Suspected GOP LTTE mass mailing

[Wink]

First some Lt.Col. writes to my local paper, the Joliet Herald.....


http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/opinions/letters/j19homecol.htm


This is still used successfully. Vietnam was one of the few times American counter-terrorism tactics failed. Or did they? Actually, they didn't. By the early 1970s, the communist rebels in South Vietnam were crushed. What people forget was that South Vietnam fell to a conventional invasion from the north in 1975.

The Baath Party and al-Qaida have no neighbor with an army ready to come in and rescue them. This time around, American troops have better tools to collect information, identify the terrorists and quickly carry out raids. The terrorists had big advantages in that they were Iraqi and the Iraqi population knew very well what the Baath thugs were capable of.

Then I do a google search and find......

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/200412301.asp

Vietnam was one of the few times American counter-terrorism tactics failed. Or did they? Actually, they didn't. By the early 1970s, the communist rebels in South Vietnam were crushed. What people forget was that South Vietnam fell to a conventional invasion from the north in 1975. The Baath Party and al Qaeda have no neighbor with an army ready to come in and rescue them.


The Lt.Col. is certainly fond of plagiarism and/or is too stupid to put into writing just how wonderful a job his president is doing in Iraq. Write the herald and let them know that they've been duped into working for the White House propaganda department.

[Kerrytravelers]

1. Did you expect a Repug to have an orginal thought?

Never. They just regurgitate, regurgitate, regurgitate.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. They're Astroturfing again.

They send out multiple letters to a bunch of papers under different names and call it "grassroots." But it's not real grass -- it's Astroturf. Notify both papers; they don't like being played for fools.

[bahrbearian]

3. Yeah thats right they invaded in 1975 after we pulled the troops

in 1972.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Great catch!!! I am going to start googling all the Repug LTTEs!

[DieboldMustDie]

5. Would someone please explain to me again...

what al Qaeda has to do with Iraq? I'm all confused. :shrug:

[Old and In the Way]

6. Since the Lt. Col is clueless about VietNam, why would you expect him to

know what he's talking about with regards to Iraq?

Yeah, it's defective astro-turf that should be recalled by the manufacturer.

[Robbien]

7. Thanks for the heads up, sent an email off to the paper

at

[e-mail]

[bunkerbuster1]

8. Which begs the question: Don't editors google this stuff?

Is it asking that much to plug a few words into a search engine to see if something has been published before?

While I'm at it, would it be asking too much for newspapers to specify that they'll only print originally composed letters, and not form letters?

This isn't a left/right thing, it's a cred thing. I sure as hell don't want Dems astroturfing like this.

[Robbien]

13. I received a response to my email to the Chicago Herald

This was their response:

Robbie,



I appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

I checked out the Web site and agree with your conclusion.

The Herald News will run an apology and suspend use of the letters.





Sincerely,

Matt Cappellini

City editor

The Herald News

[bunkerbuster1]

14. Nice work.

And nice of them to acknowledge your contribution.

[Wink]

15. I sent this in......no response.

In a recent letter to the editor published in your paper a Lt. Col. Mark A. Smith offered his opinion about how rosy things were going in Iraq and how we actually beat the rebels in South Vietnam and how the media doesn't report our wars accurately. The Lt. Col. had quite a lot to say in support of our fearless leader's policies. Unfortunately what the Lt. Col. had to say wasn't his own to say. It seems the Lt. Col. got his letter, in it's entirety, from another author, a Mr. James Dunnigan. Mr. Dunnigan wrote an article in December of 2004 entitled "The War In Iraq That Isn't Reported". This is where the Lt. Col. lifted a few paragraphs from Mr. Dunnigan's opinion piece to create his own opinion piece for publication in the Herald.

It took me all of ten seconds to do a google search to determine the true author of the Lt. Col. Smith's submission. You would think that a little more care would be taken by the Herald to ensure they haven't been taken in by plagiarism and/or mass propaganda mailings by GOP operatives. If the Lt. Col. feels so supportive of the Bush administration maybe he should use his own words to describe his heartfelt feelings. And if the Herald truly feels that it's letter to the editors should be written by the submitters, they should do a little responsible researching before printing them.

[Jim__]

9. ... South Vietnam fell to a conventional invasion from the north ...

Ummm, weren't we supposed to be training the South Vietnamese Army to resist just such an invasion? Aren't we now training the Iraqi Army to resist the insurgency? Seems like our training of the South Vietnamese Army wasn't too successful. Aren't a number of critics now claiming that we are not really training the Iraqi Army? We're just hyping the numbers of the supposedly trained soldiers. Why do we expect this to turn out any differently than Vietnam? Oh, that's right. The North Vietnamese aren't going to invade Iraq. Well, I guess we've got it then.

[enki23]

10. "conventional invasion..."

that's funny, i could have sworn the people who actually lived there considered it to be one nation...

but you know how arbitrary political boundaries go. you can believe in whichever ones you want.

[RedCloud]

12. Fell or Rose?

I think Vietnam rose to the challenge of its rival...

[H2O Man]

11. A Nixon tactic .....

Last summer, I failed miserably in an effort to get DUers to become semi-organized in writing LTTE. I was concerned in large part with the Plame/neocon spy/yellow cake forgeries scandals. Each can be traced to a people connected with the "Adam" of modern republican scandals, the late Richard Nixon.

To understand Bush2, and indeed Bush1 and Reagan, one must study Nixon closely. Indeed, Watergate led to the Iran-Contra scandals, which led to the current criminal administration. And to understand these most significant issues, one has to understand Nixon's relationship with the press.

It is not so simple as the bitterness between Nixon and Rather, or the publication of the Pentagon Papers. The idea of organized LTTE campaigns between election campaigns actually can be traced to Nixon. Let me quote from the 6-24-69 memorandum from HR Haldeman to PJ Buchanan: "The President feels very strongly that we need to develop a 'Letters to the Editor' and 'Calls to Broadcasters' program somewhere within the administration."

In the past two weeks, I've done some fascinating research into the Nixon efforts to influence the media with a small but potent LTTE campaign. They had 50 citizens who would sign & send letters that Buchanan (and others) wrote. While only about 25% were printed, they were actually very successful in terms of changing editors' perceptions on what stries to print.

Be assured the republicans continue this efforts. The last democrats to do so effectively may have been the Kennedys, although their efforts were usually limited to election campaigns. The only effort that I am aware of that included a broader scope was actually when many in the intel community (though obviously a minority) wanted RFK to run in the 1968 election, and this is what actually led to the publication of the Pentagon Papers.

History holds many valuable lessons .....