Spirit of America: Manufacturing The Message

Spirit of America is a client of Direct Impact, a "grassroots marketing" organisation (their website here).

Grassroots marketing involves creating a "Buzz" by getting seemingly ordinary people (or better yet, influential people) to promote your product by word-of-mouth. A feature of "grassroots marketing" is that those being targetted are not aware that the seemingly sincere opinions being expressed are actually disingenuous marketing.

How many of the posters at Iraq the Model are working for Direct Marketing, I wonder?

BTW, Martini Republic have picked up this ITM story again here, while there is a long and rambling (and mostly uninformed) discussion at The Washington Monthly here.

Many right-wingers are up in arms about this and blaming Juan Cole for their psychological trauma. But as Cole points out, a new CNN poll shows these dolts who support the war are now a minority in the USA. The poll also shows that a majority of Americans think Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should resign, something Cole has demanded since the Abu Ghraib scandal:

Rumsfeld appointed Douglas Feith his undersecretary for policy, and allowed Feith to set up the Office of Special Plans, which cherry-picked intelligence and forged a false case for war in Iraq. Rumsfeld over-ruled his officer corps by sending a tiny force of only 100,000 troops to Iraq, ensuring that they could not keep order in the aftermath. Rumsfeld was the one who tried to hand Iraq over to corrupt financier Ahmad Chalabi. Rumsfeld allowed the looting that began the deterioration of security after the war. Rumsfeld dissolved the Iraqi army, putting US troops on the front lines of the guerrilla war. Rumsfeld didn't order as much armor for US troop vehicles as he could have, exposing thousands to serious injury from roadside bombs. Rumsfeld didn't even bother to personally sign the letters of condolence to the families of deceased troops killed in Iraq, in some large part as a result of his own flawed policies. The majority of the American people is right that Rumsfeld must go (and his deputies with him).

Meanwhile, Omar and Mohammed Fadhil get coverage from the Washington Post. I loved this quote:

"People outside Iraq are more worried than the Iraqis themselves," says Mohammed.