West Wing, Petraeus’ shop ‘hard-wired’

[babylonsister]

West Wing, Petraeus’ shop ‘hard-wired’
Posted September 9th, 2007 at 2:55 pm



There are quite a few noteworthy tidbits in today’s front-page piece in the Washington Post about internal Bush administration divisions over Iraq policy, but this one is probably the key piece to remember:

Another new arrival in the West Wing set up a rapid-response PR unit hard-wired into Petraeus’s shop. Ed Gillespie, the new presidential counselor, organized daily conference calls at 7:45 a.m. and again late in the afternoon between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Embassy and military in Baghdad to map out ways of selling the surge.

From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and last week, the office put out 94 such documents in various categories — “Myths/Facts” or “Setting the Record Straight” to take issue with negative news articles, and “In Case You Missed It” to distribute positive articles or speeches.

Now, it isn’t exactly a big surprise that a Gillespie-run public-relations team in the White House would be fully integrated into Gen. Petraeus’ team, but it does reinforce what observers have known for quite a while now: Petraeus is a part of the president’s political operation. That’s not necessarily a criticism. It is, however, a realization that Petraeus’ testimony is not that of a neutral, dispassionate observer.

As Ezra said the other day, “Next week, Petraeus will not be acting as a general and he will not be acting as a soldier; he will be acting as a media campaign. He is the White House’s press strategy, and the degree to which the press and the Democrats internalize this will largely dictate how the testimony is received.”

more...

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/12824.html#more-12824

[annabanana]

1. Anyone who regards it as anything OTHER than a PR tour

has not been paying attention. Anyone who pretends that it is something other than a PR tour is complicit... (hear that Congress?)