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Paid Propaganda: Changing American Opinion on Iraq by Changing the Subject

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bigtree Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-25-07 09:05 AM
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Paid Propaganda: Changing American Opinion on Iraq by Changing the Subject
Edited on Sat Aug-25-07 09:21 AM by bigtree

"Propaganda is that branch of the art of lying which consists in nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies." -Cornford


As the Bush administration and the Pentagon work to manipulate the news out of Iraq to their favor, more and more Americans appear to be tuning them out. There is a deep weariness of Bush's continuing occupation brought on by the continuing lies which he used to lead America to Iraq and, now, to hold our soldiers there indefinitely.

Bush began his propaganda campaign to continue his occupation in the year leading up to the 2004 election. He complained then that, "images of violence from Iraq on the television screens" were influencing Americans away from support of his bloody occupation. He insisted that there was "good news" out of Iraq which wasn't reaching the American public.

In October 2006, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, was revealed in an internal memo obtained by the AP to be in pursuit for her boss Rumsfeld of a department which would "counter unfavorable media accounts about the war in Iraq."

from the AP:

Smith's memo says the new operation would have several departments. They include one to provide quick responses to independent news accounts, another one to enlist influential politicians and interest groups to speak to the media on the Pentagon's behalf, and still another to post the military's version of news on the Internet.

Smith's boss at the time, Defense Chief Donald Rumsfeld, had given a speech earlier in 2006 where he described the Pentagon effort to influence the media as a "war" where he said, "Most critical battles may not be fought in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq, but in the newsrooms in places like New York and London and Cairo and elsewhere."

"Today we’re engaged in the first war in history," Rumsfeld said before the Council on Foreign Relations, "unconventional and irregular as it may be—in an era of e-mails, blogs, cell phones—(laughter)—Blackberrys, Instant Messaging, digital cameras, a global Internet with no inhibitions, cell phones, hand-held videocameras, talk radio, 24-hour news broadcasts, satellite television. There’s never been a war fought in this environment before," he said.

As reported by the WaPost in April 2006Rumsfeld's (and the White House's) ambition to control the media reports about the Iraq occupation was revealed in action as the administration and the U.S. military were found to be conducting a "propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq by magnifying Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's role beyond any reality."

The Post reported that the two-year effort "raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that, "the U.S. campaign aimed to turn Iraqis against al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners."

The documents uncovered "explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign," the Post report said, including internet postings.

It was in December 2005 that the stories surfaced of Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, which was being paid over $100 million by the Pentagon to plant administration propaganda in the Iraqi news media; and also of an effort to pay Iraqi journalists to write 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.

"In Iraq, for example, Rumsfeld said, "the U.S. military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the U.S. embassy, has sought nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of aggressive campaign of disinformation. Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate; for example, the allegations of someone in the military hiring a contractor, and the contractor allegedly paying someone to print a story—a true story—but paying to print a story. For example, the resulting explosion of critical press stories then causes everything, all activity, all initiative, to stop, just frozen. Even worse, it leads to a chilling effect for those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field."

The "chilling effect" that Rumsfeld attributes 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 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. Yesterday it was revealed by the AP (again) that another internal memo from, none other than, 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 report in September.

The information "war" which is to be waged this time around 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. 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 his propaganda. 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. There has been, however, reams of reporting which has accurately portrayed the disaster in Iraq. There aren't any "sunshine" reports of soccer stadiums, reconstructed vineyards, or even marshland restoration in Iraq, which are at all relevant to the critical questions of our military involvement there. Bush can't change our perceptions of the bloody tragedy of his invasion and (escalated) occupation by merely changing the subject.


http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree
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bigtree Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-25-07 10:43 AM
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1. kick
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bigtree Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-25-07 01:44 PM
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2. The Pentagon Propaganda Machine
Edited on Sat Aug-25-07 01:47 PM by bigtree
Senator J. William Fulbright
Vintage Books, 1971, paper

snip . . .

During the past several years, there have been too many instances of lack of candor and of outright misleading statements in treating with the public. Too often we have been misled by the very apparatus that is supposed to keep us factually informed or, in the very strictest sense, honestly guided.

Even without breaking the limits of honest presentation, any President and the heads of his "newsmaking" departments can shape the flow of information the public gets.

The President has ready access to the nation's television networks whenever he feels the need to use them, and his press conferences attract hundreds of newsmen. His statements and the statements of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense usually get front page treatment.

Through selectivity and timing, they can command attention that at times is far greater than that deserved by the content of the information released. They can give new luster to old ideas and obliterate embarrassing events with announcements, actions, trips, and "summit meetings." In a pinch, what have been called "pseudoevents" can be created.

The word "propaganda" ... from the title Congregatio de propaganda fide (Congregation, or College, for the Propagation of the Faith)-an organization set up in I673 to train Roman Catholic missionaries - the word through usage over the years has taken on the meaning set forth in Webster's New International Dictionary (Second Edition): "Now, often, secret or clandestine dissemination of ideas, information, gossip, or the like, for the purpose of helping, or injuring, a person, an institution, a cause, etc."

From 1951 to I959, the Congress in its annual appropriations for the military limited the amount that could be spent on public relations to $2,755,000. According to Hohenberg, the services complied with the spending limit:
... by specifying that only particular duties could be classified as public relations. They even made out weekly slips giving the total number of hours spent in the "public relations" function-sometimes none at all, sometimes 30 to 45 minutes out of an entire week. It was not considered "public relations" to "answer queries from the public," i.e. respond to a newspaper inquiry, or to draft statements, write speeches, or do so many of the things that are a normal part of a public relations man's duty.

The congressional restriction on spending was removed in I959.

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.


more: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pentagon_military/Pentagon_Propaganda_JWF.html
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drm604 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-25-07 10:38 PM
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3. K&R
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bigtree Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-26-07 03:20 PM
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4. Pro War Ads Falsely Link 9/11 To Iraq
Neocon riddled "Nonprofit corporation" Pumps out misleading propaganda

Infowars.net | August 23 , 2007
Steve Watson

A newly formed non-profit organisation made up of former Bush administration officials is to spend $15 million to run pro-war television and radio ads in more than 20 states which falsely link the 9/11 attacks to the war in Iraq in an effort to strong arm Congress into withdrawing support for a de-escalation.

According to its own press release the group, Freedom's Watch , will run the ads as of today and feature an 800-number for the public to call their representatives and urge them "not to surrender to terror".

One of the founding board members for the group is former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. In addition Freedom's Watch chairman Bradley A. Blakeman was a member of the White House senior staff during President Bush's first term. According to the Politico , the group's board is also riddled with former Bush officials, as is its list of major donors.

According to its website the organisation is "dedicated to educating individuals about and advancing public policies that protect America's interests at home and abroad, foster economic prosperity, and strengthen families."

Though it claims to be "fighting for what is right", the group seems to have no problem producing intentionally misleading propaganda.


Watch the propaganda: http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/pro_war_ads_falsely_link_911_to_iraq.htm
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