PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Has the Pentagon disinformation melodrama finally quit playing?
by Stephen Donahue Sunday, Sep. 01, 2002 at 1:15 PM

The Pentagon struggles with the issue of disinformation

The whole episode could have been a script for the popular TV drama, "The West Wing." According to stories "leaked" from the Pentagon last week (Feb19-21) there has been an honest-to-goodness debate at the Department of Defense. According to these leaked stories the debate has centered on a newly-formed Pentagon department with a multimillion-dollar budget called the Office of Strategic Influence. According to these stories there has been a disagreement at the Pentagon about plans by the Office of Strategic Influence to provide false news items to the foreign press so as to manipulate public opinion in countries both considered friendly and unfriendly to U.S. foreign policy.

The headlines each day have told the story. On February 19 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported: "Pentagon considering disinformation in drive to gain global support." On February 20 the headline was "Defense department divided over disinformation plan." On February 21 the "Pentagon clarifies propaganda plan" and finally on February 25 we read that, "Pentagon disinformation plan angers White House aids." Is this the last episode of this half-assed serial melodrama? One can only hope.

Needless to say the Pentagon and the White House are always very concerned about shaping public opinion. It is the job of "psychological warfare" operatives and now this new Office of Strategic Influence to make sure that the truth does not get in the way of this. It seems reasonable in fact to suspect that the entire series of articles which were leaked to the press between February 19 and 25 were just part of a horse-and-pony show designed to make the public think that the truth actually matters to our president and his generals.

Day one: misdirected Pentagon underlings plan to flood the world with lies cleverly disguised as news. Day two: Good guys at the Pentagon protest this plan. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says that he never tells a lie. Day three: Praise God! The truth wins out! Rumsfeld while speaking at the Winter Olympics says that the Pentagon will not tell lies to the press. He goes on to say however that, "the word 'deception' is an interesting one." Day four: The guys over at the White House West Wing express righteous indignation that the Pentagon would even consider spreading lies all over the world because it makes their boss look like an L.S.S. (lying sack of shit).

Thus the story ends happily. An evil design to spread disinformation to all the media outlets of the world is beat off because our government, like George Washington himself, "cannot tell a lie."

Most people are aware that governments by their very nature are prone to finagle with the truth from time to time. Most of us are also very aware that during war the truth is especially irrelevant to those calling the shots. Unless our leaders are extremely na�ve they know that we know that they lie a lot. So why the four act play last week? Are we being prepared for lies the likes of which we have not heard since big daddy Bush told us that Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard were plucking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and smashing their tiny brains out? Yes we are because now the Pentagon has a brand new Office of Strategic Influence. Josef Goebbels must be jealous, even from his grave

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