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TechnoratiHouse Aims At Pentagon 'Propaganda' on Iraq War
The House of Representatives moved Thursday to crack down on a Pentagon program that Democrats say planted false and overly optimistic news stories about the Iraq war, using military analysts who appeared regularly on television.
Acting on a 2009 defense policy bill, lawmakers forbade the Defense Department from engaging in "a concerted effort to propagandize" the American people over the war.
The amendment by Rep. Paul W. Hodes (D-N.H.), which passed by voice vote, also would force an investigation by the General Accounting Office of efforts to plant positive news stories about the war. The overall bill passed 384-23.
The action follows an April 20 New York Times article that described how the Pentagon promoted its positive view of the war by cultivating former military officers who became regulars on Fox News, CNN and the broadcast networks.
The report prompted outrage among war opponents, who called it just the latest example of the Bush administration's secretly trying to manipulate the media. Defenders of the war said the Pentagon merely tried to ensure that its views were understood by the retired officers, who have become a broadcast staple.
The Senate will not take up the defense policy bill until after next week's recess. Its version does not yet include language about the military analyst program.
The White House, citing concerns with other provisions of the overall legislation, has threatened a veto.
"The American people were spun by Bush administration 'message multipliers,' " Hodes said, using the Pentagon's term for the retired generals and colonels.
"They were fed administration talking points, believing they were getting independent military analysis."
Previous defense policy bills prohibited such "domestic propaganda," said Hodes, arguing that the restriction was even more critical now.
But Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) called it "ridiculous" to suggest that the retired officers had been part of a propaganda program. He called them "a great resource" who had given both positive and negative views of the war.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said the amendment could endanger benign "propaganda," such as the Marine Corps' recruiting slogan: "The Few, the Proud, the Marines."
The New York Times article was built, in part, on e-mails between the Pentagon and the analysts. The newspaper said those missives and interviews suggested "a symbiotic relationship in which the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated."
Some officers who voiced too much skepticism about the Iraq war were not invited back to the special briefings, the Times reported, and other analysts echoed the talking points "even when they suspected the information was false or inflated."
The Pentagon announced about a week after the article's publication that it would suspend the private briefings pending an internal review, which is continuing.
Representatives of NBC, CBS and ABC said Thursday that they were confident their analysts had not been improperly influenced. Fox News and CNN did not respond to requests for comment.
Nancy Snow, a professor of communications at Cal State Fullerton who studies propaganda, said the public had become largely inured to revelations that the government had tried to skew debate.
"When I tell audiences that the U.S. government is prohibited from propagandizing the American people, they just guffaw," she said.
But Snow said she believed that public interest, and outrage, would be piqued if new details were reported.
Particularly galling, she said, would be evidence that analysts tilted opinions to favor military contractors who paid their salaries.
"The public will really become upset if these analysts appear to be profiteering from this military war machine," said Snow, who once worked for the State Department's U.S. Information Agency. "It always comes back to the pocketbook."
james.rainey@latimes.com
© 2008 The Los Angeles Times
13 Comments so far
Show Allbbr-001 I agree with your assessment; additionally, I personally believe the retired O-6 (Army/Marine/Air Force Colonels and Navy Captains) and higher level officers (Generals) participating in this propaganda endeavor, and, therefore, unnecessarily sending Soldiers, Marines, and others to their deaths because of their actions (which very well delayed any and all public opposition to the invasion) must now do the only honorable thing they can. Kill themselves.
They knowingly sent Service Members to their deaths in order to make money and stay in the good graces of their masters at the Pentagon. Suicide is the only honorable option they have left. They have disgraced themselves, the services they were once a part of, the American people, and, most of all, the Constitution of the United States which they once swore to protect -- against all enemies, foreign or domestic.
If I could afford it, I would call them all out in a full-page ad in USA Today, NYT, LAT, Wash. Post, etc. so that all Americans could know, by name, those responsible for perpetuating a criminal invasion of a sovereign nation by selling it to the American public as "expert opinion".
Good heavens, our government uses propaganda to
influence our thoughts? When I was a young GI many years ago, I sat in a classroom and watched
a "captured" training film that showed how North
Vietnam used propaganda to train their soldiers.
In the course of viewing that film a light of awareness came on and I thought, WTF, my country is doing the very same thing to me at this moment.
I've never trusted our government since. The news media questioned politicians in years past, now they help spread the bullshit.
