Pentagon sets sights on public opinion

Pentagon sets sights on public opinion

www.msnbc.msn.com

WASHINGTON - As it fights two wars, the Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls "the human terrain" of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of spreading propaganda at home in violation of federal law.

An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That's almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Here we go again...

The meat-grinder, war profiteering monster that is the Military Industrial complex is gearing up for more BS and propaganda spewing garbage, to continue raining down kool-aid to the masses.

And why shouldn't they? War is big business, and these people's greed is INSATIABLE.

Not to mention, when the Pentagon gets to be the determiner and investigator into what is and is not acceptable in terms of blatant propaganda and media talking heads promoting their war profiteering ventures, why should they worry about spewing out the fallacies and fairy tales of what they are up to?

No accountability, and the war machine grinds on, leaving its trail of dismembered corpses in its aftermath.

Disgusting.

www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

let them first account for the missing trillions and the WMD lies about Iraq.

FUD mongers are what they are.

And ANOTHER article chronicling the M.I.C.'s propaganda and controling of the media:

Pentagon clashes with media over control of information

The Pentagon now spends more than $550 million a year — at least double the amount since 2003 — on public affairs, and that doesn't including personnel costs. Public affairs officers are, in the words of the military's training manual, a "perception management tool." Their job is to provide facts but not spin to American audiences and the American media.

Over the past two years, the number of public affairs officers trained by the Defense Information School has grown by 24 percent to almost 3,500. The military is also expanding its Internet presence from 300 to 1,000 sites and increasing its free cable programming on the Pentagon Channel by 33 percent to 2,080 programs.

Along with putting out its own messages, the public affairs arm tries to regulate what other media put out.

Full Article:

www.latimes.com...


[edit on 6-2-2009 by DimensionalDetective]

increasing its free cable programming on the Pentagon Channel by 33 percent to 2,080 programs.

If ever there was a channel that deserves to have a control room error leading to airing a pornographic video clip from Club Jenna ala the Tucson Super Bowl flub, this is the one.

Isn't it all the more disturbing to know that over the past 5 years they've spent ever increasing dollars abroad to "win hearts and minds" yet over that same period of time our foreign image has grown progressively more negative?

reply to post by DimensionalDetective

Flag'd & Star'd & Star'd!

Excellent find DD- one of your best lately, in my op. Love your patriotism!
Watching out for the greed-pigs-of-war and their ceaseless campaign to ignite the entire world ablaze!

The part of that article that gags my goat the most, is how it said these releases of info are designed for the public to "conclude for themselves" or something to that effect;

HOGWASH! If they hadn't outlawed photographs of our dead soldiers, and innocent women & children to be published, for public view, there would be an immediate end to their insanity by all rational people of the earth!

Well what it's looking like for me is they're gearing up for martial law sooner rather than later.

I mean, honestly what could backfire when they do? A few revolutionary groups with some machine guns? Home made bombs?

How far will that get ANYONE against stealth bombers and sattelite guided missiles thermal vision EMPs UAVs and superiorly trained fighting machines(human robots).

Honestly, the best thing to do is take it all with a grain of salt, because there isn't a damn thing we can do.

There's no stopping the corrupted war machine.

The war-pigs control the spin.

It's too bad that lots of people believe it. I don't know what the solution is either? I can barely say one bad word about the military in Australia without being looked upon as a traitor. It's as though people justify that we should be proud of soldiers who invade foreign lands...

Nice find, DD.

And ANOTHER article, with a press CEO speaking out on the subject. Although I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this is WAY beyond Dubya. He was certainly a co-conspirator in this grotesquery, but as we can see, this is beyond the POTUS position. This entity has a life of its own, and is completely out of control. The very thing that Eisenhower warned us about has developed into full fruition...These people are keeping the entire world in peril.

AP CEO: Bush turned Military into propaganda machine

LAWRENCE, Kan. — The Bush administration turned the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine while imposing tough restrictions on journalists seeking to give the public truthful reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Associated Press chief executive Tom Curley said Friday.

Full article:

www.huffingtonpost.com...



[edit on 7-2-2009 by DimensionalDetective]