Secrets and Lies: The DoD's disgraceful plot to plant rosy stories

By Christopher Hitchens
Slate
Monday, Dec. 5, 2005



This time, someone really does have to be fired. The revelation that Defense Department money, not even authorized by Congress for the purpose, has been outsourced to private interests and then used to plant stories in the Iraqi press is much more of a disgrace and a scandal than anyone seems so far to have said.

1. It helps discredit free media in Iraq at a time when that profession is very new and very hazardous (and one of the unarguable moral gains of the original intervention). In a situation already dominated by rumor and conspiracy-mongering, and in a country rife with death squads, it exposes every honest Iraqi reporter to the charge that he or she is an agent of a foreign power. Who at the Pentagon could possibly have needed to have this explained to them?

2. It comes on the heels of a credible report about a threat, from President George W. Bush, to bomb the Qatari headquarters of Al Jazeera. The British government, from whose inner circle the relevant memo has been leaked, might have taken credit—in that Tony Blair appears to have dissuaded Bush from this course of criminal insanity—but instead has threatened to use the Official Secrets Act against the newspaper that published it, thus somewhat strengthening the supposition that the story is true. Since certain people and places associated with Al Jazeera have been hit in the past, it appears more plausible than ever in retrospect that some deliberate "targeting" may have been involved.

3. It follows the deaths, at the hands of American soldiers, of several Iraqi journalists in "friendly fire." I wrote about this for Slate in July and pointed out that a British general had warned American commanders that these tactics might be quite an easy way of losing the war.

4. It is not just a matter of lying to the Iraqis and to neighboring countries, bad as that would be. The feedback must also have been intended to deceive the American taxpayers whose money was used for the fraud in the first place.




http://www.slate.com/id/2131566/?nav=tap3

Dammit! The White House warmongers say they're using fake news in the Iraqi press because we're at war with them.

What about the at HOME, then? They're not (supposed to be) at war with the American people, yet they plant fake news stories on a daily basis, through their echo chamber, their whoring reporters, and their paid columnists and cronies. These lies get disseminated to HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people, throughout the world, let alone a few million Iraqis.

F*cking hypocrites. Bring back the oubliette.

taxpayers, or so it could be compellingly argued.