We’ve heard a lot about the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Mosque lately. Bush has brought it up twice in the last week alone. It’s a critical part of the administration’s rationale for the occupation of Iraq, so we can expect to be reminded of it nearly as often as 9-11.

Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.

In their recently published book, “The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq” (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), co-authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber document how Pentagon money was “thrown” at the Lincoln Group and other public relations outfits to promote the war in Iraq:

In September 2004, the U.S. military awarded a $5.4 million contract to Iraqex — which soon after changed its name to The Lincoln Group — a “newly formed” Washington, DC-based company “set up specifically to provide services in Iraq.” A year later, the New York Times’ Jeff Gerth would report that Iraqex’s winning of the contract was “something of a mystery” given the fact that the “two men who ran the small business [Christian Bailey, a young businessman from England and Paige Craig, a young former marine intelligence officer] had no background in public relations or the media.”

According to Rampton and Stauber, “In its various [pre-war] incarnations, Iraqex/Lincoln dabbled in real estate, published a short-lived online business publication called the Iraq Business Journal, and tried its hand at exporting scrap metal, manufacturing construction materials, and providing logistics for U.S. forces before finally striking gold with the Pentagon PR contract.”

At first the Lincoln Group worked with the Rendon Group, “a public relations firm that had already played a major role in leading the U.S. into war through its work for Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress.” After Rendon left the project Lincoln “hired another Washington-based public relations firm as a subcontractor — BKSH & Associates, headed by Republican political strategist Charles R. Black, Jr. BKSH is a subsidiary of Burson-Marszteller, a PR firm whose previous experience in Iraq also included work for Chalabi and the INC. Other Pentagon contracts for public relations work were awarded to SYColeman Inc. of Arlington, Virginia, and Science applications International Corporation. All totaled, the PR contracts added up to $300 million over a five-year period.”

All in all, as the New York Times reported, the Lincoln Group managed to place more than 1,000 stories in the Iraqi and Arab press.

Reckoning with Lincoln

In late-May of this year, bulldogreporter.com pointed out that “a Defense Department investigation of Pentagon-financed propaganda efforts in Iraq warn[ed] that paying Iraqi journalists to produce positive stories could damage American credibility and call[ed] for an end to military payments to a group of Iraqi journalists in Baghdad, according to a summary of the investigation.”

The review, ordered after news reports last November disclosed “that the military had paid the Lincoln Group to plant articles written by American soldiers in Iraqi publications, without disclosing the source of the articles. The firm’s work also included paying Iraqi journalists for favorable treatment.”

Though the document prepared by Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk doesn’t mention the Lincoln Group by name, it nevertheless found that the military should scrutinize contractors involved in the propaganda effort more closely “to ensure proper oversight is in place,” the New York Times’ David S. Cloud reported. Van Buskirk also blamed the military for not investigating whether paying for placement for articles would “undermine the concept of a free press,” in Iraq, according to the summary.

According to bulldogreporter.com, “Over all, the report conclude[d] that American commanders in Iraq did not violate military regulations when they undertook a multipronged propaganda campaign beginning in 2004 aimed at increasing support for the fledgling Iraqi government, the three-page summary says. That conclusion has been previously reported, but the portions of the report that raise questions about the effort or that are critical have not been previously disclosed.”

“The most critical portion of the report concerns the military’s creation in 2004 of an entity called the Baghdad Press Club, in which Iraqi journalists were paid if they covered and produced stories about American reconstruction efforts, such as openings of schools and sewage plants.”

“The military’s ‘direct oversight of an apparently independent news organization and remuneration for articles that are published will undoubtedly raise questions focused on ‘truth and credibility,’ that will be difficult to deflect, regardless of the intensions and purpose of the remuneration,’ the report says.”

Psyops Journalism

“The war in Iraq has spawned a new industry in Washington that could be called Psy-ops Journalism,” Alvin Snyder, a former Executive of the United States Information Agency (USIA) and a Senior Fellow at the USC Center for Public Diplomacy, recently wrote on the Center’s website. “The new breed of journalists are following the money trail to the Pentagon.”

