"Propaganda" still needed

Submitted by Dennis Murphy (United States), Dec 28, 2005 at 10:03

The State dept spends millions for negligible results, and its worthless effort is dismissed with a shrug. But our military pays to put favorable, and accurate, stories in Moslem newspapers in Iraq and is pilloried by our own news media for its attempt -- even though the military was apparently somewhat successful in influencing public opinion there!

The West has the best "propagandists" in the world in the form of advertising agencies, when it comes to selling commercial products even to the Islamic world. Why is it a bad thing to try to use that skill to win a war against militant Islamist terrorists?

Too often it is used as a derisive term and an implication that the story is false, but "propaganda" isn't necessarily a bad thing, isn't necessarily false, and is very much needed in this war.

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