From The Times-Tribune, 12/3/05:
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15686134&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=418218&rfi=6

Who’s really paying for the good news from Iraq?

By Chris Kelly


You can’t make this stuff up.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was crowing about the
scores of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" now
flourishing in post-Saddam Iraq.

Revisiting remarks he made to a gathering of newspaper editors in
April 2004, Mr. Rumsfeld said everyday Iraqis are learning that
democracies depend on government being "challenged internally through
the complex constitutional system of checks and balances, and
externally by a free and energetic press."

Hours later, America’s free and suddenly energetic press revealed that
some of Iraq’s "free press" has been bought with American tax dollars.

Since early this year, something called the Information Operations
Task Force has been paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories slanted
to cast the U.S. mission in Iraq in a blindingly positive light.

Some of the stories were ghost-written by "information operations"
soldiers and later translated into Arabic.

Others were written by Iraqi "journalists" who were told what to
write.

So far, it seems most of the stories were based on factual
information, but clearly carried a pro-American bent.

The stories were passed off as the unbiased reporting of independent
journalists.

Meanwhile, the State Department has been spending millions of dollars
training Iraqi journalists in Western media ethics.

Put the two efforts together, and it’s like paying a carpenter to
rebuild a house you keep burning down.

The operation was driven by Washington, D.C.-based Lincoln Group,
which, according to its Web site, is a "strategic communications and
public relations firm providing insight and influence in challenging
and hostile environments."

TRANSLATION: "We fake the news for money."

For planting stories in the Iraqi media and God knows what else, the
Lincoln Group was paid $6 million.

The company has another Pentagon contract worth $100 million over five
years to provide "media operations with video, print and Web-based
products," according to the Special Operations Command.

Who signed off on the contracts?

No one in government seems to know, and (surprise!) no one at the
Lincoln Group is talking.

Pentagon officials, including Mr. Rumsfeld, denied any knowledge of
the program.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan expressed his usual
bewilderment, loosing a slew of nondenial denials similar to those
bleated after the Department of Education got busted producing fake TV
news packages and paying "journalists" to hawk the Bush
administration’s "No Child Left Behind" legislation.

The official Washington reaction to the latest news manipulation
scandal is perhaps best characterized by the response of Pentagon
spokesman Bryan Whitman, who said:

"I don’t have all the facts. I don’t have a lot of facts at all. I
have very few facts."

TRANSLATION: "Our plausible-excuse guy is on vacation."

So, no one at the Pentagon knows who at the Pentagon awarded Pentagon
contracts worth $106 million.

Spending $6 billion a month on the war, I guess a little spare change
is bound to get overlooked.

Senators, as they will when confronted by cameras, made showy demands
for hearings and "facts," punctuated by dramatic declarations of "deep
concern."

"A free and independent press is critical to the functioning of a
democracy, and I am concerned about any actions which may erode the
independence of the Iraqi media," said Virginia Republican John
Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

TRANSLATION: "Dammit! Who let the plausible-excuse guy take a
vacation?"

On the Democratic side, Sen. Edward Kennedy said the program "speaks
volumes about the president’s credibility gap."

TRANSLATION: "Woo-hoo!"

Some commanders on the ground in Iraq defended planting stories in the
Iraqi media, insisting such measures are necessary to combat the lies
and distortions of terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"We don’t lie," said Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch.

"Everything we do is based on fact, not based on fiction."

It’s not hard to understand the man’s frustration.

For three long years, our soldiers have been sweating, fighting and
dying in a struggle to give an oppressed people the chance for a new
start, without much help from said people or our leaders back home.

We can argue the wisdom of this war, but there is no debate about the
sacrifices of our soldiers and their families.

Good things have been accomplished in Iraq, but all soldiers ever see
in the media is bad news.

Insurgents are winning the media war, and it must be tempting to slip
a few positive stories into Iraqi newspapers.

Tempting, but wrong.

This kind of chicanery undermines the credibility of our nation and
soldiers on the ground.

From now on, any good story that finds its own way into print can be
dismissed as more propaganda.

From now on, many Iraqis will dismiss democracy as just a word, for
sale like any other.

That’s why you can’t make this stuff up.

Not if you want to be trusted.

_________________________________________________________

Tsk, tsk. Faking the news. We've sure come a long way, baby.

Harry