The Government Accountability Office reports finding that the Bush Administration spent more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in a two and a half year span.

“The government is spending over a billion dollars per year on PR and advertising,” said Rep. Waxman. “Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush Administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States.”

The Bush/Cheney cabal has been working its own Ministry of Enlightenment and Truth overtime (and over budget it seems). As Howard Beale in ‘Network’ proclaimed, “When the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome, god-damned propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network.”

We seem to be getting some answers to that question these days.

Read the complete Raw Story Report Here

Its gets more surreal by the day. Does Condoleezza Rice really think she is honoring Edward R. Murrow, or is this yet a new, heretofore unplumbed depth of craven cynical manipulation of history and principle for propaganda exploitation by this regime. What’s next, George Bush giving out George Orwell Integrity In Journalism Awards to Fox, or Donald Rumsfeld bestowing the Gen. Smedley Butler Award for achievements in selfless military and government service?

Amid undenied charges that the Pentagon is paying Iraqi journalists to write “good news” stories about the country’s progress, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced a new international exchange program for journalists named for famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and emphasizing “the democratic principles that guided Mr. Murrow’s practice of his craft - integrity and ethics and courage and social responsibility”.

“We all know that the bedrock pillar of a free society is a free press and that it is crucial for the foundation of any democracy,” Rice said.

The new initiative - The Edward R. Murrow Journalism Program - is a partnership of the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the non-partisan Aspen Institute, and the journalism schools of six US universities.

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Rolling Stone has actually been publishing some pretty good articles these days. This one by Matt Taibbi on George Bush’s propaganda tour in promotion of his non-existent Iraq policy is no exception.

Matt Taibbi, who followed Bush’s national tour for more than a week, concludes that while Iraq burns, the president keeps playing the same old song. “This is how President Bush takes his message to the people these days: in furtive sneak-attack addresses to closed audiences of elite friendlies at weird early-morning hours.”

Recommended. Blunt and to the point, with some colorful descriptions of this rather pathetic and pitiful exercise in spin. Read it Here.

The Man Who Sold The War
By James Bamford
Rolling Stone

Excellent, well researched piece on a little-known but highly influential figure in the Bush administration’s propaganda machine.

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.

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Calling Lord Haw Haw.

A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the US government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.

Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and “novelty items” such as T-shirts and bumper stickers.

Read the article in USA Today

Amazing….
Does Bush actually (albeit inadvertently) tell the truth?

The following is a transcript of remarks by President Bush in a conversation on ’strengthening’ Social Security: Athena Performing Arts Center At Greece Athena Middle and High School Greece, New York , May 24, 2005 (PR Newswire)

“Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you — as I mentioned to you earlier, we’re going to redesign the current system. If you’ve retired, you don’t have anything to worry about — third time I’ve said that. (Laughter.)
I’ll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
(Applause.)
- George W. Bush (May 24, 2005)

Read The Full Press Conference Here

It was Nazi filmmaker Fritz Hippler (one of Josef Goebbels’ most effective propagandists) who said that in order to make propaganda work you need to reduce an issue to a simple black-and-white choice that “even the most feebleminded could understand,” and to repeat the oversimplification over and over. If these two steps are followed, people would always come to believe the Big Lie.

And here is some more perspective from a true master of propaganda, not an amateur wannabe like our current president….
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch06.html

“so this is how democracy ends…
… to thunderous applause.”
- Padme Amidala; “Revenge of the Sith”

Do you think Lincoln would have been pleased to have this PR(ropaganda) firm use his name for their marketing purposes?

The Lincoln Group has a K Street address and an executive in charge of “insight and influence.” It was not a household name in the Washington influence industry, however, when a controversy started after recent reports that the firm, while working under a U.S. military contract, had paid Iraqi journalists to place pro-democracy stories in the media there.