Yes, we can do something. Spreading the word of real news portals such as CommonDreams goes a long way. When a news agency is publicly found to be lying by honest citizens, educated and intelligent people disregard their news. I put more faith in the "Weekly World News" (elvis is still alive) than I do in Fox.
That said, every news agency does get some information wrong and therefore, on good news portals, they write in corrections, post story. As long as most people realize that Fox is NOT a news channel but a phony propaganda megaphone (i think most do already) then we can get on to getting real stories from places like commondreams.
Therefore, it makes me happy everytime it comes out that Fox News has distorted the truth because it loses a little more of its non existant credibility.
If they start talking about bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, wake me up.
I do not mind Propaganda. I just want to hear it from both sides in equal amounts. Today we hear only one side on anything important to the elite psychopaths, or sometimes they give us a controlled dissident point of view, an opposing view presented so lamely that nobody takes it serious.
Then there is this.
2008 On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news.
We have no regulations to prevent MSM from intentionally lying or distorting the news? Maybe they can do something like pass a law to prevent them from deliberately lying or distorting the news.
EH?! what was that? Propergander? oh, a VERY PROPER GANDER, indeed.
Can you say Loophole!?
All this would do is lead the Bush administration to running their propaganda campaign out of say the Ag Dept. According this article, the bill is very limited and only says the DOD can't do this. Heck, we've got like 20 spy agencies, a full cabinet full of other agencies, and a White House full of operatives who can do the same thing.
Plus, I'm pretty sure the worthless Dems know this won't become law. And what exactly were the penalties for violating this bill .... twenty lashes with a limp noodle?
How about a real law saying anyone who does anything like this, who runs any propaganda campaign designed to fool the American people into anything get 20 years in a Federal penitentiary.
I think the vast majority of military officers are patriotic, well educated, and want to do what is right. The neocons and their "Special Working Groups" (someting like that) and minders infiltrated the Pentagon and the State department in the early days of this administration. They made certain every sound bite coming from the Pentagon agreed with the neocon plans.
The next president should remove the political operatives and restore the professional military leadership.
Don't let them fool ya,
Or even try to school ya! Oh, no!
We've got a mind of our own,
So go to hell if what you're thinking is not right!
Love would never leave us alone,
A-yin the darkness there must come out to light.
Bob
Stop the madness, still in exile,
True patriotism is only accomplished with heartfelt truth
When does spin become a sin?
When young people die for a lie.
It is the sin of the spinner to spin,
It is the sin the spun to be spun.
'Wild Dog
'Propaganda'
We have a lie based government.
Alas, trust was such a brittle thing.
It's not just General Mayhem of the Pentagram but the
entire Federal Government that has betrayed America's trust.
http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/Update/Update2008-05-22.htm
http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_01_03_03_mockingbird.html
"The "old boy network" of socializing, talking shop, and tapping each other for favors outside the halls of government made it inevitable that the CIA and Corporate America would become allies, thus the systematic infiltration and takeover of the media."
and
"There is such an overwhelming amount of information pertaining to the CIA that it is impossible to cover it all in one book, much less an article. Personally, I have come to the conclusion that the media is not only influenced by the CIA.....the media is the CIA. Many Americans think of their supposedly free press as a watchdog on government, mainly because the press itself shamelessly promotes that myth. One of the first tenets for the control of a population is to control all sources of information the population receives and mostly because of the pervasive CIA and Operation Mockingbird, the mainstream American Press is a controlled multi-national corporate/government megaphone. They are up to their eyeballs in dirty deeds and there will never be an end to the corruption that prevails unless the CIA is abolished. Otherwise, the CIA will just keep on using their tricks of propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, drug trafficking, sexual intrigue, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, demolition and evacuation procedures, death squads, and politically motivated assassinations. The CIA is the epitome of organized crime run amuck!"
please follow the link above to read the entire article from which these excerpts were taken
Nancy Snow, a professor of communications at Cal State Fullerton who studies propaganda, said the public had become largely inured to revelations that the government had tried to skew debate.
"When I tell audiences that the U.S. government is prohibited from propagandizing the American people, they just guffaw," she said.
Is she talking about the "mindless 'mericans" assured by revelations and in such a rapture over georgie boy that they are immunized against any form of truth whatsoever, and therefore able to "guffaw" in the face of the inevitable?
Congress should investigate ad naseum, slap their wrists and send them to the corner for a time-out... We'll probably need them later when we gear up to conquer Iran...
Long live Oceania....
"Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to posses because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change in partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible."
guffaw, guffaw....
KCT