The Iraq / war on terror thread

[SLCPUNK]

well, frankly, you are losers.
In the elected official way. Which is the way I used the term
You vote Dem
Repub wins...you lose. loser.

And if you actually think the US pays journalists to write articles spinning the war.

  what am I dealing with here.

let me guess
UFO's right?

1) Post sources stats figures to back your claims

2) Don't ask the same question over and over again

3) Don't recreate the past

4) Stop lying

5) When faced with a truth, don't call names, take it like a man and step down

[pilferk]

And if you actually think the US pays journalists to write articles spinning the war.

 ?what am I dealing with here.

You don't read the news much, do ya?

Somehow, given this:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm

and this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54651-2005Jan6.html

along with some other current reported events (Evidenced in Booker's article)....

maybe you want to rethink that position.

Besides, paying for propaganda in a country we're currently having military operations in isn't exactly "old news".? ?Check out WWII and the propaganda we engaged in....

[Booker Floyd]

well, frankly, you are losers.
In the elected official way. Which is the way I used the term
You vote Dem
Repub wins...you lose. loser.

This is embarassingly childlike in both demeanor and rationale.

Democrats won two major elections last month and had successful local elections across the nation, so if you were going by the most recent elections, your immature logic would really work in reverse. ?

And if you actually think the US pays journalists to write articles spinning the war.

 ?what am I dealing with here.

let me guess
UFO's right?

Thats very humorous, considering that you are a proponent of the "Decoy Harriet Miers" theory (for which youve avoided providing evidence or explaining). ?Its even more humorous considering that the Department Of Education (which is in the U.S., just to clarify) engaged in covert propaganda itself. ?

So youre alledging that everything in that article is false? ?On what is that based? ?Whatever it is, youll be disappointed to know that the senate disagrees with you:

[gilld1]

The only loser on here is you, Shades. ?Is your life so pathetic that your ego depends on putting down people with opposing political views than you? ?Are you that insecure?

5 years in the Army? ?I guess they didn't ask and you didn't tell.

[Booker Floyd]

Senate Summons Pentagon to Explain Effort to Plant News Stories in Iraqi Media

By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: December 2, 2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee summoned top Pentagon officials to a closed-door session on Capitol Hill on Friday to explain a reported secret military campaign in Iraq to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media. The White House also expressed deep concerns about the program.

Senior Pentagon officials said on Thursday that they had not yet received any explanation of the program from top generals in Iraq, including Gen. John P. Abizaid, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the three most senior commanders for Iraqi operations.

After reports about the program circulated this week, General Casey initially protested that it should not be discussed publicly because it was classified.

One senior Pentagon official said, however, that General Casey was told that response was inadequate. The official asked for anonymity to avoid possible reprisals for disclosing the general's reaction.

At a briefing with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, responded to a barrage of questions about the program, which military contractors and officials said also pays friendly Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends.

"We're very concerned about the reports," the White House spokesman said. "We have asked the Department of Defense for more information."

Under the program, the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm working in Iraq, was hired to translate articles written by American troops into Arabic and then, in many cases, give them to advertising agencies for placement in the Iraqi news media.

At a time when the State Department is paying contractors millions of dollars to promote professional and independent media, the military campaign appeared to defy the basic tenets of Western journalism.

Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said he had directed Pentagon aides to describe and justify the program on Friday in a closed briefing for senators and staff aides.

"I am concerned about any actions that may undermine the credibility of the United States as we help the Iraqi people stand up as a democracy," Mr. Warner said in a statement.

"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," the committee chairman's statement said.

Asked about the issue on Thursday, the top military spokesman in Baghdad appeared to defend the practice without referring specifically to the Lincoln Group's activities.

The spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said that Iraq's most-wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was also using the news media to advance his terrorist goals.

But General Lynch said the similarities ended there because the American military was disseminating truthful information.

"He is conducting these kidnappings, these beheadings, these explosions, so that he gets international coverage to look like he has more capability than he truly has," General Lynch said. "He is lying to the Iraqi people."

General Lynch continued: "We don't lie. We don't need to lie. We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact, not based on fiction."

