Book Review: ‘Greatest Story’ about President Bush’s selling of war

Criticizing George W. Bush these days somehow seems like shooting lame ducks in a barrel, one full of rotten neo-con apples.

But New York Times Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich fires salvo after salvo directly into the barrel in “The Greatest Story Ever Sold,” his expos/ of the Bush administration’s propagandistic selling of the Iraq War and the theft of Americans’ trust in their political system.

Rich also blasts the willing national press and television media that bought into nearly every fear-mongering press release and photo-op thrown their way, thus forfeiting their rightful duty to doubt and to question.

With the help of the media, claims Rich, the administration pounded the same drum of fear and terror until the American populous began to believe the lies and misinformation.

“The problem with Bush was not that he was stupid but that he thought everyone else was stupid,” Rich writes. “He believed he could sell anything if he repeated the pitch often enough (and often verbatim.)

Like other entitled boomers utterly blind to their own faults, he narcissistically assumed things to be so (and intentions pure) because he said they were.”

Obviously the book’s title plays off the off-repeated description of the Christian Holy Bible, but veers into the step-by-step selling of the Iraqi invasion with methods similar to selling soap or new cars on television.

Rich even hints at how Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the other arrogant war birds used the Big Lie techniques developed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels for Germany’s Third Reich to sell the invasion the rest of Europe during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.

The plan then and now depended on a simple strategy: Bang the drum loudly and often, scream the same message in the headlines and sooner or later people will begin to believe something must stand behind the noise.

Then frighten that populous with the ogre of an immediate apocalypse and people gladly will part with some of their freedoms as long as the “bad guys” are held in check while the fighting far away is fought by a “volunteer” military made up of minorities and poor families’ sons and daughters with a sprinkling of white Academy graduates as officers.

“Every time that a Bush official announced that the apocalypse was on its way, the president bragged that he had made America safer.

The message was in the good news-bad news contradictions: The less safe Americans felt, the more likely they would play it safe on Election Day by sticking with the protector they knew rather than take a chance on the devil they didn’t.”

“If this White House knew anything, it knew how to roll out a slick product by the yard, “Rich writes.

In a final chapter he calls “What the White House Knew and When They Knew It: Time Lines of the Selling of the War,” the author provides a step-by-step record of the lies and the manipulation that covers over 150 pages that document precisely the words said by each administration official in interviews, press releases and official speeches. Then Rich adds another 18 pages of copious notes about his sources.

The man knows how to write, and he knows how to research, then to use the English language to skewer those who believe they have snookered the public. More often than not, Rich uses the very words of Bush or his minions to slice them for their manipulation of information and outright lying.

“Perhaps future generations will discover that George W. Bush was a visionary who worked a miracle—that by knocking out one thing in the Middle east he set off a domino effect that led to democratic reform in a region gripped by totalitarianism, tribal hatreds, and radical religious fundamentalism.

If so, he will be among the luckiest players in the history book, and history tells us that sometimes it does pay to be more lucky than smart.”

Rich leaves his readers with a powerful final warning about the future when the next group of cynical politicians plots to stomp on the American Constitution and rule by Presidential fiat.

“History tells us that politics is cyclical in America, and the Bush cycle may well be in its last throes,” he writes. “But the culture in which it thrived still rides high, waiting to be exploited by another master from either party if Americans don’t start to take it back.”

Anyone of the percent still supporting Bush and the war in Iraq, or those who doubt the reality of the loss of fundamental American freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism should not read Frank Rich’s book.

On the other hand, maybe that’s exactly who should read the book!

The details
The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The

Decline and Fall of the Truth

By Frank Rich

Penguin Press (2006)

List price: $25.95

Al Shaff is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.