Pentagon used psychological operation on US public, documents show

[AllentownJake]

A months-long review of documents and interviews with Pentagon personnel has revealed that the Bush Administration's military analyst program -- aimed at selling the Iraq war to the American people -- operated through a secretive collaboration between the Defense Department's press and community relations offices.

Raw Story has also uncovered evidence that directly ties the activities undertaken in the military analyst program to an official US military document’s definition of psychological operations -- propaganda that is only supposed to be directed toward foreign audiences.

The investigation of Pentagon documents and interviews with Defense Department officials and experts in public relations found that the decision to fold the military analyst program into community relations and portray it as “outreach” served to obscure the intent of the project as well as that office’s partnership with the press office. It also helped shield its senior supervisor, Bryan Whitman, assistant secretary of defense for media operations, whose role was unknown when the original story of the analyst program broke.

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/bryan-whitman-2/

[gratuitous]

1. How else can you get people to kill and die for nothing?

Well, not nothing. I mean, a lot of the administration's friends made just bucketloads of money. But as for any other benefit? Pretty tough to see.

[midnight]

2. Very effective programming they have..... Bryan Whitman is now Obama's pentagon spokesperson.

I'm trying to figure out if he was a stay behind?

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. It worked well enough at the time, but

millions of Americans were not fooled. As economic times get more perilous, people will be fooled less and less.

[midnight]

4. Whitman even proved a creative force in getting the most out of the analysts, seeing opportunities

even in a national disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina. Economic peril might be another win win for this creative approach....

[Vinnie From Indy]

11. True!

Stressful times allow all kinds of evil to run amok. Scapegoating is always the first salvo.

[Hannah Bell]

5. no duh.

[AntiFascist]

6. K&R....

no doubt the Pentagon program was coordinated with the intelligence disinformation program.

[TexasObserver]

7. Recommend

[robdogbucky]

8. War is Peace, Up is Down.....

DOD Spends More on Domestic PsyOps Than On Foreign PsyOps
By: emptywheel Friday February 6, 2009 1:16 pm

"The AP just did a great investigation on how much money DOD is spending on PR and outreach (via Noah Shachtman). There are lots of nausea-inducing details in the story: that PR funds have grown 63% in the last five years, that DOD has almost as many people working in PR as the State Department employs altogether.

But what gets me is that DOD is spending more for Domestic PsyOps (otherwise known as Public Affairs) than it spends on Foreign PsyOps.

The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more goes into what is known as psychological operations, which targets foreign audiences....

....But on Dec. 12, the Pentagon's inspector general released an audit finding that the public affairs office may have crossed the line into propaganda. The audit found the Department of Defense "may appear to merge inappropriately" its public affairs with operations that try to influence audiences abroad. It also found that while only 89 positions were authorized for public affairs, 126 government employees and 31 contractors worked there..."

[Hubert Flottz]

10. Laws are for the working class taxpayers to abide by.

Guys like Bush, Cheney and RumBo are, TOO BIG TO JAIL....

[Cali_Democrat]

9. K&R

[intheflow]

12. OMG, rilly?!?!

I'm shocked, I tell ya! Shocked!

:sarcasm: