Wonderful idea....

[Lanya]

*Correction
[Using our tax dollars to pay trolls to argue with liberal bloggers. people to make pro-administration  comments on mostly conservative sites.  THAT'S the way to win a war!]

Pentagon starts spin unit to target talk radio, bloggers
Will Menaker
Published: Tuesday July 17, 2007    
   
Print This  Email This    

With public opinion on both the President and Iraq war cratering, it's hard to imagine any amount of PR could turn back the tide. But don't tell that to the Pentagon's public affairs division. Ken Silverstein reports on the latest efforts to spread the good word on Iraq in Monday's Harper's.

The new ?Communications Outreach? program is the latest effort to bypass the traditional media and work directly with talk radio and bloggers. The project was originally called "Surrogates Operation" and is the brain child of former ABC executive and assistant secretary of defense for public affairs Dorrance Smith.

Less kindly, Silverstein remarks that "the Pentagon?s public affairs division has become a dumping ground for administration cronies."

Silverstein reports that the "Communications Outreach" program "reportedly provides talking points and briefings to retired military officials who now support the administration in appearances as media pundits." The genesis of the idea came in 2006, "when the press and retired senior military officials were pummeling Donald Rumsfeld."

Also on board are Erin Healey, a former junior assistant press secretary at the White House, Julie George, who formerly worked as deputy coalitions director for Rick Santorum, and perhaps most telling is another person reportedly involved with the operation is the presence of Jocelyn Webster, "who formerly worked in the White House?s political operation for Sara Taylor, the Karl Rove aide who now finds herself in a bit of hot water."

The relative inexperience of these true-believers is an old theme for the Bush administration, Silverstein writes.

"Healey may have some knowledge of defense matters, but she?s certainly no expert," he says. "Webster and George were described to me by one well-informed source as 'very young with no background in national security or foreign affairs.' This person said that some defense officials have been 'put off to say the least by these neophyte political appointees telling retired and active personnel in uniform what to say and what to think.'"

Webster is also among those whose name has surfaced in Democratic investigations. She's on the list of current and former White House staffers who used Republican National Committee email addresses and was among those dealt with a controversial Powerpoint slideshow that involved briefing the General Services Administration about Republican prospects for the 2006 election cycle.

?Please do not e-mail this out or let people see it," one of the emails said, according to Harper's. "It is a close hold, and we?re not supposed to be e-mailing it around.?

Know what blogs the Pentagon's strike force may be working with? Contact Ken Silverstein at ken@harpers.org.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Nowhere_to_go_but_up_Pentagon_0717.html

more info:
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000539

[Richpo64]

I consider this just another front on the war on terror.

[BT]

Don't see where they would be trolls in the comments sections of blogs.

And the war folks have as much right to get their story out as the antiwar folks do.

[yellow_crane]

*Correction
[Using our tax dollars to pay trolls to argue with liberal bloggers. people to make pro-administration  comments on mostly conservative sites.  THAT'S the way to win a war!]

Pentagon starts spin unit to target talk radio, bloggers
Will Menaker
Published: Tuesday July 17, 2007    
   
Print This  Email This    

With public opinion on both the President and Iraq war cratering, it's hard to imagine any amount of PR could turn back the tide. But don't tell that to the Pentagon's public affairs division. Ken Silverstein reports on the latest efforts to spread the good word on Iraq in Monday's Harper's.

The new ?Communications Outreach? program is the latest effort to bypass the traditional media and work directly with talk radio and bloggers. The project was originally called "Surrogates Operation" and is the brain child of former ABC executive and assistant secretary of defense for public affairs Dorrance Smith.

Less kindly, Silverstein remarks that "the Pentagon?s public affairs division has become a dumping ground for administration cronies."

Silverstein reports that the "Communications Outreach" program "reportedly provides talking points and briefings to retired military officials who now support the administration in appearances as media pundits." The genesis of the idea came in 2006, "when the press and retired senior military officials were pummeling Donald Rumsfeld."

