Lincoln Group, Propagandist, Keeps On Swinging
This new contract is designed "to provide 'strategic communications' services for the top U.S. command in Iraq to help American officials counter poor public perceptions, conduct polling, and perform other communications services."
Last week, the Huffington Post reported that the Lincoln Group was poised "to receive yet another two year $20 million contract from the Pentagon to "put together a unit of 12-18 communicators to support military PR efforts in Iraq and throughout the Middle East, as well as influence 'the morale and support for the war in the United States.'" It's not clear if the articles are referencing the same contract.
Progaganda OK
According to the Marine Times, "The purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to U.S. objectives." And when investigating the "pay to print" program, the Pentagon decided it's all good:
We concluded that the Multi-National Force-Iraq and Multi-National Corps-Iraq complied with applicable laws and regulations in their use of a contractor to conduct psychological operations and their use of newspapers as a way to disseminate information.
As I pointed out in an earlier article, information practices that would be illegal if the target were American citizens is perfectly OK if the target is a foreign national. Nevermind that information has no geographic borders in today's globally networked mediascape.
According to Bill Berkowitz:
An Air Force document published in 1994 titled "Air Force Intelligence and Security Doctrine: Psychological Operations (PSYOP)," pointed out that by necessity psychological operations aims to "convey and (or) deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning ... In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover, and deception, and psyops."
In the information age, psyops, or the effective manipulating of information or spinning stories for political gain knows no borders. A Defense Department document titled "Information Operations Roundup," approved in 2003, acknowledged that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa. PSYOP messages disseminated to any audience ... will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public."
So why, then, does this remain legal?
Technorati Profile
Technorati tags:
Lincoln Group,
Pentagon,
Politics
gada.be tags:
Lincoln Group,
Pentagon,
Politics