US Says Putting Paid Ads in Iraq Press Is Okay

The reason it’s all right for the US military to plant propaganda in the Iraq press is because it’s the US military doing it. When the Iraqis do it, it’s wrong, immoral and evil. After the news broke on Thursday that the US military was planting paid propaganda in Iraq newspapers, the White House, Pentagon and military sources said it wasn’t true and if it was true it was righteous and a good thing to do. On Friday, the US military admitted that “news articles written by American troops had been placed as paid advertisements in the Iraqi news media” and “they were not always identified” as paid ads. That’s the military’s way of saying the paid ads were made to appear as though they were impartial news stories. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said on Thursday that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was using the news media to advance his terrorist goals but that “the American military was disseminating truthful information”. Oh right! Truthful, like the lie Prez Bush handed out to the Annapolis midshipmen on Wednesday? Bush told the midshipmen that Iraqi security forces had primarily led the recent assault on Tel Afar. Time Mag reporter Michael Ware, who is embedded with the U.S. troops in Iraq and who participated in the Tal Afar battle, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Bush's description was completely untrue: “I was in that battle from the very beginning to the very end,” Ware said. “I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with al Qaeda. They were not leading. They were being led by the U.S. green beret special forces.” President Bush’s baldfaced lie in Annapolis gives a pretty fair idea of the kind of so-called truthful information being larded into the Iraq newspapers. A lie is a lie is a lie, no matter who tells it. And just to put things in proper perspective for all those lying warmongers who love to quote what God thinks is an abomination, let’s see what Proverbs 6:17 says about lying: “There are six things which the Lord hates; seven which are an abomination to him: Haughty eyes, A lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood; A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that make haste to run to evil, A false witness who breathes out lies, And a man who sows discord among brothers.”