Robert Parry's Lost History

Consortiumnews.com

If you want to know how the neoconservatives got control of the most powerful nation on earth, Robert Parry's Lost History is a must-read.

Drawing on classified documents released during the Iran-Contra scandal, Parry describes how the neocons and their allies in the Reagan administration recognized that modern media and the false reality it can create could be the soft underbelly of the American Republic.

So, the neocons developed the concept of "perception management," the manipulation of the American population by exaggerating foreign threats.

This propaganda theory was tested out in the 1980s by scaring the American people about impoverished Third World countries, most notably Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua. Similar strategies were used to minimize negative information about groups favored by the neocons, like the Nicaraguan contra rebels.

In one key memo, an architect of the strategy explained that in regards to Nicaragua the goal was to "glue" black hats on the Sandinistas and white hats on the contras.

Aided and abetted by Washington's careerist press corps, the neocons achieved remarkable successes in the 1980s. Then, after George W. Bush claimed the White House in 2001, the neocons and their propaganda theories returned in force, achieving their greatest triumph in stampeding the nation into the invasion of Iraq.

So get your copy of Lost History, which is now in its third printing. If you buy it through the publisher's Web site (http://www.neckdeepbook.com/), $5 of each purchase price will be rebated to help pay the bills at the free investigative Web site, Consortiumnews.com. Lost History costs only $19.95 (plus $4 for shipping).

Lost History is also available through Amazon.com.