[Osx-nutters] Oliver Stone, 9/11, and the Big Lie

[Kevin Callahan]

<http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0816-33.htm>

You might say, "But everyone knows it was al-Qaeda." And you'd be  
right, but do most Americans really know just who those terrorists  
were or that they had no connection to Iraq -- that not a single one  
of them even came from that country? It doesn't sound very important  
until you realize that various polls over the last five years have  
reported from 20% to 50% of Americans still believe Iraqis were on  
those planes. (They were not.) As of early 2005, according to a  
Harris poll, 47% of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein  
actually helped plan the attack and supported the hijackers. And in  
February, 2006, according to a unique Zogby poll of American troops  
serving in Iraq, "85% said the U.S. mission is mainly ‘to retaliate  
for Saddam's role in the 9-11 attacks'; 77% said they also believe  
the main or a major reason for the war was ‘to stop Saddam from  
protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.'"

The Big Lie, first coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography  
Mein Kampf,was made famous by Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister  
for the Third Reich. The idea was simple enough: Tell a whopper (the  
larger the better) often enough and most people will come to accept  
it as the truth. During World War II, the predecessor of the CIA, the  
Office of Strategic Services, described how the Germans used the Big  
Lie: "[They] never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault  
or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;  
never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on  
one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong;  
people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you  
repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

This is, in fact, just what the Bush administration has been doing  
ever since 9/11. As a result, in 2005, an ABC/Washington Post poll  
found that 56% of Americans still thought Iraq had possessed weapons  
of mass destruction "shortly before the war," and 60% still believed  
Iraq had provided "direct support" to al-Qaeda prior to the war. In  
June 2006, Fox News ran a story once again dramatizing the supposed  
links between 9/11 and Iraq. And, as recently as July, 2006, a Harris  
poll found that 64% of those polled "say it is true that Saddam  
Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda."