Pentagon quizzed on Iraq propaganda program

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10272171/

<snip>

Defense Department officials, summoned to a briefing Friday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, have remained silent about the program. Multimillion-dollar contracts cover paying Iraqi newspapers and journalists to get into print such stories about the war and the rebuilding effort.

<snip>

One of the companies involved — the Washington-based Lincoln Group — has at least two contracts with the military to provide media and public relations services. One contract, for $6 million, was for public relations and advertising work in Iraq and involved planting favorable stories in the Iraqi media, Defense Department records show.

The other Lincoln contract, which is with the Special Operations Command, is worth up to $100 million over five years for media operations with video, print and Web-based products. That contract is not related to the dispute over propaganda and was not for services in Iraq, according to command spokesman Ken McGraw.

The Lincoln Group shares that Special Operations contract with SYColeman, a division of L-3 Communications, and Science Applications International Corp., a San Diego-based defense contractor.

Here, they gladly hand out $100 million to spin, hype, lie, make-believe that everything is JUST FINE in Iraq.

How about if they had spent the money on something REAL, like a school, or a hospital, or improving their lives.

They just can't ever get it right.

To me, this is the functional equivalent of using the Psychological Operations function of the US Military against the citizens of the US!

Does anybody else find this scary??

How can we possibly believe ANY news that comes out of Iraq at this point?

These guys have taken Orwell to the next level...