Petraeus

As an Internet Organizer for Progressive Future, I've been busily spreading the otherwise buried reports of the atrocities and abuses committed by military contractors in Iraq. As outraged as they made me, I had to wonder why these stories failed to reach the mainstream American public. Now I know why.

In an extensive article on the front page of Sunday's New York Times, David Bartow exposes how the Pentagon recruited, groomed, prepped and, one may go so far as to say, bribed a team of "military analysts." This team consisted of retired military men, defense lobbyists and private contractor representatives, who were then unleashed upon the mainstream media to deliver manipulated testimony on the war. Highlights of the detailed investigation of the Pentagon's highly strategized manipulation of war reporting are as follows:

-Well before the September 11th attacks, the Pentagon was already preparing a system for achieving what inside officials called "information dominance" to sell the case for an Iraq invasion.

-Participating analysts in the program were courted by Pentagon insiders through briefing sessions during which lavish treatment was extended upon the team; analysts were paid $500 to $1000 per television appearance on one condition: they were not to quote their briefers directly or disclose the extent of their contact with the Pentagon.

-Multiple "Iraq tours" were set up for the analysts to "see what the situation was really like." These trips were planned detail by detail, down to the minute, to ensure none of the war's negatives were exposed. Private contractor representatives took advantage of these tours to set up lucrative contracts for their companies' services in Iraq.

-Analysts who were quoted as giving testimony that could be construed as negative toward the administration were promptly fired.

-Further tactics used to sway public opinion included paying columnists to write favorably about the administration, distributing false news segments to local TV stations, and covertly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish coalition propaganda.

The Pentagon is doing more than just keeping taxpaying Americans and our troops in the dark about what's really going on in Iraq. They are deliberately distorting the information that reaches us to cover up the abysmal failures of the war.

Ironically, while the administration uses the claim of defending American security abroad as justification for the war, they have stripped the American people of our personal security. They are attacking our freedoms at home first by tapping our phones, and now by interfering with the free press that is foundational to a free society. Join Progressive Future's campaign to repair these breaches to our freedom of information by signing our Petition for an Open Press, targeting the news networks and calling for the removal of any "military analyst" whose conflicts of interest prevent him or her from unbiased reporting.

Whether you measure it by the lives that have been lost, the sap of taxpayer money, the loss of accountability or the breach of the numerous laws and institutions that make up the foundation of our country, the Iraq War has cost us. It is astounding that our leaders have the stomach to be aware of all these costs and can still look us in the eye and tell us this war has been anything but an abominable failure. Here are the highlights of the latest befuddlements in the Bush administration's handling of the war:

*The end of March saw the bloodiest two-week period we have experienced since September 2007, resulting in the loss of 25 American lives in fourteen days. That week, on the same day a roadside bomb claimed over 50 lives, Dick Cheney and John McCain visited Iraq; McCain told CNN, “We are succeeding. And we can succeed, and American casualties overall are way down.”

*A lawsuit waged against KBR regarding the senseless death of Sgt. Ryan Maseth due to negligence in electrical wiring has uncovered details that the private contracting company's failure to fix reported faulty wiring led to the deaths of at least eleven other troops.
Details probing into the suicide of Army Colonel Ted Westhusing in Iraq found that greed and corruption in the attitudes and behaviors of his commanders was a contributing factor to his emotional distress. One of his commanders? David Petraeus.

*On March 11th, the Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing on waste, fraud and abuse of American tax dollars in Iraq, which described corruption in contracts as “widespread” and “rampant,” and found that “poor accountability has resulted in thousands of weapons provided by the U.S. to Iraqi security forces being stolen, looted, or otherwise provided to insurgents and militias to use against U.S. troops.”

It's too late to get our money back. But its not too late to demand that our leaders use our tax money in a responsible manner that contributes to, not undermines, our security. Progressive Future has launched a brand-new website to provide our supporting activists with the tools and resources necessary to launch an all-out campaign to change the direction of our country. This new site includes features such as a weekly cartoon like the one above, daily updated news you can use, recent outrages, and direct action opportunities, like our petition to call for contractor accountability. Join Progressive Future in taking back our country.

Greg Mitchell posted an saddening, incensing and conscience-rattling post today about the findings of further probing into the suicide of Colonel Ted Westhusing. The beleaguered military ethics scholar left a suicide note, revealing that the extent to which personal greed, corruption and lies ruled the decisions and policy formation of his commanders in the Iraq War left Westhusing guilt-ridden and plagued with despair. As it turns out, one of the two commanders Westhusing was referring to was none other than David Petraeus, the point person behind the recent "surge" campaign.

Christian Miller reported in the L.A. Times that, "Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military."

Unfortunately, what is publicly known about the extent to which corruption and deceit is rooted in the activities of U.S.-led initiatives in Iraq is probably just the tip of the ice burg. Not only has the Pentagon manipulated the structure of power and responsibility to eliminate any system of accountability, but there have been increasingly eerie reports on the ways in which the American public has been receiving incomplete, absent, manipulated or slanted news coverage on the war (and how the DoD has been behind a large part of this).

Reports reveal that in the first quarter of 2008, media coverage of the war dropped to a meager 3.5 percent . At the height of Iraq War reporting, immediately following the initial invasion, reporting was at around 30 percent.

It has long been a known fact that the administration has made it a personal policy not to do body counts, learning the lessons from Vietnam that visibility of casualties leads to public outcry. But now a report indicates that the Pentagon is considering hiring, commissioning, or co-opting bloggers “to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message." This coincides with a GOP strategy to bolster support for the presumed Republican nominee John McCain (a staunch supporter of the war) by launching multi-lateral attack campaigns against what they see as Democratic attempts to "legislate defeat" in Iraq.

Bottom line: whether its through the tragedies of formerly deployed troops upon their return stateside, the depletion of our economic infrastructure by the careless and fraudulent spending of our tax money on the war, or the descent of our international reputation from the surfacing stories of contractor corrosion, the consequences of the administration's mishandling of the war will follow us home. We need to take action while our country still has some integrity to defend. Sign Progressive Future's petition to enforce accountability for the events that take place in Iraq in our name.