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20080501
• US - Iraq -  - Cameras - Media - Politics - San Diego - California - ""Mission Accomplished," 5 Years Later: Since [Republican President] Bush Announced Major Combat Operations In Iraq Ended, Another 3,924 Troops Have Been Killed." ... "It was a picture-perfect moment, made for the TV cameras, in which a military leader stood before heroes and heroines to declare a victory which seemed to come easier than anyone dared hope, in a conflict which was opposed by many friends and foes alike." ... "May 1 marks the fifth anniversary of President George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln." ... "After being landed on the deck of the carrier in an S-3B Viking 30 miles off the coast San Diego [California] (Ari Fleischer said the president "could have helicoptered," but "he wanted to see a landing the way aviators see a landing"), Mr. Bush appeared in a flight suit to the cheers of the ship's personnel and the glare of television lights." ... "Later, he stood at a podium against a backdrop of an enormous banner reading "Mission Accomplished."" ... "To the assembled audience and the world, Mr. Bush said, "Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country." ... ""In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world. Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment - yet it is you, the members of the United States military, who achieved it. Your courage - your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other - made this day possible. Because of you, our nation is more secure. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free." ... ""Tonight, I have a special word for Secretary Rumsfeld, for General Franks, and for all the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States: America is grateful for a job well done."" ... "Now in its sixth year, the war in Iraq has claimed the lives of at least 4,058 members of the U.S. military - 3,924 of whom have died since Mr. Bush landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln." ... "And there are currently more U.S. troops in Iraq than there were when the U.S. invaded with a contingent of other coalition forces." -AP via -CBSNews 

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20080427
• Elizabeth Edwards - Edwards - Biden - Barack Obama - Media - Television - Corporations - Sports - Politics - 2008 Election - Pennsylvania - Freedom - Health - "Bowling 1, Health Care 0." ... "For the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its [2008 Election] Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn?" ... "Well, the rancor of the campaign was covered. The amount of money spent was covered. But in Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country this political season, the information about the candidates’ priorities, policies and principles — information that voters will need to choose the next president — too often did not make the cut. After having spent more than a year on the campaign trail with my husband, [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] John Edwards, I’m not surprised." ... "Why? Here’s my guess: The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments." ... "But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture." ... "Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties." ... "What’s more, the news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started." ... "News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve." ... "If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it." (1, 2) -By Elizabeth Edwards -NYTimes 

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20080424
• WATCH - US - Iraq - Military - Government - Intelligence - Illegal - Psychological - Media -  - Marketing - Politics - "Government Curries Favor With Military News Analysts." ... "The Pentagon may influence the analysis of some retired military personnel who appear on television news programs, the New York Times recently reported. Media insiders discuss the details of this murky world of defense companies, the current administration and the war in Iraq.
[PBS NewsHour Reporter] JUDY WOODRUFF: These former generals and colonels have been a mainstay of commentary and analysis. And the networks paid them for their appearances.

Now, a lengthy New York Times investigation, published on Sunday, revealed the Pentagon targeted many of these analysts as part of an information apparatus to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance.

Pentagon officials organized hundreds of private meetings with senior military leaders and the military analysts. They included talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

According to the Times, analysts were also taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated.

It was also disclosed that most of the analysts have ties to military contractors [corporate military money ties].
...
JOHN STAUBER, Center for Media and Democracy [and author of the book, "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq."]: Well, Judy, first of all, congratulations to the NewsHour for doing this report. And it's a shame on the networks who were duped this way that they didn't show up to defend or explain their actions.

What happened here was a psy-ops campaign [a psychological operations campaign], an incredible government propaganda campaign whereby Donald Rumsfeld and Torie Clark, the head of public relations for the Pentagon, designed a program to recruit 75, at least 75 former military officers, as your report said, most of them now lobbyists or consultants to military contractors, and insert them, beginning in 2002, before the attack on Iraq was even launched, into the major networks to manage the messages, to be surrogates.

And that's the words that are actually used, "message multipliers" for the secretary of defense and for the Pentagon. This program continues right up to now.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And is the essence of this that what they did was -- what the Pentagon did was illegal?

JOHN STAUBER: Yes, what they did was illegal. Now, the Pentagon might contest that, but we've had various laws on the books in our country going back to the 1920s. It is illegal for the U.S. government to propagandize citizens in this way.

In my opinion, this war could have never been sold if it were not for this sophisticated propaganda campaign. And what we need is congressional investigation of not just this Pentagon military analyst program, but all the rest of the deception and propaganda that came out of the Bush administration and out of the Pentagon that allowed them to sell and manage this war.

