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I don't know if anyone took note of this Freudian slip (Howard Kurtz sure didn't) on Reliable Sources the weekend before last.

KURTZ: Shepperd told me this week that while he consulted with Pentagon officials, he has always been independent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHEPPERD: I feel no pressure whatsoever to do anything other than prevent my honest opinions about what's going on. I certainly did not feel compelled to carry any message to anybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: In our "Talk Back" segment this morning, a chance to hear the other side. I spoke earlier with Lawrence Di Rita, the former Pentagon spokesman under Secretary Don Rumsfeld, and retired Colonel Ken Allard, a former military analyst for NBC and author of the book "Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War."

Fascinating that he not only failed to pick up the irony of the slip, but that his program chose to include such a balanced and unbiased panel to discuss the topic. For those who missed it, ret. Colonel Allard was more critical of the left-leaning media than the conflict of interest inherent in the collaboration between the media and the military. He failed to take issue with the Pentagon executing a wide-scale psi-ops program on the American public.

Since we can't depend on CNN or other networks to come clean, I'm happy to know that my own Senator is not lost in the fog.

Please take the time to follow these links:

This is the way the Pentagon wants us to view IRAN.

 

This is a view of IRAN they would like to keep from us.

Because Woodward sucks up to the bushies and others in power, he writes his millionaire books rather than actually reporting.

And of course who were the real heros of Watergate?  Not Woodward and Bernstein, they were just copy boys for Mark Felt- and their editors were the ones who were invested in democracy enough to risk the wrath of the nixon criminal gang.

The link you included in your comment, is that the entire draft (you mentioned it was published in the UK) or only the portions that were published in the VV?

Thanks for the link to Bernstein's essay. Wow. ( I thought I knew half of that stuff already, but I'm printing it out to read on my flight tomorrow).

the home folks is nothing new. Back in those days it was referred to as "The Mighty Wurlitzer". Why would it be any different in our times? Just think about all of the other distorted "news" from FoxNews, ABC, AP and plenty of other sources.

Wisner created the first "information superhighway." But this was the age of vacuum tubes, not computers, so he called it his "Mighty Wurlitzer." The CIA's global network funded the Italian elections in 1948, sent paramilitary teams into Albania, trained Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan, and pumped money into the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the National Student Association, and the Center for International Studies at MIT. Key leaders and labor unions in western Europe received subsidies, and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were launched. The Wurlitzer, an organ designed for film productions, could imitate sounds such as rain, thunder, or an auto horn. Wisner and Dulles were at the keyboard, directing history...

Psywar was also used with success during the 1950s by Edward Lansdale, first in the Philippines and then in South Vietnam. In Guatemala, the Dulles brothers worked with their friends at United Fruit, in particular the "father of public relations," Edward Bernays, who for years had been lobbying the press on behalf of United. When CIA puppets finally took over in 1954, only applause was heard from the media, commencing forty years of CIA-approved horrors in that unlucky country. Bernays' achievement apparently impressed Allen Dulles, who immediately began using U.S. public relations experts and front groups to promote the image of Ngo Dinh Diem as South Vietnam's savior.

since the beginnig of the CIA. The good thing is that the internet has pretty much neutralised the effect that these paid mouthpieces have.

Did any of these monies, which amounted to $300 million, bleed directly into US message production.  I just responded to Kerry's tip jar with links to Michael Kelley's USA today articles from 12/05...

I am aware of the "Video Press Releases" distributed mostly by the HHS and Education Depts. and I have written about them at length. I would never minimize the harm they produce, but the scale of those programs pale in comparison to SPINCOM.

I am also aware of the Lincoln Group's activities, mostly in paying Iraqi newspapers to publish rosy stories written by American PR. That was directed primarily at Iraqis, although US media often picked up the stories and republished them domestically.

I didn't say there wasn't ANY other propaganda. There's loads of it. I said that I think this is the worst (most brazen) directed specifically at Americans. An agency with the scope of the Pentagon, partnering with the communications muscle of the media, is far worse than any of the other PR atrocities committed by this administration.

In order to win the election, you just had to set up and fund your own "John Kerry is the Coolest" office in the Dept of Homeland Security and call it something like "Office of Thermal Data."  Don't worry, you can use MONEY FROM MY PAYCHECK to fund it. Apparently its done all the time.

I'm not bitter, though.  Nope.

...that paints the President out of the torture picture.

The only way that the "deliberations" of that "group of high level officials" could become US policy was if the president specifically signed a document making it policy.

Rice may have chaired the meetings, but Bush is the chair of the NSC.

The President himself didn't simply "approve of the meetings," as is so widely reported, in order for the recommended tortures to become US policy, Bush legally would have had to sign a document approving those tortures. That's his job as the chair of the NSC.

Period.  

That's the elephant in the room that everyone is dancing around, trying not to get too close.

We're extremely tired of ineffectual "strong statements," investigations that lead nowhere (like that bridge in Alaska), and ongoing lies of omission on all sides. It's time to stop.

Give us some credit for not being as stupid as Fox would have you believe.

Please launch investigations into whether impeachment is required, thereby making it impossible for these miscreants to ignore subpoenas.

Anything less is pointless and not worth another moment of our time.

Thanks.

All these stories are but symptoms.

Turn 'em off.

Can we ask them to come explain to the public (under oath, on live TV) why they haven't said a fucking word about their role in selling us a disaster?