Yesterday, the LA Times broke the story about the U.S. military secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish “articles” written by Americans to bolster our image and convince Iraqis that the war and occupation are worthwhile. Since then, the story has only gotten more interesting.
As the LAT explained, the articles were written by “information operations” troops, but made their way into Iraqi newspapers with the help of a private defense contractor known as the Lincoln Group. And who are they? As Garance Franke-Ruta explained, it’s largely a public relations group staffed by GOP operatives from the Bush-Cheney campaign.
The New York Times summarized the problem nicely.
Even as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media, the Pentagon is paying millions more to the Lincoln Group for work that appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism.
Making matters worse, Josh Marshall noted that we’re dealing with a “seamless global web of mumbojumbo.” The Pentagon is giving money to the partisan Lincoln Group, which in turn is subcontracting with Republican uber-operative Charlie Black, who also happened to work for Ahmed Chalabi before the war. It’s like an Elmore Leonard novel gone bad.
There are, of course, plenty of details that we don’t know about, which is why the whole mess may soon be the subject of a bi-partisan investigation in Congress.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said his panel will look into the issue. And Rep. Henry Waxman of California called for the House Government Reform Committee to launch an investigation; he is the panel’s top Democrat.
“I’m concerned that our credibility abroad is very important,” Warner said on MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews, adding that he wants to know “if we’re manufacturing things, or taking our wonderful troops and trying to translate their ideas into something that’s more our ideas rather than the troops’ idea.”
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also questioned the program Wednesday.
“I wouldn’t fault somebody trying to get the American message out,” Lugar said. “(It) may be about the only way that any sort of a message will ever get to anybody. But that’s a very forlorn conclusion early on, and really sort of violates what we’re attempting to do to begin with in our emphasis on democracy.”
An investigation could certainly raise some troubling issues for the administration. Stay tuned.