Another military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, later confirmed in an e-mail message that the Lincoln Group's effort was aimed at promoting the allied efforts in Iraq. "We acknowledge that a program exists to get factual information into the Iraqi media," Colonel Johnson said. "Leadership is reviewing this program and how it is being executed, but there has been no decision yet on how to proceed."


One Pentagon official said it was possible that the program began as an effort to buy space in Iraqi publications for articles identified as coming from the United States government and then evolved into something where the government and contractor roles were hidden.

[Booker Floyd]

If the whole intent of this is really an effort to provide false information to the people of Iraq, then that's more of a problem," said the official, who added that officials could decide to refer to the matter to Defense Department inspector general.

The Lincoln Group, which includes some businessmen and former military officials, was hired last year after military officials concluded that the United States was failing to win over Muslim public opinion.

In Iraq, the effort is seen by some senior commanders as an essential complement to combat operations in the field.

Lincoln's media work for the Pentagon in Iraq included a multimillion dollar campaign to influence Sunni Arab voters in Anbar Province before the national referendum on the new Iraqi Constitution in October, according to military contractors and officials.

The campaign, the officials said, included television and radio spots that did not disclose their American sponsorship and the disbursement of more than $1 million in cash.

"It wouldn't be obvious it came from Americans," said one official, referring to the media messages.

Laurie Adler, a spokeswoman for Lincoln, confirmed the company worked for the military in western Iraq but refused to provide any details.

The company's most senior executive in Iraq is Paige Craig. His r?sum?, contained in Pentagon documents spelling out some of Lincoln's work, highlights his role in "designing and leading the development of numerous government and corporate intelligence projects."

It goes on to say "Paige Craig graduated first in class from the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center in 1996."

The descriptions of the Lincoln Group's activities, first reported by The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, have spurred debate in Washington about how the United States should promote free and independent news media in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

"The State Department is working with journalists in Iraq to help them develop the skills that you all have in terms of reporting and journalistic ethics and practices," the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, told reporters on Thursday.

"That's important," the department spokesman said. "This is a country where free media didn't exist for decades, so they are learning. We think it's important to assist them in that."

But if the nascent Iraqi news media are perceived by ordinary Iraqis to be a tool of American interests, that effort will be ruined, some lawmakers said.

"How are people going to get information that's reliable?" said Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who heads the Foreign Relations Committee. "Who can they trust? If you are a devout Shiite or Sunni, and you suspect that the press has been bought, why, then you wouldn't respect the press."

[SLCPUNK]

Besides, paying for propaganda in a country we're currently having military operations in isn't exactly "old news".   Check out WWII and the propaganda we engaged in....

There you go using big words again...........

[gilld1]

There is a man by the last name of Rendon who's firm is in charge of selling conflicts to the public. ?It is against the law to tamper with the US media so in the age of global news they plant false stories in foreign press knowing that the US media will pick up on it. ?He calls himself an information management speacialist and is making mega bucks at the expense of taxpayers. ?There is an article in the Madonna issua of Rolling Stone about him.

[SLCPUNK]

There is a man by the last name of Rendon who's firm is in charge of selling conflicts to the public.  It is against the law to tamper with the US media so in the age of global news they plant false stories in foreign press knowing that the US media will pick up on it.  He calls himself an information management speacialist and is making mega bucks at the expense of taxpayers.  There is an article in the Madonna issua of Rolling Stone about him.

Sounds interesting, nothing online about this guy?

[Booker Floyd]

There is a man by the last name of Rendon who's firm is in charge of selling conflicts to the public.? It is against the law to tamper with the US media so in the age of global news they plant false stories in foreign press knowing that the US media will pick up on it.? He calls himself an information management speacialist and is making mega bucks at the expense of taxpayers.? There is an article in the Madonna issua of Rolling Stone about him.

Sounds interesting, nothing online about this guy?

I actually came across the RS article about him a week ago online...Ill try to post it up, or perhaps the link - its very long.

[SLCPUNK]

There is a man by the last name of Rendon who's firm is in charge of selling conflicts to the public.  It is against the law to tamper with the US media so in the age of global news they plant false stories in foreign press knowing that the US media will pick up on it.  He calls himself an information management speacialist and is making mega bucks at the expense of taxpayers.  There is an article in the Madonna issua of Rolling Stone about him.

