Lincoln Group ... Propaganda in Iraq ... Ahmed Chalabi ... Billmon

[RedEarth]

From Billmon....

Land of Lincoln
Last summer I took a long, speculative look at a company called the Lincoln Group, which appeared to have parlayed its Republican Party connections into a whopping big contract with the Pentagon's special ops propaganda machine -- the JPOSE (Joint Psychological Operations Support Element) to use the proper Orwellian acronym.

Now the Los Angeles Times has obtained a little more information on what the Lincoln Group has been giving the taxpayers for their money -- which appears to be a bunch of bribes paid to Iraqi newspapers to regurgitate official Cheney Administration talking points. (Sorry you had to sit this one out, Armstrong)

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 . . . small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group . . . 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.

Now the thrust of the story -- and of the outrage expressed by the anonymous Pentagon sources who passed out the paperwork on Lincoln's little payola scheme -- is the utter hypocrisy of preaching democracy and transparency while secretly bribing journalists to print government propaganda.

But knowing what we already know about how the Cheney administration and the semi-official media (Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Judy Woodward, etc.) operate here at home, it's not exactly a surprise to learn the same techniques are being used to shape the information "battle space" in Iraq. After all, why should the Iraqis get more democracy than we do? (I suppose one could argue that since it's taken the USA almost 230 years to devolve into the corrupt and decadent republic we've become, the Iraqis should be required to wait in line just like everyone else.)

And indeed it turns out that the ethical standards of at least some of the Pentagon's journalistic hirelings in Iraq are higher than those of their U.S. counterparts. According to the Times, some of the planted articles have been run under special headings identifiying them as "advertising" or "media services." Which is a hell of a lot more than the New York Times ever did for any of Judy Miller's WMD propaganda

http://billmon.org/archives/002347.html

[rw3204]

1. And we're supposed to be surprised?

This has been going on for years, and neither the LA Times or NY Times were able to crack the half of it. There's another acronym people should be aware of, NMEC, the National Media Exploitation Command, and the Lincoln Group isn't the only contractor doing it.

What shocks me is how lame our media is. There was a talking head from the WP on MSNBC who couldn't even cite the contractor who had been bribing Duke Cunningham. Why do I know and these dumbass journalist can't seem to find out. Just plain lazy. It's MZM BTW.

[Al-CIAda]

2. .

[pushycat]

3. Why not do it honestly - American commanders could openly

submit articles detailing whatever they do/have done to help Iraq's democracy go forward.

Putting our info out honestly seems more credible than sneaking and hiding behind an Iraq face.