" -PBS /NewsHour

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• Karl Rove - Corporate - Media - Politics - Network - US - Iraq - Military - "The Self-Loathing Liberal Media." ... "I've been thinking some more about [TIME-WARNER] CNN hiring [former Republican President Bush's spokesperson] Tony Snow as a commentator." ... "Coming in the wake of Newsweek's hiring of [Republican political operative] Karl Rove, and the New York Times' hiring of Bill Kristol, the mainstream media's embrace of these unabashed propagandists has revealed a self-loathing streak a mile wide." ... "What is it with these media outlets? Have they been so cowed by the Right's relentless branding of them as "liberal" that they feel compelled to show that they are not by sleeping with the enemy? And make no mistake, Rove, Kristol, and Snow are the enemies -- of honesty, truth, facts, reality, and the public's right to know. Anything." ... "Rove's commitment to deception is legendary. His entire career was built on it. Kristol is neoconservatism's crown prince. He was a prime mover in the push to invade Iraq, and his claims about the war's progress (or, rather, lack thereof) have been discredited again and again. His reward: a conservative slot on the Gray Lady's Op-Ed page. The Times might as well have given a weekly column to Jayson Blair." ... "Now CNN, the self-anointed "Most Trusted Name in News," has thrown its arms around Snow and handed him its international megaphone." ... "Are the cable network's execs all suffering from amnesia? Do they not remember the extremely distant relationship Snow had with the truth during his time as Bush's mouthpiece?" ... "Misinformation accomplished." ... "The fanatical right has put a modern media twist on Lenin: "Self-loathing liberals will hand us the microphone with which we will bludgeon them."" -By Arianna Huffington -HuffingtonPost.com

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20080423
• Barack Obama - Hillary Rodham Clinton - Karl Rove - Terrorism - Politics - Osama bin Laden - Television - Ad - Money - History - Pennsylvania - Illinois - New York - Iran - Israel - US - Military - 2008 Election - "The Low Road to Victory." ... "The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it." ... "Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and New York] Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election." ... "If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois] Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead." ... "On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned." ... "If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”" -NYTimes

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20080421
• Corporate - Hackers - Manufacture - Electronics - Technology - California - Texas - US - Global - TV - Telecom - Media - Copyright - Enforcement - German - Canada - UK - Israeli - Intelligence - Spying - "Rupert Murdoch Firm Goes on Trial for Alleged Tech Sabotage." ... "Did a Rupert Murdoch company go too far and hire hackers to sabotage rivals and gain the top spot in the global pay-TV war?" ... "This is the question a jury will be facing in a spectacular five-year-old civil lawsuit that is finally being tried this month in California but which has, oddly, received little notice from U.S. [United States] media." ... "The case involves a colorful cast of characters that includes former intelligence agents, Canadian TV pirates, Bulgarian and German hackers, stolen e-mails and the mysterious suicide of a Berlin [Germany's capital] hacker who had been courted by the Murdoch company not long before his death." ... "On the hot spot is NDS Group, a UK-Israeli firm that makes smartcards for pay-TV systems like DirecTV. The company is a majority-owned subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corporation. The charges stem from 1997 when NDS is accused of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes access cards and systems for EchoStar's Dish Network and other pay-TV services. Further, it’s alleged NDS then hired hackers to manufacture and distribute counterfeit NagraStar cards to pirates to steal Dish Network's programming for free." ... "NagraStar and one of its parent companies, EchoStar, are seeking about $101 million for damages for piracy, copyright infringement, misconduct and unfair competition. The list of witnesses in the case includes EchoStar's founder and CEO Charlie Ergen; several hackers and pirates; and Reuven Hazak, an Israeli who heads security for NDS and is a former deputy head of Shabak, or Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency (the equivalent of Britain's MI5)." ... "According to court documents, the scheme began to unravel in 2000 when law-enforcement agents in Texas seized suspicious packages containing CD and DVD players stuffed with more than $40,000 in cash. Parcels similar to this were being sent almost daily from Canada, via Texas, to a hacker in California named Christopher Tarnovsky, who was working for NDS as an engineer. The money was allegedly part of the conspiracy between Tarnovsky and NDS Group to sabotage NagraStar's cards." -By Kim Zetter -Wired

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20080420
• Corporate - Government - Psychological - Military - Intelligence - Television - Radio - Media - Politics - Classified - US - History - Guantánamo - Prison - Cuba - Human Rights - Justice -  - Iraq - Terrorism - Cheney - Gonzales - "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand." ... "In the summer of 2005, the [Republican President] Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay [US military prison in Cuba]. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure." ... "The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo." ... "To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-[September]Sept. 11 world." ... "Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found." ... "The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air." ... "Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized." ... "Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." ... "Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley." ... "In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access." ... "A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis." ... "Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war." ... "This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam." ... "“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, DOCUMENTS) -By David Barstow -NYTimes 

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  WATCH - "How the Pentagon Spread Its Message." ... "David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times, examines primary source documents detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals." -By David Barstow -NYTimes 

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20080418
• John McCain - Money - Accounting - Politics -  - Arizona - Illinois - New York - Obama - Clinton - 2008 Election - "CNN chart purporting to compare candidates' "wealth" omitted Cindy McCain, who is reportedly worth $100 million." ... "Summary: On [TIME WARNER/CNN TV show] The Situation Room, an on-screen chart showed [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator] Sen. John McCain's income to be significantly lower than that of [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidates and Senators from Illinois and New York] Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when combined with the income of their spouses. However, the chart did not include any income earned by McCain's wife, Cindy. As Dana Bash reported moments earlier of Cindy McCain, "Some estimates actually put her worth at about $100 million."" ... "Earlier in the program, Bash compared the portion of McCain's income that he gave to charity with the portion given by the Clintons and Obamas -- without noting that McCain presumably benefits from his wife's wealth and from her income from her separate property, a figure that she has not released." -MediaMatters.org

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