Sounds interesting, nothing online about this guy?

I actually came across the RS article about him a week ago online...Ill try to post it up, or perhaps the link - its very long.

Long is fine, I don't mind reading, unlike other people.

If you find it, throw the link up. No rush.

[Booker Floyd]

Heres the Rendon Groups official site.

And heres the Rolling Stone article:

The Man Who Sold the War

Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

By JAMES BAMFORD

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.
On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

"They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor of the industry trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "It's all cloak-and-dagger stuff."

(Continued in link)

[pilferk]

Damn...

That's a good article.

[RichardNixon]

Even after Watergate and Iran Contra, this kind of stuff still goes on, the public will never learn. The same crooks are always in power and always will be.

[SLCPUNK]

"Stay the course": Ten Marines killed in bombing in supposedly conquered Fallujah



10 Marines Killed in Bombing Near Fallujah


By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
Dec 02 11:58 AM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON - Ten Marines on foot patrol were killed and 11 wounded by a roadside bomb near Fallujah, Iraq, in one of the deadliest attack on American troops in recent months, the Marine Corps announced on Friday. A brief statement said the Marines were from Regimental Combat Team 8, of the 2nd Marine Division. They were hit Thursday by a roadside bomb, which the military calls an improvised explosive device, or IED, made from several large artillery shells, the Marines said. IEDs are the most common cause of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

The Marines were attacked outside of Fallujah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad. Of the 11 who were wounded, seven have returned to duty, the Marine Corps statement said. It added that Marines from the same unit continue to conduct counterinsurgency operations throughout Fallujah and surrounding areas.

The names of those killed were withheld pending notification of their relatives, in line with usual military practice.

Pentagon officials said they did not immediately have any information beyond was what contained in the Marine Corps statement.

Fallujah had been a stronghold of the insurgents until U.S. forces, led by Marines, assaulted the city in November 2004. Since then the U.S. military and the Iraqi government have been working to rebuild the city and limit the return of insurgents.

Deadly insurgent attacks in the Fallujah area have become less common in recent months, although one Marine, Cpl. Joshua D. Snyder, 20, of Hampstead, Md., died of wounds from small-arms fire while conducting combat operations in the city on Wednesday.

The 10 deaths on Thursday marked the deadliest incident for Marines in Iraq since 14 were killed by a roadside bomb on Aug. 3 near Haditha, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. Those Marines were traveling in a lightly armored amphibious assault vehicle when it hit the bomb, flipped into the air and exploded in a fireball.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

As long as we are in a war, soldiers will die, no getting around that. Have we EVER had a "popular war"?

We need to finish what we started and get out of Iraq regardless of why we went there.

Or else all those soldiers die in vain and we have a rogue terrorist state in Iraq with the resources of a whole country available  for plotting on how to kill Americans and overthrow non Islamic governments. 

[SLCPUNK]

We need to finish what we started and get out of Iraq regardless of why we went there.

Or else all those soldiers die in vain and we have a rogue terrorist state in Iraq with the resources of a whole country available  for plotting on how to kill Americans and overthrow non Islamic governments. 

What did we start?

Define "finish"

They already did die in vain, and looks like many more will.

I never knew the Iraqi people were so beloved by the right wing. Funny that they are, but the rest of America's poor are not.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

SLC, your hatred for the right wing blinds you.? So critical of others yet I have yet to hear one exit strategy from you regarding Iraq. Changing the past is not an option.

[SLCPUNK]

SLC, your hatred for the right wing blinds you.  So critical of others yet I have yet to hear one exit strategy from you regarding Iraq. Changing the past is not an option.

Who is the blind one? The guy that holds hypocrites and liars accountable for their actions? Or the one who defends those actions still after all the cards are on the table?

[pilferk]

SLC, your hatred for the right wing blinds you.? So critical of others yet I have yet to hear one exit strategy from you regarding Iraq. Changing the past is not an option.

But your passion for the right wing doesn't?  Please......