Psyops is of course not a new phenomenon. An Air Force document published in 1994 titled “Air Force Intelligence and Security Doctrine: Psychological Operations (PSYOP),” pointed out that by necessity psychological operations aims to “convey and (or) deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning … In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover, and deception, and psyops.”

In the information age, psyops, or the effective manipulating of information or spinning stories for political gain knows no borders. A Defense Department document titled “Information Operations Roundup,” approved in 2003, acknowledged that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa. PSYOP messages disseminated to any audience … will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public.”

“Some $400 million in media consulting contracts has been awarded during the past few years by the Pentagon, for the purpose of helping ‘to effectively communicate Iraqi government and Coalition goals with strategic audiences,’” Alvin Snyder pointed out. “Thus far both the Pentagon and its contract psy-op journalists have experienced a painful learning curve, but the most recent contract award will show how much each has learned. The outlook is not promising.”

“A practical question is whether psy-ops journalism can work at all. It is a cross between what is accepted as the mainstream journalism of print and TV (and many journalists now blog) and what is known as psy-ops, or psychological operations, those engaged in mind control warfare, to gain military advantage by fooling the enemy.”

Over the past three-plus years, the Pentagon has initiated an endless stream of public relations efforts aimed at stemming the tide of negative news from Iraq. As “The Best War Ever” points out, “much of the U.S. propaganda effort” — from manipulating events, such as the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein after the U.S. marched into Baghdad, creating heroic stories for domestic consumption, sitting on negative information as evidenced by the slow initial response to torture at Abu Ghraib prison — “is aimed not at tactical deception of enemy combatants but at influencing morale and support for the war in the United States.”

Many observers appear to agree with Alvin Snyder’s assertion that the millions spent by the Pentagon have basically come to naught. It hasn’t won the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, it has failed to win support abroad for the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy, and it has ultimately failed to convince the American public that the war in Iraq is winnable.

Despite the chaos enveloping Iraq, business for The Lincoln Group is thriving. Its D.C. offices, once located on K Street, moved to larger quarters in the Pennsylvania Avenue building that housed Jack Abramoff’s famous restaurant, Signatures.

Since the inception of the Iraq war, and even during the run-up to the invasion, the Bush Administration aimed to control the news about, and from, Iraq. Early on, embedded reporters told moving, albeit questionable stories about the toppling of the statue of Saddam and the heroism of individual soldiers as the military quickly seized Baghdad.

Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran’s President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, “Israel must be wiped off the map”. Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made, as this article will prove.

A bipartisan group of politicians in the US House of Representatives is pushing for legislation to prohibit a US attack on Iran without congressional permission.

Pentagon officials have confirmed for the first time that the United States has troops on the ground in Somalia. This amounts to an admission that the Bush administration is a co-belligerent with Ethiopia in its illegal war in the Horn of Africa. It is the first time that Washington has acknowledged having forces in Somalia since it pulled out in 1994 after the infamous “Black Hawk down” incident.

To pay for World War II, Americans bought savings bonds and put extra notches in their belts. President Harry Truman raised taxes and cut nonmilitary spending to pay for the Korean conflict. During Vietnam, the US raised taxes but still watched deficits soar.

Guantanamo prisoners are entitled to protections under the Constitution, yet the government is trying to deny them due process.

We are not winning the war on terrorism (and would not be even if we knew what victory looked like) or the war in Iraq. Our track record in Afghanistan, as well as in the allied “war” on drugs, is hardly better. Yet the Pentagon is hard at work, spending your money, planning and preparing for future conflicts of every imaginable sort.

The New Webster Dictionary of the English Language describes culture as education, improvement by mental or physical training, the way of life of a people. The same dictionary describes war as hostility, a contest between nations or within the same nation, a state of violent opposition.

Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.

Tony Blair has turned the blame for his disastrous military campaigns in the Middle East on anti-war dissidents and the media.

American forces stormed Iranian government offices in northern Iraq, hours after President George Bush issued a warning to Tehran that was described as a “declaration of war”.

The military-industrial-complex [would] cause military spending to be driven not by national security needs but by a network of weapons makers, lobbyists and elected officials. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Pentagon on Thursday proposed increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps by a combined total of 92,000 troops and announced it will recall to duty sooner than planned some National Guard and Reserve troops who already have served yearlong tours in Iraq or Afghanistan.