30th of November, 2005
Propaganda, Propaganda, Propaganda
Posted by dlw in Uncategorized at 7:33 pm | 
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Google News informed me today that Al Jazeera has a story on the way the US military is planting madeup stories in Iraqi News outlets in hopes that the spun news will bleed into the western media. It also shares about the extent the western media self censor in the coverage of news stories and has a disturbing picture of a camera with blood splattered on it.
It’s serious news. Apparently, things are far worse in Iraq than many of us think it is and our leaders are willing to bend the rules to manipulate us at home.
dlw
ps, it gets much worse.
pps,I like Josh Marshall’s quote selection:
Even as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media, the Pentagon is paying millions more to the Lincoln Group for work that appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism.
I just can’t wait for that Complete Victory!
dlw
The 1st of December, 2005 at 8:59 am
The Washington Post has an article about this today. I agree with the point that we subvert the democratic values we hope take root in Iraq by cynically buying off the Iraqi media. Yet this is just sign and symptom of what this war has done to us as a country: it has corrupted our politics, discredited our military, and destroyed our reputation in the world. Bush is so worried about the “message” a withdrawal from Iraq would send to terrorists; well terrorists already get the message. We’re a clumsy giant encumbered by bureaucracy, ineptitude, and vice that cannot successfully defeat an insurgency, or even supply consistent power to the most oil-rich nation in the middle east. We already look like bunglers to the rest of the world.
The 1st of December, 2005 at 1:16 pm
I felt so much shame last night, reading about Bush’s promise of “Complete Victory”.
I really wish I could respect or trust my country’s leaders.
dlw
The 3rd of December, 2005 at 11:28 am
I don’t think this is a big deal, honestly. If we weren’t doing this, I’d question what we have psi-ops people for. Nobody complained in the second world war. Manipulation of foriegn media is a legitimate wartime act.
The 3rd of December, 2005 at 4:12 pm
We’re not in the same sort of war as we were in WWII.
The key issue here is the sort of witness we have for the Iraqi people.
I think the future will depend on them having to find ways to get around their long-standing animosities to work out peacefully their self-rule.
dlw