Power of Alt
I went to the book talk last night given by Christopher and Robert Scheer on their book "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq." (it's co-written with Lakshmi Chaudhry.) Christopher and I worked together at our college paper, the Daily Nexus, and later at Prognosis in Prague. The book was published in December, is now on its second printing and has sold 30,000 copies, Bob Scheer told the audience at the Housing Works bookshop in SoHo. And it's done all that without receiving a single book review in any newspaper. All the publicity for the book has come through alt-media, basically the Internet and outlets such as Pacifica radio. I'm pretty amazed they're not getting better coverage, especially given the latest "oops" from the Bush camp over the accuracy of their pre-war WMD information.

The book is based on an article Christopher wrote last summer for Alternet. In discussing the first lie (Al Qaeda's Ties to Iraq,) Christopher talked about the opinion polls asking Americans if they thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Despite evidence to the contrary, as many as 70 percent believed Saddam and al Qaeda were the same enemy though that percentage is slowly slipping as the haze of war dissipates. Chris said he hopes the book helps show that Bush's motives for the war were not merely misguided, but wrong and based on intentional lies. "I don't see the moderates getting that, and that's our goal," he said.

You can buy the book directly from the publisher for less than a ten spot.
- posted by Amy @ 2/10/2004 10:56:00 AM