Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, which was paid over $100 million by the Pentagon to plant administration propaganda in the Iraqi news media, has now been gifted with a six month, $14.3 million U.S. Army contract to convince Afghans that bombs are bad.
The initiation of the new Afghanistan disinformation campaign by the administration is not out of any concern for the casualties and destruction from the American coalition bombs which have rained down incessantly on Afghan communities and killed civilians at a rate rivaled only the sum of all of the attacks by those we label 'terrorists', but a proprietary desire to further cajole and intimidate the population there into surrendering to their oppressive military authority.
It was in December 2005 that the stories surfaced of the Rumsfeld Pentagon's Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, which was being paid by the Pentagon to compliment their effort to bribe Iraqi journalists into writing favorable stories about the occupation. In fact, the NYT pointed out that the Government Accountability Office had found that year that, despite the legality in America of spreading propaganda outside of the U.S. "the Bush administration had violated the law by producing pseudo news reports that were later used on American television stations with no indication that they had been prepared by the government."
Rumsfeld addressed criticism of the Iraq propaganda program, in his speech, as having a "chilling effect" on the Pentagon departments which work to get their opinion into the public debate.
The "chilling effect" that Rumsfeld attributed to scrutiny of his unlawful attempts to manipulate the media coming from Iraq, is in fact, exactly what the administration wants to see overtake independent reporting coming from and about Iraq and Afghanistan as they dangerously characterize everything coming from government and military officials as "truth," and casting the rest of the reporting and analysis unconnected to their administration as some dangerous distortion directed by their "enemies."
The administration and the Pentagon have apparently been able to carry on their propaganda enterprise with impunity, despite the "chilling" scrutiny. It was revealed by the AP, during the time of the first revelations, that an internal memo had surfaced from Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, about her new efforts to organize and manage an office within the Pentagon which would provide U.S. propaganda on Iraq 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week to coincide with the anticipated release of Petraeus' Iraq progress report last September.
This time, in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and their Lincoln Group propagandists will be working to convince citizens in Afghanistan that American bombs which are killing their neighbors, families, and friends are necessary and that resistant violence is futile. But, Afghans know too well about the death and destruction they've suffered as they stand in the way of the American takeover and installation of Karsai's compliant regime. It's not likely that they will see the American's aggression as any less devastating than they view violence they've suffered from those resisting the U.S. takeover.
The information "war" which has been waged by the administration and the Pentagon is a direct assault on the material and opinion independent of the Bush regime's manipulated reporting. It's a direct assault on Americans who would benefit from those outside perspectives on the Iraq occupation and the devolution of the original military operation in Afghanistan into nation-building. In the shadow of the continuing (and escalating) efforts by the Bush administration to control American's perceptions of their increasingly unpopular occupation, there are thousands of credible individuals whose voices will be dominated and bullied by the heavy-hand of our military state.
Consider Bush's initial justification for deploying his paid propagandists. There really hasn't been any proliferation of "images of violence" from our television screens to the degree that they would, themselves, influence Americans away from the occupation, as he claims. There have been, however, reams of reporting which has accurately portrayed the disasters in Iraq and the bungled hunt for the 9-11 suspects in Afghanistan.
The military and the Bush administration can't change perceptions of the bloody tragedy of his invasions and (escalated) occupations by merely changing the subject. There aren't any credible "sunshine" reports of soccer stadiums, reconstructed vineyards, or even marshland restoration in Iraq or reconstruction for their Afghanistan prize, which are at all relevant to the critical questions of our military involvement there. In fact, on his visit to Afghanistan this year, presidential candidate, Barack Obama, was asked by Afghan governors and ministers he met with that financing be provided so it could build up its own institutions, and that the U.S. do something about the countless hundreds of Afghans held in American controlled prisons for years without trial.
Despite the Pentagon's insistence that their propaganda efforts are just directed at Afghans and other overseas, It's clear that they are working to filter their misinformation through the foreign media to, ultimately, have their spin trickle into domestic media markets, bypassing laws prohibiting propaganda directed at the U.S. As Senator J. William Fulbright wrote in 1971, The military public relations campaign is directed at all of the American people ("targets," they are called in the manuals, a nice military word adopted by Madison Avenue and readopted by military PR people in its new sense). The audience ranges from school children and teachers to ranchers and farmers, from union leaders to defense contractors, from Boy Scouts to American Legionnaires. The principal target of the military PR men, however, is the media."
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree/1261The NYT reported that the AEI and their emerging right-wing splinter, 'Freedom's Watch' were soliciting $200 million to sell war on Iran. (
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6498 ) Freedom's Watch is basically a PNAC front. Freedom's Watch was the group who put out those pro-administration commercials Ari Fleicher helped organize during the period of Gen. Petraeus' September testimony to Congress on Iraq.
Although it has it's apron strings tied to the AEI, Freedom's Watch is also under the umbrella of a coalition of PNAC exiles who's membership includes fellow Israel supporters like Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer and Donna Brazile who serve as advisors alongside of right-wingers like Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer, Newt Gingrich and others.
The umbrella organization that Freedom's Watch operates under is called 'The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.' (FDD) was founded right after the September 11 attacks to exploit the nations (and the administration's) vengeful focus on adversaries in the Middle East. Its president, Clifford May, is the former director of communications for the Republican National Committee.
from RightWeb:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1475The FDD's three board members are Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, and Jeane Kirkpatrick. Its four “distinguished advisers” are Newt Gingrich, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Louis J. Freeh (former FBI director), and James Woolsey (former CIA director). FDD also has a Board of Advisers, whose members are: Gary Bauer, Donna Brazile, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), Frank Gaffney, Amb. Marc Ginsberg, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), Charles Jacobs, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, former Gov. Richard D. Lamm, Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA), former Sen. Zell Miller, Richard Perle, and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). (
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1475 )
Pentagon Sets Up 24-hour-a-day, Seven-Day-a-Week Iraq Propaganda Department AP Scoop: Pentagon Readies New 'Info Desk' on War
August 24, 2007
WASHINGTON As anticipation builds for September's progress report to Congress on the Iraq war, the Bush administration is getting more involved in shaping the character of the conflict to the American people.
For the Defense Department, getting out Iraq information now will include a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week Iraq Communications Desk to pump out data from Baghdad and while serving more or less as a campaign war room.
According to a memo circulated Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, is seeking personnel for what he called the high-priority effort to distribute Defense Department information about Iraq.
The move, requested by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, comes as administration officials are gearing up for a rash of reports on the status of the war and recommendations from the military on troop levels going into next year. The crucial report will come from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
Other reports are expected from the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace; retired Gen. James Jones, who will examine the progress of the Iraqi security forces; and the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which will review whether the Iraqi government has satisfied security and political benchmarks outlined by Congress.
The Pentagon dismissed suggestions that the communications desk will be a message machine or propaganda tool and said it is being set up to gather and distribute information from eight time zones away in a more efficient and timely manner.
"I would not characterize it as a war room," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Friday. "It's far less sinister than that. It's more like a library."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003631291
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