Also on board are Erin Healey, a former junior assistant press secretary at the White House, Julie George, who formerly worked as deputy coalitions director for Rick Santorum, and perhaps most telling is another person reportedly involved with the operation is the presence of Jocelyn Webster, "who formerly worked in the White House?s political operation for Sara Taylor, the Karl Rove aide who now finds herself in a bit of hot water."

The relative inexperience of these true-believers is an old theme for the Bush administration, Silverstein writes.

"Healey may have some knowledge of defense matters, but she?s certainly no expert," he says. "Webster and George were described to me by one well-informed source as 'very young with no background in national security or foreign affairs.' This person said that some defense officials have been 'put off to say the least by these neophyte political appointees telling retired and active personnel in uniform what to say and what to think.'"

Webster is also among those whose name has surfaced in Democratic investigations. She's on the list of current and former White House staffers who used Republican National Committee email addresses and was among those dealt with a controversial Powerpoint slideshow that involved briefing the General Services Administration about Republican prospects for the 2006 election cycle.

?Please do not e-mail this out or let people see it," one of the emails said, according to Harper's. "It is a close hold, and we?re not supposed to be e-mailing it around.?

Know what blogs the Pentagon's strike force may be working with? Contact Ken Silverstein at ken@harpers.org.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Nowhere_to_go_but_up_Pentagon_0717.html

more info:
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000539

Guess everybody thinking that since Bush and Company have screwed up so much that much of their political structure has fallen away to nothing keeps people from realizing that the fascists are still at work full force to deny Americans the rights they once thought were long ago secured.

Wasn't a month ago someone posted something wherein the suggestion was put forth that some sort of troopers swarm our universities to remove the liberal professors.  I reacted to this since I was raised on American film, and had seen just that scenario oft repeated, wherein the goosesteppers throw open the doors of the lecture tank and arrest the prof.   It was straight-faced and straight forward, with no sarcasm asked and none given. 

It went uncommented on.

In the history of fascism, this inability to connect the dots by the people under question is deemed a salient and crucial part of the design.

[BT]

How does what the left is doing differ from what the current admin is doing. Both sides have stories to tell, cases to make. Should it be one sided?

[Michael Tee]

Let me ask BT a hypothetical question:  If Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly were to suddenly announce that they had been on the government payroll for the past twelve years, what effect would this have on their credibility?

What if they were to announce that they had never been on a government payroll before, but starting August 1, they would be receiving $50,000 per month from the U.S. government to make sure the government's views are adequatelly represented in the media?

People know that Rush and O'Reilly are partisans.  They don't expect them to come out anytime soon in favour of socialized medicine or immediate troop withdrawal.  But their views command a certain amount of respect because they are perceived to be independent commentators, original thinkers giving their take on events, not some canned government spiel.   I think it's a cinch that if they were seen as paid government flacks, they would lose significant credibility.

The U.S. government now wants to subsidize speakers who will not disclose their hidden interest.  Their views will be received by the public with the respect due to an independent commentator, biased or not, which is a lot more respect, I would say, than the respect accorded to a paid government flack, hired and paid to say what he or she says.

So the Government, with all its resources, derived from the people, is now defrauding the people who gave it the money to do so, by sneaking over on them views of their own paid flacks, masquerading as the POV of independent and unbeholden individuals.  It's a common fraud, a betrayal of trust and worst of all a stab in the back to democracy, because a sovereign people, entitled to decide for itself, is being robbed of that right by a government using underhanded means funded by the people themselves to influence their opinion and hence their votes.

It's outrageous.

It's also a sad commentary on the disrepute to which Bush has brought the U.S. government, where its credibility has sunk so low that its views are suspect.  Government sourcing rather than authenticating information as it once did, now renders the information suspect, so it has to be sneaked in under the false guise of "independent" citizens and bloggers.  Truly pathetic.

[BT]

The U.S. government now wants to subsidize speakers who will not disclose their hidden interest.

