The Rendon Group

I’m always interested in what the Rendon group are up
to, and from this week’s PR Watch I find this gem.

RENDON GROUPS HELPS AFGHAN GOVERNMENT WITH IMAGE

‘The Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group to counsel and coordinate
communications for Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai.’ O’Dwyer’s
PR Daily reports. ‘The United States” according to the New York Times “wants
to bolster the leadership of Karzai by promoting ‘visible signs of
reconstruction.”

The paper reports that in recent weeks Karzai’s government has issued ‘choreographed announcements about hundreds of schools and clinics to be built or rehabilitated in the next few months.’ Karzai and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the country’s defacto CEO, made a media splash on April 17 with a ceremony to celebrate the planting of 850,000 trees as part of the ‘greening of Kabul’ campaign. But Afghanistan is far from the success story that the Bush administration has been projecting, according to a recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh. An unpublished report commissioned by the Pentagon found that ‘the victory in Afghanistan was not, in the long run, a victory at all’.

This might be a good point to remind readers of some of the other
Rendon Group highspots. For example:-

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_preparations_for_2003_invasion_of_Iraq?

Other stuff is this article from disinfopedia.

www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Rendon_Group

Next a longer article, scan down for reference to
OFFICE OF STRATEGIC INFLUENCE

www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020311fa_FACT

I picked up this anecdote about John Rendon from a US journalist, who pointed out that when hundreds of Kuwaitis in the first Gulf war were liberated from months of oppression etc, they were pictured waving US flags in celebration. And where did those flags come from??.

More history to consider

www.fair.org/media-beat/011025.html