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Opinion An Independent Attitude Pentagon feeds propaganda to media During the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, the politicians leading the United States told Americans that the information we got from the Communists was propaganda.
In other words, their government put out lies to sway their people and us toward their points of view. Our government, on the other hand, gave us the straight scoop. Whether our government did or not, we, in fact, for a long time, believed it. Not so any more. That lack of government credibility began in the 1960s when President Lyndon Johnson, his bloodstained Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Gen. William Westmoreland lied about what was going on in Vietnam. They lied to the American people about body counts, about the successes of the American and allied troops and about how well the North Vietnamese and other enemies were doing. The lies Ñ when exposed by Daniel Ellsberg and others Ñ led Johnson to his famous announcement: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president." For those who saw JohnsonÕs legacy as positive, because of the passage of civil rights legislation and the War on Poverty, it was a sad day. For those who saw JohnsonÕs legacy as negative, because of the failure in Vietnam and the propaganda he splattered on Americans, it was good riddance. Then along came President Richard Nixon, probably one of the most complex personalities to inhabit the White House. He resolved the Vietnam War, opened China, and then his henchmen opened the door, literally, to the Democratic offices in the Watergate complex. His lies cost him a legacy, his place in history. But I donÕt remember the Nixon administrationÕs launching the propaganda campaign that we saw with Johnson. Nor do I remember or perceive an orchestrated propaganda campaign until Newt Gingrich came along with his indecent assault on decent Americans. That assault came in 1994 with the "Contract with America." Gingrich led the charge of the Republican Revolution that called for a smaller government. But to achieve that goal, part of the strategy was to bash the federal government and the revolution did so with another wave of propaganda. Today we have a reversion to the bad old days. On Sunday, the New York Times told the nation of the concerted campaign to make the Pentagon a propaganda machine inside our own borders. The federal government is waging psychological warfare against the free will of its own citizenry by, in essence, providing the big media with "military analysts" who maintained ties with the Pentagon and military contractors. "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 Ñ an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks," the Times wrote. The newspaper pointed out that, "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 administrationÕs wartime performance." The New York Times had to file a lawsuit to gain access to the documents that showed these unsavory relationships Ñ and that in and of itself reflects the attitude of the Bush administration toward the public and its right to know. What are we to make of all this? That weÕve lost control of our government and that America has lost the war against terror. Why? Because we have let our government be taken over by a different kind of terrorist, one who would use our own resources against us. It confirms, one more time, that this upcoming election is a watershed election. It is well past time for the people to take back the government. George Schwarz: Editor and publisher of the Amarillo Independent. george@amarilloindy.com E-mail
comments about this story Posted: April 24, 2008
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