I do not believe that is what the article said. It said they would be provided information.

Silverstein reports that the "Communications Outreach" program "reportedly provides talking points and briefings to retired military officials who now support the administration in appearances as media pundits." The genesis of the idea came in 2006, "when the press and retired senior military officials were pummeling Donald Rumsfeld."

Perhaps you need to read the article again.

[Michael Tee]

It's not as bad as putting them on the payroll but it's still bad because it miscasts a debate between ordinary citizens each with publicly available information to a kind of one-sided debate where one of the debaters is getting his information straight from the government itself and it uses public money to influence a public debate.

Would any participant voluntarily identify himself in all public debates as a recipient of US government coaching?   I suspect very few would do so, because that would obviously destroy the effectiveness of the technique.  So the covert coaching of debaters is a kind of fraud on the uncoached debaters, who believe they are entering an arena of citizen-debaters, not unpaid agents of the U.S. government.

The US government issues press releases, commands press conferences, has officials who give speeches:  why is this not enough?  Isn't it for the citizens to debate free of government influence?  The public debate has to be free of government interference.  The citizens should be left to make up their minds on their own.  It's kind of sinister because the hope is that with hidden government assistance, public opinion even in free debates between citizens could be subtly pushed to a pro-administration view.

If the technique proves to be effective, it's a big step towards a totalitarian regime, because it will mean the ability to influence public opinion into support of the government of the day, weakening any natural "throw the bums out" sentiment that might otherwise be developing.  I have doubts as to its effectiveness, but that's a whole other issue.  Even if ineffective, as I suspect it will be (because bullshit is still bullshit no matter whose mouth it comes out of or is seen to come out of) it will only poison the debate, as charges that  one or the other debater is a government agent will become common.

[Lanya]

It's more wingnut welfare.  I'm sure many rightie bloggers will happily suck on the government teat.

[BT]

It's more wingnut welfare.  I'm sure many rightie bloggers will happily suck on the government teat.

Um Lanya, perhaps you could show where bloggers are getting paid?

And mikey, if i wee to argue economic policy wouldn't it be helpful to have access to government data?

Sounds like you are upset that one side gets info from the source and you are relegated to unnamed sources in high places who are really just aliases from the dem underground.

[Michael Tee]

<<And mikey, if i wee to argue economic policy wouldn't it be helpful to have access to government data?>>

Of course, but the data is already plentifully available to the public.  The issue is not making data available, the issue is (a) the government involving itself in public debate and (b) doing it clandestinely.  Someone is using public funds to advance partisan causes.  The government already gets its message out as "official" government information.

<<Sounds like you are upset that one side gets info from the source and you are relegated to unnamed sources in high places who are really just aliases from the dem underground.>>

No, I'm upset for the reasons set out in my prior post.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I consider this just another front on the war on terror.
==========================================
Herr Goebbels Ministry of Propaganda was just another front on the War for Aryan Supremacy.

Why should I pay taxes to support militaristic propaganda?

The War on Terror is every bit as bogus as the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty.

One cannot wage war on abstract concepts.

   

[_JS]

It is very similar to the DDR's agitators. Most of them were unpaid, or received very little in the way of profit, but received training and materials from the government of East Germany in order to help their fellow workers and the general population understand why the Government was doing what they were doing. They received a magazine at regular intervals and had meetings based on their region where they discussed not so much Government policy, but the best methods of discussing the policies with the average person.

[Plane]

I just wonder where my check went.


There is a newsletter I get in e-mail , I asked for it and I occasionally read it .

It is more often than not boring, but this only proves that highly placed people can be poor writers of prose.

[BT]

(b) doing it clandestinely.

How can it be clandestine when they have a department charged with the duties and Lanya posted an article about it.

Seems like sour grapes on your side.

How much money was spent explaining  Fords Whip Inflation Now initiative, the WIN program urging everyone to grow a home garden.

Or Carters thermostat and sweaters initiatives during the energy crisis?

DDR propaganda? Geez