So, regardless of who is surprised or not surprised by this outrageous story of blatant military propaganda operations, there is absolutely no excuse for the ensuing media blackout, based on some self-serving pretense that this sort of thing is common knowledge, so "let's move on."

The media have the worst of egg on their faces and blood on their hands, and they want desperately for nobody to notice.

Once you're finger gets tired of pointing at some indistinct objection off in the horizon of outraged indignation...what EXACTLY do you want done about it? Or is that beside the point? Heh.

The story about the generals is one of America's most important stories and lessons. If somehow, the American media was fundamentally altered to allow such a story to be told, then I think Americans would be able to sleep better at night knowing the journalists and editors are doing their job. Democracy is fragile, and the only thing keeping it up is a healthy media. How healthy do you think our media is? Take a look at what kind of commercials are running on Ad breaks. Count how many pharmaceutical commercials, car commercials, military commercials there are.

We need this story to be told, or it will happen again.

Pedinska. huh. err. grunt. @ 7:34.

You are extra fastidious and unruly?

Glenn needs you for another secretary.

I'm being extra quiet around the death loyalist. Or, I get ordered to attend workshops at the V.A. where psychiatrist swap Bush/Cheney general's jokes. Those visits to the Pentagon are almost as depressing as the V.A. blogging-rap group I attend. Inside the Pentagon the War-Porn DVD rental shop is always packed with brass-officers that are dressed in yellow galoshes, three piece sear-sucker orange bib-overalls, and the conventional pink bow ties. The DOD embezzlers are overdosed on aspirin, and zombie-thorazine. They shuffle along... and keep making irritating dry-heaving upchuck sound in the hallways. The dry tongue is hung out. They military hacks pant in blood lust.... The kill-club is gag-elite. They buy Wimpy hamburgers snacks there, and bet on greyhound dog races with 'our' taxes. The Brass Band plays "Amazing Grace" the Americans are so happy. Wretches!

Media outlets keep up with the trends. They shout, 'Suet' .... Gops listen to 8-track tapes of "Stand by My Man" "Hound Dog" and sing like Dolly Pardon. They catch up on the country western classics from the 30's while being briefed by Gates while they are slumped over.... gagging.

'Um are being told to say LIES about what the American people want pumped into 'our' ears.

Pedinska. It is not a good day to roll down a hill. muddy.

Well. Now, aren't these militant triumphalist disgusting?

What neocons! O poor, lethargic, sluggard, and depraved stragglers.

Maybe there are some good-will suits for sale that say : DESTITUTE.

I bet the Pentagon gives good deals on worn-out clothes to retired sell-out corporate militarist.

Let's take up a collection for a Salvation Army 3-piece silk suit : Hart Schaffner & Marx.

They can wear conical hats, and grey oil-rags can be wrapped around the face like dead mummies.

If ever anyone needed to heed his own advice, surely this is it:

One gets one's message out in better fashion when positive and attractive to an audience, as opposed to appearing rude, negative, and condescending. But hey, like that could ever happen. Heh.

-- shooter242

Once you're finger gets tired of pointing at some indistinct objection off in the horizon of outraged indignation...what EXACTLY do you want done about it? Or is that beside the point? Heh.

-- shooter242

Because prohibitons never stopped anyone in or out of government and with the internets and fully wired world, it's a moot point.

Smith-Mundt is a Moot Case - Except It's Not

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Why is it that the U.S. government still operates its overseas information activities as if the Internet had never been invented? Or actually, it operates them with increasing impunity as if Smith-Mundt, the law that came into being in 1948 and was strengthened during the Vietnam War that separates information aimed at foreigners from information designed for American consumption, had been repealed years ago. Except it wasn’t. This artificial and meaningless firewall – supposedly to keep the executive branch of the U.S. government from “propagandizing” the American people – should have been repealed once the Internet took hold.

By 1996 when I worked in the US Information Agency’s Information Bureau and we published quarterly electronic journals on national security issues, developed our own subject-specific web pages as well as a regular news service called the Washington File, it was clear the Smith-Mundt designated separation between information and information had become meaningless.

[...]

What can and should, however, be instituted – with no exceptions for any branch or agency of the US government including the CIA and the US military is a policy of clear information attribution. This also includes any information products produced by contractors for the US government. Remember the Lincoln Group? Or how about General Dynamics which has added the manufacture of web pages for overseas audiences to its weapons production arsenal - in a bizarre sort of contractor mission creep?

What goes around comes around

The problem with Smith-Mundt is particularly true in the viral Internet era. What’s the old adage: “What goes around comes around?” Have you ever wondered how many of those “good news” stories in the Iraqi media were bought, paid for and placed by some US government contractor? Think how difficult it must be for reporters covering Iraq to distinguish the fake from the real. Some of this is called PSYOPS, or psychological operations – but I wonder sometimes who the ultimate recipient really is.

Then there’s disinformation – concocted stories designed to mislead an enemy during wartime – another form of PYSOPS. The Soviets were really good at disinformation. I saw one of their more infamous products circulating in the Finnish media when I was Information Officer in Helsinki at the end of the Cold War. It was the “baby parts” story, circulated without attribution and designed to make America look really bad.

It seems to me, therefore, that the best way we can protect ourselves from ourselves – or the blow-back from overheated US government paid-for information operations particularly on the military side of the house which has been on a war footing since 2003 - is jettisoning an archaic law now all but ignored with a “wink and a nod” and replacing it with a policy of clear attribution that is strictly enforced not evaded...

http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2008/05/smith-mundt-is.html#more

Even this won't stop everyone, but it is a step in the right direction.