witness how the White House and the CIA engage themselves in the blame-game. This clearly implies how much it can be relied on the data provided by the US President to support the military action in Iraq (Jehl and Sanger). The supposed comment of Bush about Iraq president Saddam Hussein enriching uranium for developing mass destruction weapon stands contradiction, as according to the NIE report, “we cannot confirm whether Iraq has succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/ or yellow cake from Somalia and Republic of the Congo.” (Yellow cake Remix) This reveals the fact that in the speech given by Bush false and evident less information were delivered in a way such that he can justify his action against Iraq. Conclusion The paper reveals the how things were staged to justify Bush’s military action against Iraq. On the basis of improper evidences which the administration could not prove later, the whole decision of the war was taken. While comparing the propaganda of Hitler and Bush one cannot put them in right light as the preceding paper is self explanatory. The paper shows how cunningly and craftily things and situations were staged to justify the actions. There has been no legal support of the whole matter and an action like this against the whole human kind. War not only is the harbinger of destruction of human kind but it also a means of destroying the environment as a whole. References Bush, George W. “Outlines Iraqi Threat.” Cincinnati Museum Center. Cincinnati Union Terminal. Cincinnati. 7 Oct. 2002. Speech. Diamond, John, “Attack on Iraq requires clear al- Qaeda link”, USA Today. 2002. 07a. June 8, 2011. Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. 1925. Jehl, Douglas and David Sanger. “C.I.A admits it did not give weapon data to the UN”. New York Times. 2004. A. 6. Web. June 9, 2011. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. 1513. The Norton Reader. Shorter. Ed. Arthur M. Eastman. Norton, 1980. 503-510. Print. Smith, Gar. “Report exposes lies leading to no-win war in Iraq”, Citizine. n.d. Web. June 7, 2011. “Yellow Cake Remix”, Wall Street Journal. 2003. A. 16. Web. June 13, 2011. Wolberg, Kristine A. All Possible art. Associated University Press, 2008. Print. Read More