Tag: Iraq

Life in the Propaganda Age

Trish

Excellent commentary by The Week’s Eric Effron on the revelation that BushCo has been planting propaganda in the “free” Iraq press. You know, ala some dictator, like Saddam Hussein maybe.

…after decades of tyranny, the Iraqis don’t need better or different propaganda; they need less of it

Propaganda may be a reality of war. But after decades of tyranny, the Iraqis don’t need better or different propaganda; they need less of it. And it’s hard to see how planting articles with headlines such as “The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq” and “Iraqi Forces Capture al Qaida Fighters Crawling Like Dogs” could ever fool anyone.

In its own defense, the Pentagon says that its phony news stories merely reported the truth to a populace steeped in anti-American lies. But as an old journalism teacher of mine used to say, the difference between journalism and propaganda is not a matter of accuracy—it’s a matter of “intention.” One is meant to inform and enlighten; the other, to screen out contradictory information and promote a narrow agenda. That distinction, sadly, is being erased, and not only in Iraq. From the blogosphere to 24/7 cable news to a mainstream media desperate to keep our attention, it’s ever harder to find information not tainted with an ideological or marketing agenda. Rather than seek some semblance of the truth, we’re now encouraged simply to pick a source consistent with our biases. The Information Age, it would seem, has been mislabeled. We’re all actually living in the Propaganda Age.

New reports reveal the Pentagon has launched a $300 million psychological warfare campaign to plant more propaganda throughout the world. I remember when America didn’t need to be sold to anyone, but that seems so last century now.

Poll: Public Not Buying Bush’s Iraq Rhetoric

Buck Banks

Battle for hearts and minds at home: While the political debate over the administration’s Iraq policy is heating up, the Busheviks’ insistence on staying the course is not swaying the electorate. Americans remain about evenly split over whether we should be there at all and whether we should pull out. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted among 1,502 adults Dec. 7-11 found:

  • Fully 61% of the public believes that progress is being made in training Iraqi forces, while nearly as many (58%) see progress being achieved in establishing a democracy in Iraq. But on balance, more Americans say the U.S. is losing ground in reducing civilian casualties and preventing a civil war.
  • The nearly even division in the public over whether to keep troops in Iraq obscures a more complicated set of opinions about what to do next. Most of those who say they want the troops home “as soon as possible” apparently do not mean “now.” And not everyone who wants the U.S. to stay is opposed to setting a timetable for a troop withdrawal. Americans also are wary about consequences of a quick withdrawal – 58% say terrorist organizations will become stronger if the United States withdraws its forces soon.
  • There is modest optimism that tomorrow’s elections in Iraq will lead to a more stable situation in the country. Roughly four-in-10 (37%) express that opinion; that is significantly greater than the percentages who said that before previous balloting in Iraq, in October and last January (29% each).

The survey also shows that President Bush’s approval ratings have not improved. Just 38% approve of his job performance which is little changed from November (36%). Only about three-in-10 (28%) say he has a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion.

Three Questions on Iraq for Bush Supporters

Jon Ponder

Be honest (for once): Bob Geiger at the Yellow Dog Blog posted 15 questions for Bush supporters last week that were quite thought provoking – I’ve found myself mulling them over ever since. (Not the least wondering if I should suggest to Bob that 15 questions might be too tasking for the average Bush voter, but that’s another issue.)

So, which is it, did they lie or were they merely criminally negligent?

Happily, I live safely behind the walls of the West Coast liberal bastion and do not count among my friends, family or work associates a single Bush supporter. However, I’ve come up with three questions on Iraq that I would pose to a Bush voter, if I knew one:

1. Yes or No: If the number one export of Iraq were olive oil, instead of petroleum oil, would we be there today?

2. One of the reasons Bush has given us for the occupation of Iraq is that we will create a foothold for democracy among the Arabs. Wouldn’t it have been less costly in blood and treasure simply to convince the Kuwaitis to hold elections? After all, we literally saved their asses from Saddam in 1992. Becoming a beacon for democracy in the Middle East would seem to be the very least they could do in return.

3. In the run-up to the war, did Bush and his team lie when they said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction?

No? Well, then the only other option is that they screwed up – and did so, as the vice president might say, big time.

In fact, this wildly inept miscalculation has led to over 100,000 casualities, including at least 2,200 dead U.S. service members and the fatalities of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. It has cost us upwards of $300 billion – and we’re not even halfway done yet. The Bush misadventure in Iraq will undoubtedly go down as the most monumentally inept war effort ever undertaken. (If they were Democrats the Bush team would be pursued by the media and the GOP for gross and homicidal official negligence.)

So, which is it, did they lie or were they merely criminally negligent?

Okay, Bushists, we await your answers.

Poll: Two-Thirds of Iraqis Want the U.S. Out

Jon Ponder

Associated Press:

Most Iraqis disapprove of the presence of U.S. forces in their country, yet they are optimistic about
Iraq’s future and their own personal lives, according to a new poll.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed oppose the presence of troops from the United States and its coalition partners and less than half, 44 percent, say their country is better off now than it was before the war, according to an ABC News poll conducted with Time magazine and other media partners.

But Iraqis are surprisingly upbeat on many fronts, the poll suggests.

Three-quarters say they are confident about the parliamentary elections scheduled for this week. More than two-thirds expect things in their country to get better in the coming months.

Questions Mike Wallace Wants to Ask Bush

Jon Ponder

New York Daily News:

Mike Wallace still doesn’t pull any punches. Talking with the Boston Globe about his memoir, “Between You and Me,” the CBS eminence offered a few questions he’d like to ask President Bush. Such as: “What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? … You apparently were incurious. You didn’t want to travel. You knew very little about the military. … Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [bleeped] up?”

