great...

[dangets]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051130/pl_afp/usiraqmilitarymedia

hopefully that's not true

[Justin_stacy]

It's a shame the Military is taking pointers from the NyTimes....

[ReFuSeD!]

Would anyone really be all that suprised if it was true? This goes on all over the world and within our own countries all the time.

[dangets]

great, they fucking changed the article to some sympathetic bullshit...

that's the problem with internet news - they can just change shit, call it the same thing, and nobody will know



i'm going to go out on a limb here and say i'm not giving the pentagon the benefit of the doubt

[Just Decent]

there are worse things to take pointers from.

[YouMadeTheScene]

o dont worry i posted a very similar article in the thread with the british reporter title

[splitsecond]

So what if this is true? What if it helps to quell insurgency and gain support for the new Iraqi government, and gains respect for the troops on the ground? Propaganda has always been an accepted part of war, and there is a reason for it: it helps to achieve goals.


Do you want us out of Iraq or not?

[Justin_stacy]

there are worse things to take pointers from.
From a journalistic standpoint, no there really isn't.......

[dangets]

So what if this is true? What if it helps to quell insurgency and gain support for the new Iraqi government, and gains respect for the troops on the ground? Propaganda has always been an accepted part of war, and there is a reason for it: it helps to achieve goals.


Do you want us out of Iraq or not?

this is a bad thing because:

-propaganda is anti-democratic (call it anti-american if you want... it's a cute buzz word these days) and ineffective
-it points to the possibility that we're doing other things in Iraq that are blatantly anti-democratic (like voter fraud?)
-it suggests that we're less interested in helping Iraq build a democracy than we are in helping ourselves (in contrast to the official position)
-this isn't an operation against insurgents, it's an operation against the common people, and this risks alienating them

if democracy there is doing as well as we're being led to believe, why is this necessary? what gives Americans the right to molest the workings of a developing free society?