That’s because Lincoln was formed just two years ago, when two thirty-somethings, Christian Bailey, an Oxford University graduate from England, and Paige Craig, a former Marine who once attended West Point, decided that post-invasion Iraq would be a great business opportunity. And it wasn’t until last year that Lincoln won its first federal contract.

The founders’ initial plan in late 2003, to help commercial clients do business in the new Iraq and publish a business magazine there, stalled when the insurgency escalated in the spring of 2004, company officials said in recent interviews. But they said the same deterioration in security made the U.S. military realize that it needed to do more to reach out to the local communities.

Read the full article

You May Be Brainwashed By Corporate Media If You…
By Todd Smyth; Independent Media TV
http://www.independent-media.tv

… believe the 5 corporations who own almost all of the media in the U.S. are liberal.

… believe $300 billion of U.S. tax money, allocated for the war and reconstruction in Iraq is actually going to Iraq.

… are unaware Iraq had 650 million barrels of oil in reserve just before the war in Iraq.

… are unaware at least $8.8 billion is known to be missing in Iraqi oil revenue from the period the U.S. was in control of Iraq.

… are unaware 198 million in Iraqi dollars is missing from the Iraq treasury from the period the U.S. was in control of Iraq.

… are unaware that war is exceptionally profitable for a small number of investors.

… believe Halliburton’s no-bid contracts have nothing to do with former CEO, now Vice President Dick Cheney.

… are unaware that the Iraq war is the biggest case of war profiteering in human history.

… believe Saddam Hussein or Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

… are unaware the U.S. has killed more than 10,000 innocent women and children in Iraq with cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions.

… believe depleted uranium weapons are not radioactive or deadly weapons of mass destruction (they are 12% less radioactive than nuclear weapons grade uranium and very deadly).

… believe wealthy, warmongers can also be true Christians.

… are unaware stem cell research threatens the pharmaceutical industry by curing and preventing diseases which drug companies profit from by treating with drugs.

… are unaware the pharmaceutical industry is based entirely on treatment and is threatened by cures and prevention.

… are unaware the Food and Drug Administration does NO testing of food or drugs. They only set guidelines and review the testing corporations do of their own products.

… are unaware the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act has been ‘re- estimated’ to cost U.S. taxpayers $1.3 Trillion (not the original $243 billion or the ‘adjusted’ $400 billion), and only pharmaceutical corporations and HMOs benefit from the increase.

… are unaware the Boston Tea party was a protest against corporate corruption (East India Company).

… are unaware our founding fathers intentionally made sure that corporations had no power over people or our government.

… are unaware corporations have fought aggressively and systematically over the past 200 years to increase their power and influence over our government.

… are unaware U.S. corporations are now protected under the 14th amendment as a legal ‘person.’

… are unaware the definition of fascism is: ‘The marriage of corporation and state’ — Benito Mussolini.

… are unaware well known U.S. corporate interests attempted a military coup against Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.

… are unaware most corrupt and wasteful government projects are run primarily by corporate contractors.

… are unaware ‘less government’ means paying corporate contractors three times what we pay government workers to do the same work.

… are unaware American corporations behave very differently in other countries.

… are unaware Enron and others were NOT investigated until they collapsed under the weight of their own greed.

… are unaware Bush’s massive tax cuts were invested overseas to build sweat shops, factories and other facilities, where our jobs have been outsourced.

… are unaware outsourcing American jobs weakens labor unions and keeps wages low and corporate profits high .

… are unaware weak enforcement of immigration laws lowers wages in the U.S. and increases corporate profits.

… are unaware ‘Free Trade’ means ‘Slave Wages’ to poor people in Honduras, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, Burma, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, El Salvador, Guatemala, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and others.

… believe America is hated all over the world because of our freedom.

… believe the massive U.S. national debt (now $7,786,000,000,000) created by Republican presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush does not seriously threaten the future of our children and grandchildren.

… are unaware massive national debt ensures the expansion of poverty, which keeps wages low, which increases corporate profits.