Bush Ignores Lessons of Vietnam at Iraq’s Peril

Buck Banks

Betrayal in the making: In “Forward Observer: Homeward Bound?” George C. Wilson, writing in CongressDaily offers some sobering thoughts on what would happen after a U.S. pullout in Iraq. He also writes a chillingly believable Bushesque speech on the withdrawal.

Some day soon I expect to hear President Bush announcing that he will begin withdrawing U. S. troops from Iraq in 2006.

He almost certainly will stress that he is not cutting and running, just complying with the request of the sovereign government of Iraq. His wordsmiths will recommend that Bush say something like this once the new Iraqi government and its constitution are in place:

“Today I am announcing the first withdrawals of American troops from Iraq. I am doing this at the request of the duly elected government of Iraq and with the full support of our own Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thanks in large part to the efforts of our magnificent military, the elected president of Iraq tells me that his army and police forces are ready to take over more of the security of their own country.

“Let me emphasize that we are not abandoning Iraq. We are standing down as Iraqi forces are standing up. This has been my objective all along. American military forces, including our air power, will be on call if the newly elected Iraqi government should need them as we execute the phased withdrawals recommended by our military commanders.

“This is a great day for democracy; a bad day for terrorists the world over. Thanks to our steadfastness in Iraq, to our men and women in uniform who paid the ultimate price helping Iraq achieve its freedom while making us all safer here at home, and to the American people who held firm and would not settle for anything less than victory over the terrorists in Iraq, we have brought a brighter day to the world.”
[…]

Poll: Wars On Iraq and Terrorism are Intertwined but Separate

Buck Banks

Cognitive dissonance: Although the Bushites — all of ’em — link the War On Iraq to the War On Terror virtually every time one of them speaks, the ploy hasn’t completely brainwashed Americans. Today’s National Journals PollTrack finds most Americans can hold differing opinions about the two wars in their brains simultaneously.

The war on terrorism and the war in Iraq have become intertwined in the minds of many Americans, but more than three-quarters of respondents told Quinnipiac University pollsters that the United States should continue the war on terrorism — regardless of their feelings on the Gulf conflict.

Those feelings don’t seem too sunny. Fifty-four percent said they thought going to war with Iraq was the wrong thing to do, 13 points higher than the number who deemed the decision correct and 3 points more than Quinnipiac’s March survey.

Consistent with a recent Time/SRBI survey, a small plurality of Quinnipiac respondents said that before going to war, the Bush administration deliberately misled the public (49%) rather than telling “what it believed to be true” (46%).
[…]

How You Define ‘Winning’ War in Iraq

Buck Banks

Count the bombings: There were only 23 suicide bombing attacks in November — the lowest level in seven months — and a U.S. general attributed the drop to U.S. and Iraqi operations along the Syrian border. So that means we’re winning, right?

Not necessarily. Maj. Gen. Mark Lynch then warned that al-Qaida in Iraq will likely increase attacks in the next two weeks in an attempt to disrupt parliamentary elections slated for Dec. 15. So, it looks like we’re still losing.

Did Someone Leak Bush’s Speech to Hil?

Trish

Or is she just that good?

In case you missed the memo, Sen. Hillary Clinton did a brilliant job of emailing people yesterday with the facts — as opposed to the spin — on Bush’s call for Congressional support of disarming Saddem Hussein way back when.

Of course, now we refer to this as “Quagmire in Iraq.” But Hillary still remembers why she voted to give the president the authority to make decisions in 2002.

“It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and it is past time for the President, Vice President, or anyone else associated with them to stop impugning the patriotism of their critics.” – Sen. Hillary Clinton

I voted…on the basis of the evidence presented by the Administration, assurances they gave that they would first seek to resolve the issue of weapons of mass destruction peacefully through United Nations sponsored inspections, and the argument that the resolution was needed because Saddam Hussein never did anything to comply with his obligations that he was not forced to do.

Their assurances turned out to be empty ones, as the Administration refused repeated requests from the U.N. inspectors to finish their work. And the “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda turned out to be false.

Before I voted in 2002, the Administration publicly and privately assured me that they intended to use their authority to build international support in order to get the U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq, as articulated by the President in his Cincinnati speech on October 7th, 2002. As I said in my October 2002 floor statement, I took “the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.”

Instead, the Bush Administration short-circuited the U.N. inspectors – the last line of defense against the possibility that our intelligence was false. The Administration also abandoned securing a larger international coalition, alienating many of those who had joined us in Afghanistan…

I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the President and his Administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war.

Hillary’s email went out a full day before Bush’s speech but in it she correctly anticipates both the speech’s contents and its themes.

After all, if ever there was someone who could stand in front of a meticulously staged backdrop before a crowd of hand-selected supporters and spout absolute inanities with an air of bluster and arrogance, that man is George W. Bush.

It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and present us with a plan for finishing this war with success and honor — not a rigid timetable that terrorists can exploit, but a public plan for winning and concluding the war. And it is past time for the President, Vice President, or anyone else associated with them to stop impugning the patriotism of their critics.

You go girl.

Information Offensive: Bush Admin Pays for Propaganda in Iraqi Press

Jon Ponder

Operation Hoodwink: This question comes up time and time again as we consider the rightwing’s tactics: If you are right about your positions and policies why then must you continually lie about them? If things are going so well in Iraq, why do we need to pay for happy-talk propaganda over there? Is it an information offensive, or just offensive information?

The articles present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments.

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military “information operations” troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism,” since the effort began this year.

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group’s Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets…

U.S. law forbids the military from carrying out psychological operations or planting propaganda through American media outlets. Yet several officials said that given the globalization of media driven by the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, the Pentagon’s efforts were carried out with the knowledge that coverage in the foreign press inevitably “bleeds” into the Western media and influences coverage in U.S. news outlets.