Less than Kosher

The Los Angeles Times reported late Tuesday that "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." Many of these articles appear to have been submitted under false pretenses, and have been presented in Iraqi papers as the work of independent journalists when they were actually penned by military "information operations" personnel.

The word that immediately comes to mind is sad. It seems to me that whether or not these stories prove to have been deliberately misleading exaggerations (or outright fabrications), this practice serves as yet one additional example of an ingrained mindset that begins at the White House, one which subverts democracy while simultaneously claiming to revere it.

And how many more examples do we need before demanding a change in Washington?

Despite the fact that the specific articles cited by the Times seem - in all honesty - to be fairly benign, I nevertheless have to wonder once again: Why the subterfuge? Why does every act of information dissemination initiated under this President continue to be staged, scripted, secretly purchased, cherry-picked, manipulated, and based on "facts" that aren't?

What does it say about our belief in the righteousness of our mission, our attitude toward the intelligence of the Iraqi people, our respect for the editorial freedom of their press, to feel the need to plant propaganda pieces under the guise of objective reporting? Is it just me, or is it extremely disturbing that seemingly every policy or statement or tidbit of information emanating from this Administration is eventually exposed as being slightly less than Kosher?

Additionally worrisome is the real probability that false or disingenuously optimistic "news" appearing in the Iraqi press will be reported as evidence of U.S. "successes" by the media here at home even if those successes are non-existent, in essence propagandizing what the American people are being led to believe is reliably objective information. The Times notes:

U.S. law forbids the military from carrying out psychological operations or planting propaganda with 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 are 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.

"There is no longer any way to separate foreign media from domestic media. Those neat lines don't exist anymore," said one private contractor who does information operations work for the Pentagon.

This whole episode strikes me as particularly Nixonian, and adds further doubt as to the veracity of any and all "official" information we receive. It should be increasingly apparent to every American that we cannot trust those in power to distribute factual information honestly and openly either here or abroad.

How, then, can we trust them to run our nation?