The Military Organized The O'Hanlon-Pollack Tour - Glenn Greenwald

[otohara]

If you've been following this story, then you know Greenwald has pointed out the organized tour deforce that followed the recent NYT's OpEd by Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon. To read the entire nauseating propaganda tour details, go here: STARTS AT POST ENTITLED: Tuesday July 31, 2007 08:38 EST A new low of mindlessness for our media.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/03/hewitt_allen/





Updated today....
(snip)

Mike Allen of The Politico visited in person yesterday with Hugh Hewitt for a radio interview. As one would expect, the deeply partisan and press-hating Hewitt is a big fan of The Politico, and told his readers: MA: And he also went over to Iraq to look at the communications capabilities, and he came back with a number of recommendations about even some of the logistical things to help people get those stories out. Now I think the military's getting smarter about it, as you know. . . .

HH: Yeah.

MA: The military organized the O'Hanlon-Pollack tour, and I didn't know until I read your interview with Mike O'Hanlon that they'd had an interview with General Petraeus

HH: Right.

MA: That had not been reported before. That was very fascinating. But I think that shows you that the military's getting better at this.

When Allen gushes that "the military's getting better at this," what he means by "this" is "media and political messaging about the war." As has been evident for months now, the U.S. military in Iraq has been devoting far more efforts to all sorts of propaganda campaigns designed to shape American public opinion about the war. Many of those media management efforts by the (absolutely nonpolitical) U.S. military have been shaped by the same individual responsible for media management in the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and, subsequently, in Dick Cheney's office.

And it was as part of exactly that newly shaped campaign that -- to use Allen's words -- "the military organized the O'Hanlon-Pollack tour." During the U.S. media part of their "tour" after they returned from Iraq, O'Hanlon and Pollack tried to create the impression -- with the able help of their very-impressed media interviewers -- that they were intrepid war reporters who practically fought their way into the war zone and dug deep into the gritty realities of the front line and came back hardened and a bit shell-shocked but nonetheless so impressed by the military progress they saw first-hand that they had no choice but to admit that the Surge is Succeeding.

What they actually did was prance around on a meticulously calibrated path shaped by a Bush-Cheney P.R. operative and U.S. military communications strategists in order to view what Sen. Jim Webb recently called the "dog and pony show" -- the same show that the U.S. military produces for war-supporting political and media figures who take a trip for a few days to Iraq so that they can come back and begin every pro-war sentence with "having just returned from Iraq." O'Hanlon and Pollack saw what the U.S. military communications team wanted them to see, and that, in turn, was shaped by the same individual whose job it was to manipulate the media for the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign.

[babylonsister]

1. Wow. I should have known; they were 'bought' by the military to spread

the admin lies. Rec'd!