PROOF: Pentagon used Psyops on American public!

In Part I of this series, Raw Story revealed that Bryan Whitman, the current deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, was an active senior participant in a Bush administration covert Pentagon program that used retired military analysts to generate positive wartime news coverage.


I have assembled some interesting highlights from this article to entice you into reading all of it. I added the emphasis.


Nicholas Cull, who also directs the public diplomacy master’s program at USC and has written extensively on propaganda and media history, found the Pentagon public affairs officials’ use of such terms both incriminating and reckless.
“[Their] use of psyop terminology is an ‘own goal,’” Cull explained in an email, “as it speaks directly to the American public’s underlying fear of being brainwashed by its own government.”


Pentagon records show that the day after 14 marines died in Iraq on August 3, 2005, James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, instructed military analysts during a briefing to work to prevent the incident from weakening public support for the war. Conway reminded the military analysts assembled, “The strategic target remains our population.”


The embed and military analyst programs shared the same underlying strategy of “information dominance,” the same objective of selling Bush administration war policies by generating favorable news coverage and were directed at the same target -- the American public.

Torie Clarke, the first Pentagon public affairs chief, is often credited for conceiving both programs.

In her 2006 book Lipstick on a Pig, Clarke revealed that “most importantly, embedding was a military strategy in addition to a public affairs one” (p. 62) and that the program’s strategy was “simple: information dominance” (p. 187). To achieve it, she explained, there was a need to circumvent the traditional news media “filter” where journalists act as “intermediaries.”The goal, just as with the military analyst program, was not to spin a story but to control the narrative altogether.


Read entire story here:rawstory.com...

[edit on 21-10-2009 by 12GaugePermissionSlip]

As soon as i saw these "embedded journalists" I thought, hmm the only 'fair and balanced' way to really do that, would be to have journalists 'embedded' on both sides of the war! Needles to say, I haven't heard of any Fox News or NY times "journalists" being embedded with the Taliban or any of the insurgents in Iraq. From now on, I only trust ATS for all my news!