[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] Commentary: Propaganda and the media

[mary rose]

An excerpt from this article perhaps sums the whole thing up, in that the 
corruption runs so deep and wide that there just aren't enough people left 
who are not  involved whether by ignorance or direct intent to do anything.. 
Perhaps there really is "no one left to enforce the law" anymore.  Perhaps 
this is why it is impossible to get a movement going to impeach Bush and 
Cheney.

"There's little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert 
propaganda operations mounted against the American public by their own 
government. But in this administration, there's no one left to enforce that 
law or any of the other laws the Bush operatives have been busy violating."

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "GlobalCirclenet" <webmaster at globalcircle.net>
To: <globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 9:26 AM
Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Commentary: Propaganda and the media



http://www.mcclatchydc.com/101/story/37225.html

Commentary: Propaganda and the media
By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

Once upon a time, it was widely believed that one of the greatest sins the 
U.S. government or its temporary political masters could commit was to turn 
a propaganda machine loose on the American people.

Congress viewed this so seriously that every appropriations bill passed 
since 1951 has contained language that says no public money "shall be used 
for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States" without the 
lawmakers' prior approval.

The Bush administration has been caught violating the propaganda ban before, 
notably in 2005 in the case of radio host Armstrong Williams, who was paid 
to endorse President Bush's No Child Left Behind law.

Particularly abhorrent to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), 
which oversees compliance with the ban, is an agency's use of "covert 
propaganda" or "covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use 
of third parties."

This is why alarm bells should be ringing all over Washington about The New 
York Times' disclosure that then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld 
encouraged a secret Pentagon program to care for and spoon-feed more than 50 
retired senior military officers whom the administration deemed reliable 
friends who could be counted on "to carry our water" on the television and 
cable networks.

Feeding the military analysts "key and valuable information" in secret 
briefings by Pentagon and White House officials, the idea went, would make 
them the go-to guys for the networks and encourage the networks to "weed out 
the less reliably friendly analysts . . . ."

This 2005 memorandum, addressed to then Assistant Secretary of Defense for 
Public Affairs Larry DiRita, added: "This trusted core group will be more 
than willing to work closely with us because we are their bread and butter."

Asked about the case of Col. Bill Cowan, who says he was fired as a military 
analyst for Fox News and cut off from the briefings for criticizing the war 
effort, DiRita told Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com: "I don't know anything. I 
saw that in the story. I've heard other assertions to that effect. It was 
certainly not the intent."

In a follow-up e-mail exchange between DiRita and Greenwald, Rumsfeld's 
former mouthpiece - now Bank of America's chief spokesman - elaborated on 
what he said he didn't remember: "I simply don't have any recollection of 
trying to restrict him (Cowan) or others from exposure to what was going 
on."

DiRita added: "There are plenty of examples to the contrary - reaching out 
to people who specifically disagreed with us. One example I recall is Joe 
Galloway - a persistent critic and apparently popular with military readers. 
He came in and met Secretary Rumsfeld and we had other interactions."

Now that's a real knee-slapper: Me as a poster boy for how Rumsfeld and 
DiRita "reached out" to their harshest critics even as they stroked and 
promoted and schemed to embed the old reliables to wax enthusiastic about a 
war that was going from bad to worse.

Let the record show that Rumsfelds' folks reached out to me on these few 
occasions:

    * In early summer of 2003, half a dozen of us were invited to an 
off-the-record lunch with Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. The defense secretary 
seemed to have a poor grasp of the reality on the ground in Iraq and was 
still declaring that we'd do no nation-building there. He saw no insurgency, 
only a handful of "dead-enders".

    * In October 2005, DiRita called to invite me to travel with Rumsfeld to 
the Middle East and Australia. I declined because it conflicted with a 
long-booked graduation speech I was to give at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. to 
a class of new Air Force F-16 fighter pilots that included my nephew. DiRita 
was stunned that I wouldn't drop a bunch of fighter pilots to be schmoozed 
by his boss.

    * In November 2005, DiRita invited me to a "one-on-one" lunch with 
Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. This one I accepted. I arrived to find across the 
table Rumsfeld, the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. 
Peter Pace; Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody; Joint Staff Director 
Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp and DiRita. We went at it hammer and tongs for an hour 
and a half over their conduct of the war and the errors that were costing 
the lives of American soldiers. As I left, I told Rumsfeld that I'd continue 
to point out those mistakes every week in my column.

    * In April 2006, DiRita sent me an e-mail telling me that my most recent 
column was "silly". That column had discussed an expensive war game the 
Pentagon conducted about a U.S. attack on a thinly disguised country that 
obviously was Iran.

A retired Marine general, Paul Van Riper, had been the commander of the 
"enemy" forces, and he used unconventional tactics to destroy the U.S. Navy 
flotilla in the Persian Gulf, leaving thousands of sailors and Marines dead. 
At that point, the commanders stopped the war game, reset everything and 
imposed new rules forbidding Van Riper from employing those tactics.

Van Riper walked out, furious, and requested an investigation. DiRita 
complained in his e-mail that I was silly to blame Rumsfeld for this and for 
covering up the investigators' report. After all, he wrote, Rumsfeld 
couldn't be expected to know retired generals several levels below him or to 
bear responsibility for such matters. His complaint sparked an escalating 
e-mail war that most reckon DiRita lost. The entire exchange was posted on 
the Internet and can still be found there.

So much for the Rumsfeld/DiRita outreach to their critics. They were much 
too busy hand-feeding horse manure to their TV generals, who in turn were 
feeding the same product to the American public by the cubic yard.

There's little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert 
propaganda operations mounted against the American public by their own 
government. But in this administration, there's no one left to enforce that 
law or any of the other laws the Bush operatives have been busy violating.

The real crime is that the scheme worked. The television network bosses 
swallowed the bait, the hook, the line and the sinker, and they have yet to 
answer for it.