Talk:Public relations preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq

Public relations is now defined as a part of the U.S. plan to invade Iraq since information warfare (some say 'ontological warfare') is part of all modern warfare. A link to this 'public relations plan' should be added to the U.S. plan article.

The new top level article Iraq crisis, 2003 now lists all potential and anticipated impacts that have been mentioned in various articles and by various news sources. There are a lot of these, and this article will get quite long. It seems clear that this is now a global crisis not just a specific U.S. plan - North Korea, UN Security Council, weapons inspectors' role, etc., are all now involved, and role of NATO and UN are being questioned by all sides. This is a much bigger thing that it was.

One important impact is credibility of the US government and of the UN and of photo and audio evidence itself. Powell's PR speech at the UN Security council backfired when it was revealed he was using sources from the UK that turned out to be a repudiated grad student paper. Also credibility of photo sources is now widely and openly doubted everywhere in the world, not just in the Arab world - Blix said as much when he told Powell he wasn't so interested in satellite photos that couldn't be validated on the ground. Then there is the Office of Strategic Influence spin, role of the Internet, etc.

Also, the peace movement is playing such a major role now in forming opinions that it is listed in the see also list as another major player.

The reason was that saying either 'war against Iraq' or 'war on Iraq' was taken to contain potentially POV meanings.

War against Iraq could mean US war against Iraq with implies Iraq war against US - ie, a two way war, which is seen as POV by anti-war side, because they argue it is the US that is unilaterally pushing for a war that no-one in the middle east or indeed the rest of the world wants.

War on Iraq could mean US waging war on Iraq, which suggests unilateralism, which is contrary to the pro-war analysis, which argues that the US is reacting to Saddam's failure to obey the UN.

I know news agencies all over are debating this very point. Is the term they are using implicitly suggesting one POV rather than absolute neutrality? (Some stations have stopped using the words 'on' and 'against' (and 'with') for this very reason, or are using both, with 'war on' and 'war against' being used in successive graphics packages.)

This was discussed on the [UN Security Council and . . . ] page and it was almost unanimously agreed that using 'proposed Iraq war' was the most NPOV term, because it didn't implicitly reach a judgment on who is doing what, just stated three words that are all accurate - it is proposed, it would be a war, and it involves Iraq.

It might make sense to apply this abolutely NPOV variation to all the pages on the issue, such as this one. Any observations? JTD 04:38 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)