alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

May 29, 2005

Iraq = FUD

by kim @ 6:15 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

I’m still trying to read through blogs and news and stuff like that, in a hopeless attempt to get “caught up.” One of the things I’m trying to figure out is how the Bush apologists are going to get around the question of what BushCo knew and when did they know it vis a vis the decision to invade Iraq.

The more I reflect on what drives the Bush machine the more I come around to those two magic words: propaganda and disinformation. What the right has been persistently effective at is using these tools to confound issue after issue. See Rather, Dan for more details.

More to the point, there’s a new bit of corporate speak that all the kool kids have picked up on: FUD. While the acronym is etymologically unrelated to FUBAR, the inference is understandable. No, FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Poking around a bit I found this explanation:

F.U.D. stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It is a marketing technique used when a competitor launches a product that is both better than yours and costs less, i.e. your product is no longer competitive. [ed: hard not to think of the 2004 election, eh?] Unable to respond with hard facts, scare-mongering is used via ‘gossip channels’ to cast a shadow of doubt over the competitors offerings and make people think twice before using it.

In general it is used by companies with a large market share, and the overall message is ‘Hey, it could be risky going down that road, stick with us and you are with the crowd. Our next soon-to-be-released version will be better than that anyway’.

In the computer world, FUD was first practiced on a large scale by IBM in the 1970’s. Many people cite Amdahl as coining the phrase when he left IBM to start his own company thus making himself a FUD target.

When IBM moved into the desktop market with the launch of the IBM PC, it took FUD tactics along with it. IBM themselves only reckoned on selling around 100 to 200 thousand units of the PC, which were to be sold as an alternative to the APPLE II in ‘all IBM’ companies. It should be remembered that in many respects the IBM PC was an overpriced and retrograde step for the desktop market which had already reached the level of 16 bit multi-user, multi-tasking machines with a good deal of flexibility and inter-operability of hardware. The IBM PC had non of these characteristics and cost more, but by marketing on the strength of the IBM label (stick with us, we are big), the PC exceeded all expectations and killed off the existing market.

While the technique traditionally refers to one brand over another, say for instance Bush vs. Kerry, it can also be applied to a Go/No Go decision, for instance, Iraq. The line of reasoning for this case would be: the Republicans are strong on security and good to the military (as opposed to the anti-war crowd who are unpatriotic) so stay with me on this.

Was Iraq sold on the basis of FUD? I would say yes. I’m certainly watching the right-wing blogs, FOX news, the Washington Times, etc., to see if they come up with a FUDish campaign to get their Boy George out of this mess. And, yes, when 50% of people polled (Gallop) say they believe Bush misled on the issue of the Iraq invasion, I’d call that a mess.

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