Originally published December 27 2005
U.S. military has been planting articles written by troops in Iraqi newspapers, LA Times says
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
According to the LA Times, the U.S. military has been publishing articles written by troops in Iraqi newspapers and pawned them off as the work of independent journalists, with the help of Lincoln Group, which translates the stories into Arabic and finds them a place in the Baghdad newspapers.
Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists.
Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said.
Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.
The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories.
The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.
The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.
The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.
The military's information operations campaign has sparked a backlash among some senior military officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon who argue that attempts to subvert the news media could destroy the U.S. military's credibility in other nations and with the American public.
The arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs --- the dissemination of factual information to the media --- and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.
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