That is the report from "Danger Room", A National Security Blog at Wired.com.
Quote:
A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent Bloggers."
Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.
This report does not surprise me, nor is a huge revelation. I believe that US Military in Iraq, at some point, when the Iraq War began to turn sour, began to instruct some of it’s Military personnel to sign up for Blogs, say on Blogspot and WordPress, under false Iraqi names, like Omar and Mohammad, and to begin to preach the good values of this War and the Bush Administration.
One of these blogs already exists. It is called "Iraq, The Model"; it has been in existence since November of 2003. It is "supposedly" run by someone in Iraq.
Sorry, I am not buying it. The English is too good. I accused the person that owns this Blog of being a covert American once and he flew into a rage and called me a liar, and then amazingly my comments on the Blog disappeared. As if he did not want to arouse anyone’s suspicions, I suppose.
My question is, does the Bush Administration really believe that the American people are that damned gullible? That we are just going to blindly buy the lie that this war is just going along smoothly and everything is perfect. I mean really!
Coupled with that and continued moving of the Goal posts as to why we should be there! First, it was to topple Saddam, and then it became to fight against Al-Qaeda, and so forth. I mean, somewhere along the line, the American people realized that the Bush Administration was full of crap.
It just cracks me up, that George W. Bush and his Administration actually sit up there, in the White House thinking of ways that they can deceive the American people into believing that this war was even remotely justified. Everyone knows, that actually reads the news, which is good percentage of America, that the whole invasion of Iraq was an abdication of U.S. Intelligence, from the ground up. Does anyone remember, "Slam Dunk"?
Mr. President, in case you have been away or a bit busy, this is not 1941! We do have the thing called the Internet and a thing called Blogs and various other kinds of Alternative news sources! You cannot control the type of news that comes out of Iraq. No matter how hard you try! You would think a man that ended up in the White House would be smart enough to know this sort of a thing. But then again, we are talking about George W. Bush, the former cokehead, the former womanizer, the former Drunk, the guy who walked away from the Military, the Former Black sheep of the Bush Family, are we not?
Of course, upon further reflection, this is the mindset of the Republican Party, the party of the wealthy in our society. The sick and twisted mentality of "They are just stupid common people, they’ll believe anything we tell them.” The sad part is, within the Republican Party, there does exist a certain amount of that sort of Mentality. It is generally made up of the viewers of the Fox News Channel. In fairness, there are liberals like that too. "Believe what you are told and shut up and accept it and get back to work!" is the mentality of the good part of America. Thank God for people like Edward C. Marrow, and Keith Olbermann and many others, including those in the Blogging community, that have stood up and said, "No More!" and have sought to expose this Administration for what it is. Corrupt.
I am not sure how I feel about this story, angry or sad. Angry because of the Blatant stupidity that it exhibits, or sad for our nation, sad because the American government is having to stoop to the level of hiring professional Bloggers to print lies about this war.
November 2008 cannot come quick enough for me.
Others: THE LIBERAL JOURNAL, Think Progress, Shakesville and Left in the West (via Memeoradum)