Perhaps it shouldn't surprise anyone, but the idea that the United States is paying Iraqi journalists to plant stories in the Iraqi media reflecting the U.S. government's view of the war may be an all-new low.
The Department of Defense gave a multimillion-dollar contract last year to a Washington public relations firm, the Lincoln Group, to translate and plant pieces written by American military personnel in Iraqi news media.
The pieces were designed to put a positive face on activities in Iraq. The Lincoln Group, made up of businessmen and former U.S. military officials, is headed by Christian Bailey, a Republican Party fund-raiser. The contractor has disbursed more than $1 million in cash to Iraqi journalists, trying not to reveal the American source.
When asked about the project by American media, the Department of Defense initially tried to label it classified, to protect the contractor and the government's role.
Ironically, the Defense Department's action in this regard cuts squarely across other efforts the U.S. government is undertaking in Iraq, paying contractors more millions to inculcate in Iraqis the importance of a free and independent press.
The Pentagon's project is at odds with the liberty that the Bush Administration claims it is trying to introduce in Iraq. A free and independent press is an American democratic principle in action.This may be another successful effort on the part of business people and former U.S. military officials to make money out of the war.
In any event, the Bush Administration's claim that bringing democracy to Iraq is now the principal objective of the American presence there is threadbare.
The government's bribery of the nascent Iraqi free press makes the claim even more of a bad joke. All of this comes just before Iraq's Dec. 15 elections, billed to put in power through free elections a legitimate democratic government.
It is shameful. Unfortunately it is not new, including in the United States, where conservative columnist Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 to tout the administration's "No Child Left Behind " act and James Guckert, working under the pseudonym Jeff Gannon, was a Bush favorite in White House press conferences before he was unmasked in February.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the practice's spread to Iraq is that many people on the right have no problem with it at all.
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