Press Release from MoveOn.org
Thursday, January 16, 2003

The landmark 1960's TV ad scene of a little girl in a field of daisies is being recreated as part of a new controversial advertising campaign to put pressure on the Bush administration against rushing into war in Iraq.

The new TV ad, financed by more than 10,000 individual members of the Internet group MoveOn.org, hits the airwaves today in 13 major U. S. cities.

"Our message is simple: 'Please let the inspectors do their job,'" says Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org. "As long as the United Nations team is still hard at work there's no reason to send in our troops and unleash forces that could escalate into the overthrow of friendly governments or chemical and biological warfare or even nuclear warfare."

As in the famous TV commercial created by adman Tony Schwartz for the 1964 presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater, the new 30-second ad opens with a six-year-old girl in a flowering meadow. She pulls petals off a daisy one by one. The ad ends with the mushroom-shaped cloud of a nuclear explosion, as the anti-Goldwater ad did.

The other scenes in the new ad show an Iraqi war spinning out of control -- burning oil wells, wounded soldiers, ambulances in full siren and crowds of civilians seething with anger. A narrator announces in a voice-over, "War with Iraq. Maybe it will end quickly. Maybe not. Maybe it will spread. Maybe extremists will take over countries with nuclear weapons."

In various worst-case scenarios drawn up by American military experts an Iraqi war could destabilize the region and risk the possibility that nuclear weapons will be deployed.

"The Bush administration must proceed very carefully or risk setting off a chain of events that could end in catastrophe," David Cortright, coordinator of the anti-war coalition Win Without War, says. "Even if a nuclear nightmare doesn't occur the other possible war scenarios could open a Pandora's box of instability and devastation."

Leaders of MoveOn.org initially asked their membership to contribute $27,000 to finance a modest ad campaign, but more than 10,000 members responded with donations averaging $35 each for a total of $400,000.

"We deliberately chose the images of the little girl and the mushroom cloud because we hope the controversy stirs up public debate," says Wes Boyd, the MoveOn.org president. "Americans ought to understand the full ramifications of war with Iraq."

The ad is airing on TV stations in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Boston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Cleveland, Portland and Seattle.

MoveOn.org representatives will be available by phone for national interviews and will hold local press conferences today in each of the 12 cities, not including Washington, DC. On Tuesday, January 21, they will meet with members of Congress and their staffs in more than 500 local offices across the nation.

MoveOn.org is a key player in Win Without War, a coalition of organizations, including the National Council of Churches, NAACP, Sierra Club, NOW, and others, representing millions of Americans who favor allowing the U. N. inspectors to finish their work in Iraq.

To get copies of the advertisement, call Trevor FitzGibbon at 202-822-5200. Click here for a brief on Why this ad?

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