Kurdish ad thanking America is from a right wing PR firm

[deminks]

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/22/the-kurdish-public-relations-campaign/

The Kurdish public relations campaign thanking America for overthrowing Saddam Hussein is run by a top conservative public relations firm that also founded the “Stop Michael Moore” campaign and “Move America Forward,” which brought together parents of dead U.S. soldiers to be counter-protesters at peace demonstrations.

from their link
http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=34168

What's going on here is that Russo, Marsh and Rogers -- the PR firm that organised Move America Forward and so-called media tours of Iraq to show how smashingly well the war is going -- are engaged in an illegal propaganda campaign aimed at influencing the November (U.S. congressional) elections," said John Stauber, co-director of the Centre for Media and Democracy and co-author of the book "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propoganda in Bush's War on Iraq".

Stauber believes the Kurdish government is using U.S. government money to hire the Russo firm, which is then using the money to lobby for a continuation of the war. It's a case that is difficult to prove since neither Russo nor the Kurdish government will disclose where they got their money from or how much they are spending.

"It's a very shadowy business," Stauber says of the public relations industry. "They don't have to disclose anything so we may never really know where they got the money to run these campaigns."

If the allegations are true, it wouldn't be the first such incident. In 1991, prior to the first Gulf War, George Bush Sr. signed an executive order directing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to create the conditions for Saddam Hussein's removal. So the CIA hired a public relations firm called the Rendon Group to run an anti-Hussein propaganda campaign.

[Nikki Stone 1]

1. Russo, Marsh and Rogers--we need to remember this name

Goddamned propaganda.

[warrens]

2. They're the ones who backed Swiftboats and sent wingnut

Radio thugs to Iraq to report how great things are going; you know, the ones who claimed that this photograph of a Baghdad neighborhood proved how peaceful it was, except it was a neighborhood outside Istanbul. And claimed they met with everyday Iraqis when they never left the Green Zone.

These guys have their finger in a lot of really nasty pies. Lying pigs.

[starroute]

7. And more...

They were also behind the "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" caravan to demonstrate against Cindy Sheehan, and a few months ago they were running tv ads calling for the censure of Jimmy Carter (in some sort of weird retaliation against calls to censure Bush.)

A well-known nest of dirty tricksters.

[magellan]

3. Are they also thanking us for letting Turkey and Iran

...lob missiles over the border and creating another Kurdish refugee crisis?

[Skidmore]

4. Is the Rogers in this firm Ed Rogers, the RNC operative?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

5. How is this illegal?

What laws have bearing on this?

[ComerPerro]

6. it is irrelevant whether it is legal or not

because they will get away with it no matter what.

Legalities aren't even relevant anymore. BushCo just does whatever it wants, there's nothing we can do about it.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

9. Prosecution

is very doable if laws have been broken.

[cascadiance]

8. Was Melanie showing pics of Istanbul with her bud Howard Kaloogian?

as if they were pictures of Mosul or Kirkuk now? Seems like they got caught in a false spin move earlier!