… are unaware widespread poverty keeps wages low and corporate profits high.

… are unaware weak gun control laws perpetuate violence in poor neighborhoods which expands poverty, reduces wages and increases corporate profits.

… are unaware abortions go down only when we reduce poverty, expand healthcare and improve education.

… are unaware that making abortion illegal expands poverty which reduces wages and increases corporate profits.

… believe the Michael Jackson trial deserved more news coverage than the genocide of 400,000 people in Darfur , Sudan.

… believe Social Security is the biggest priority in America.

… are unaware privatizing Social Security would be a massive give away to experienced Wall Street investors that would also destabilize Social Security.

… are unaware that NOT funding ‘No Child Left Behind’ is dismantling funding for schools in poor neighborhoods, which expands poverty, lowers wages and increases corporate profits.

… are unaware the Healthy Forests Initiative has led to massive clear cutting of prime lumber and almost none of the forest fire prevention that it was sold on.

… are unaware the Clear Skies Initiative has increased pollution.

… are unaware Tort Reform will absolve corporations of massive negligent liabilities for things like asbestos exposure, pollution, mercury poisoning, hazardous waste, mad cow disease and all sorts of dangerous products and practices.

… are unaware mercury pollution (mostly from coal fired power plants and medical vaccines) has caused an epidemic of Autism, ADD and ADHD in the U.S.

… are unaware the Bush administration is dismantling three decades of US environmental protection.

… believe global warming is a rumor or conspiracy.

… are unaware ‘Global Warming’ is causing colder weather because the melting ice caps are cooling the gulf stream.

… believe the UN scandals could have taken place without the largest, most influential member and host nation being involved.

… believe making a war monger ambassador to the UN will help prevent more wars.

… are unaware that expanding equal rights to any segment of the population (including gay people) also expands economic opportunity and puts pressure on wages, which would reduce corporate profits.

If you believe Fox News is fair and balanced, you have been brainwashed by corporate owned media.

David Isenberg of the Asia Times on the massive Pentagon-led ‘information management’ campaign being waged in Iraq by the PR(opaganda) firm The Lincoln Group.

The news of a US military operation that pays Iraqi newspapers to run stories written by “information operations” troops about how wonderfully things are going in the war should not come as a shock.

Even before the Iraq invasion, the Pentagon planned to create its own in-house propaganda and disinformation operation, to be called the Office of Strategic Influence. The program was supposedly killed after critics pointed out how easily the phony news it created could drift back into the domestic media.

Nevertheless, the occupation of Iraq has put the Pentagon in the “strategic influence” business in a big way, with its own TV news operation (the Pentagon Channel), a then-coalition-controlled Iraqi TV and radio network (now nominally in the hands of the Iraqi government, but still powered by Pentagon dollars and run by a US vendor) and millions of dollars to hire public relations firms and consultants to spin the coalition’s propaganda to the Iraqi people.

In fact, paying off the Iraqi media to run good news mirrors what the Bush administration has been doing at home.

For example, in the past year it was revealed that the Bush administration paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars to a prominent conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote a new education law that had been strongly supported by President George W Bush. The Education Department paid a public relations firm for a video that promoted the law and appeared as a news story, without making clear the reporter was hired as part of the deal.

Similarly, some-time reporter and $200-an-hour gay escort, James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, violated a ban on “fake” news stories by reprinting White House news releases verbatim.

The gist of the latest story is that beginning this year as part of an information offensive in Iraq, the US military began secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the US mission in Iraq.

Read the rest of the article on this campaign to gain market share in the hearts and minds department here

You’re tax dollars at work. Not only are the Bush administration policies some of the most horrendously bad in American history, but you get to have your money take to be put towards PR(opaganda) campaigns to advertise to you about how wonderful they are.

The Bush administration spent $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars on 137 contracts with advertising agencies over the past two-and-a-half years, according to a Government Accountability Office report released by House Democrats Monday.

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