Stars and Stripes has published a
report that the Obama Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group to screen journalists who seek to embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Rendon Group is an outgrowth of the controversial, PNAC propaganda tool of Bush-era neocons, the Lincoln Group, which was created by PNAC neocons to spread and promote the lies used to justify the Bush administration's push to invade and occupy Iraq.
from Stars and Stripes:
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=64348U.S. public affairs officials in Afghanistan acknowledged to Stars and Stripes that any reporter seeking to embed with U.S. forces is subject to a background profile by The Rendon Group, which gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq for its work helping to create the Iraqi National Congress. That opposition group, reportedly funded by the CIA, furnished much of the false information about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion.
Rendon examines individual reporters’ recent work and determines whether the coverage was “positive,” “negative” or “neutral” compared to mission objectives, according to Rendon officials.
Almost on cue, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen worried aloud yesterday about eroding public support for the Afghanistan occupation. Even though the Obama administration closed down the Bush Pentagon's propaganda office earlier this year, there is still a desperation by the war hawks to keep the public on-board with their escalating military mission.
Fighting the 'war on terror' abroad is these militarists' bread and butter. They have a vested interest in seeing enemies everywhere. Anyone who they regard as an obstacle to their military priorities is treated as an enemy to their cause which they've wrapped up in familiar rhetoric about defending against what they've termed as a continuing or escalating threat from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
In January 2006, top Army general (and an Obama holdover from the Bush administration) Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute said that 21st century warfare is more about "will and perception, than taking territory or enemies killed."
He mused that information is critical as 'firepower' in 'long war'. The American people must remind themselves every day that the United States is at war, the general said.
Rumsfeld spoke on the need to control information surrounding their expansive wars. "U.S. military public affairs officers must learn to anticipate news and respond faster, and good public affairs officers should be rewarded with promotions," he said.
"The Pentagon's propaganda machine still operates mostly eight hours a day, five days a week while the challenges it faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week." he lamented. He then complained that the "vast media attention about U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq outweighed that given to the discovery of "Saddam Hussein's mass graves."
However, he was just upset that there were pictures, proof of their crimes. That's the control they wanted with the press that surrounded their imperialism. Their concern with the news wasn't just about protecting soldiers or catching al-Qaeda, although there were those things going on in the military planning room that may have involved legitimate security. The thrust of their efforts was to create a zone of 'good news' that would permeate the airwaves and print media, and obscure the bloody images and alarming reports which provide the public with a clear view of the realities of the disaster in Iraq.
Bush revealed his own desire to shade the news to reflect his rosy outlook on Iraq:
"It's -- confidence amongst the Iraqis is what is going to be a vital part of achieving a victory," he said, "which will then enable the American people to understand that victory is possible. In other words, the American people will -- their opinions, I suspect, will be affected by what they see on their TV screens . . ."
The Pentagon and Bush expected for the images that they paid for and fed into their purchased press in Iraq to trickle into the mainstream media to be quoted and disseminated around the world as a counter to the realities expressed by the daily images of violence and despair coming from the occupied nations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Obama Pentagon leadership is still filled with many of the same Bush-era hawks who are as desperate now, as they were then, to keep the public fearful of disengaging from their escalated military campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan/Pakistan. It's no mystery why the Rendon Group still has credibility among these occupation-loving dinosaurs.
The question for the Obama administration is to what extent the progress reports generated by the proven propagandists at Rendon reflect the actual realities surrounding the admittedly faltering military campaign against the Taliban. According to Stars and Stripes:
The recent merger of U.S. and NATO public affairs outfits in Kabul has resulted in a one-stop shop for media information and embed requests. It also gives more public affairs officers access to the background reports and other services provided by The Rendon Group.
The backgrounders are part of a wide scope of work Rendon does for the Defense Department under its current $1.5 million “news analysis and media assessment” contract, according to military and company officials.
The work includes statistical analysis of reporting trends inside and outside of the country and coverage of specific topics such as counternarcotics operations. It also analyzes how effectively the military is communicating its message.
That 'message' the Obama Pentagon wants the American people to hear is nothing more than a cheerleading campaign for their opportunistic escalation of force in Afghanistan and for their continuing occupation of Iraq. Their embrace of the infamous Rendon Group is predictable in their need to prevent a total meltdown of support for their flailing of our forces against the militarized resistance to their opportunistic advance across Afghanistan and their self-serving assaults across the sovereign borders of Pakistan.
However, Rendon's attempts to separate journalists looking to embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan into supporters and critics is anti-democratic and an anathema to the very criticisms against the occupation of Afghanistan that President Obama employed in his election campaign. Does he believe that support for his own escalation of the Afghanistan occupation can be managed by grouping those reporting on it into friends and enemies?
The most prescient concern is that the Rendon effort will result in a cherry-picking by the Obama administration of stories which are favorable to their military campaign, and a stifling of those reports which are critical or revealing - much like the Bush White House employed in their efforts to preserve public support for their own militarism. As Stars and Stripes reported, the military has moved, in the past, in Iraq, to bar reporters who they felt had reported negatively about their activities from accompanying soldiers on future tours.
from Stars and Stripes in June:
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=63426Asserting that Stars and Stripes “refused to highlight” good news in Iraq that the U.S. military wanted to emphasize, Army officials have barred a Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.
Officials said Stripes reporter Heath Druzin, who covered operations of the division’s 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team in February and March, would not be permitted to rejoin the unit for another reporting tour because, among other things, he wrote in a March 8 story that many Iraqi residents of Mosul would like the American soldiers to leave and hand over security tasks to Iraqi forces.
The main complaint from the official who ordered the barring was that the reporter had refused to echo the 'positive news' the military had provided and had offered quotes 'out of context' of the talking points the Army was anxious to promote. That's the real danger in allowing the Pentagon and the WH to control the news. The reaction the Bush regime to the press was a direct response to the wave of initial protests against the Bush wars as they worked to change public attitudes and erode support for the occupations, and, as some in the media began to actually contradict what the WH and Pentagon had been insisting were matters of national security.
The propagandists in the Rendon Group, now employed by the Obama Pentagon, intend to transform the public debate on our escalated military involvement in Afghanistan into a one-sided hurrah by controlling the flow of information they receive from the embedded media they allow to follow them into the battle-zones. The pretense of democracy that President Obama expects to emerge from his nation-building efforts in Afghanistan are nothing but a lottery with a dwindling jackpot - a trillion to one shot at a democratic nation emerging from our foreign invasion and occupation. The realities of these military interventions don't support their rhetoric about defending democracy, spreading freedom, or defeating terror. All they are left with after years of U.S. military repression in Iraq and Afghanistan is more violence and more 'enemies' bent on our destruction. Cultivating 'good news' about the wars won't change that.
We can't expect the Pentagon to police themselves and reform their own anti-democratic meddling. With the full force of our nation's military deployed in a seemingly intractable conflict in Iraq, the rest stationed in Afghanistan and around the globe as mercenaries of the new American imperialism, and the president's continued refusal to rule out military action against Iran, there is no time to wait and see if they cross the line into suppressing dissenting views here in the US and abroad, or muddling them with disinformation abroad which ultimately ends up in the mainstream press here and elsewhere.
What happens when the public criticisms from the press and elsewhere actually begin to effectively disrupt the Pentagon's efforts to conduct their military campaigns with impunity? How will this thin-skinned military establishment react if the media actually succeeds in disrupting efforts that the Pentagon has declared are integral to protecting and defending our national security?
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