Selling the War

No doubt you've read or heard about the recent article in Rolling Stone about the Rendon Group, a PR firm hired by the Pentagon to sell America on the invasion of Iraq. Head of the Rendon Group is John Rendon who brags that he's helped sell wars and regime change in 91 countries.

"Going all the way back to Panama, we've been involved in every war, with the exception of Somalia."

Rendon helped overthrow Manuel Noreiga by planting anti-Noriega stories and photos in the media. In 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Kuwaitis hired Rendon to help convince the world to go to war in their defense and Rendon even set the stage for the media by handing out flags of the U.S. and other coalition countries to citizens of Kuwait City so they could wave them in front of TV cameras.

During Daddy Bush's administration, Rendon collected a group of Iraqi exiles and molded them into an organization called the Iraqi National Congress so they could lobby for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

And now during the administration of Baby Bush, the Pentagon (aka Rummi) hired Rendon to push the story that Saddam Hussein was stocking up weapons of mass destruction. Rendon coached Iraqi exiles to talk about Saddam's weapons programs.

He thinks that one of his best ideas was to embed American journalists with the troops during the invasion. This allowed the Pentagon to take control of the story.

You might think that Rendon would have regrets now that the lies have been exposed and you'd be right - except that his regret is that the Pentagon lost control of the media.

"We lost control of the context. That has to be fixed for the next war."

Bastard! How does he sleep at night?