Oh Great, More Propaganda
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The failed administration strikes again.
The Bush Administration has provided the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with guidelines on how to weave positive messages about Iraq into their briefings. More ludicrous still, there’s a scoreboard being updated weekly to shame less enthusiastic folks into getting on message.
Last week USDA speechwriter Heather Vaughn sent an email to about 60 undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and other political appointees.
31 Responses to “Oh Great, More Propaganda”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Sounds like a bumper crop of bull***t
You really have to admire the tenacity (gall) of the mercenaries.
They will fight to control information until the last of them are
forcibly removed from their perch of power.
Oh, no. We wouldn’t want to know what each agency is doing to help Iraqi reconstruction, would we? Especially since we all know there really is no progress.
This is straight out of a Dilbert book, actually. I remember getting stupid shit like this when I toiled as a middle manager in Corporate America: “Write up a paragraph showing how your completely-unrelated job/product/team helps us with marketing’s new Corporate Vision Statement. Such-and-such VP wants this by tomorrow.”.
Yet another reason why we should never again have an MBA as our president. Government bureaucracies tend to have their own pathology (i.e. stultifying red tape), but now we’ve combined those with the unique pathologies of for-profit corporations… such as relentless spin and bullshit-infestation.
The worst thing to ever happen to our government was for Repugs to bring the “greater fool” theory along with them when they marched in from Wall Street.
People who think the job of the Dept. Of Agriculture is to provide CYA for a misplanned abortion of a war… and they’re not ashamed of it. Amazing.
That should be 30-40 corpses a day…
Politics above governing is the central theme of this sad administration. Just another data point for the history books.
Good Lord. A President exerting influence over his own administration?!? SCANDAL!!!!!!
We all should know by now that it is the duty of all Americans to bash Bush, and in the unlikely event he is responisible for anything good, we shouldn’t talk about it.
JWG got the memo.
Oliver, you can cynically call it “Cover Your Ass” if you want, but that’s not what it is. It’s called supporting the war effort. Not everyone wakes up every day, as you do, thinking, “What can I do to drown the President in offal today?”
I wonder how you might have felt if similar efforts were undertaken with regard to Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, etc., when Clinton (blessed be his name) was in office. The worst thing he was ever accused of was the “tail wagging the dog,” which certainly doesn’t even approach the dizzyingly demoralizing drivel that emanates from the Left nowadays.
This is good news! The more good news the better. The reports of 30-40 corpses really seems to be dragging Frank, JWG and SF down.
Supporting the war effort doesn’t involve lying about the progress of the war, Frank. We tried that before (Vietnam) and it didn’t work. The President drowned himself, I can only help to point out the facts. If the facts are so bad that they demoralize people, maybe the work is to change the facts and not just layer on more rhetoric.
“The worst thing he was ever accused of was the tail wagging the dog”
This is a lie. Let’s see, he was called murderer, rapist, drug smuggler, drug addict, draft dodger, flag burner, traitor, and communist. And that was just on Rush Limbaugh. You must not know any actual conservatives, do you, Frank?
Hello, Appearances. No, we haven’t seen Substance in quite some time.
Frank, your rather convenient gloss over the efforts to undermine Clinton as “merely” wagging the dog is quite telling. In fact there was a quite significant effort, especially on the part of House Republicans under persecuted Xtian Martyr Tom Delay, to paint any and all efforts of Clinton as “wagging the dog”, “war for Monica”, and misuse of the nation’s military for foreign adventures and the dreaded “nation building”.
Besides, I have no need to think “What can I do to drown the President in offal today?”, when at the moment he’s doing such a spectacular job of drowning himself without additional help.
Your complete lack of understanding of the multiple missions carried out by the USDA is what’s amazing.
Shorter Oliver: “Those dumb hicks at the USDA should stick to growin’ potatoes. What do they know about Iraq?”
Another strawman grows. The *acutal* position is that agencies should do their jobs, not Karl Rove’s while they’re on the taxpayer’s dime. But you’re not interested in an honest debate, are you Farris?
Huh?
The subordination of every agency to the political arm of the White House is truly sickening. Can’t wait for the grownups to be in charge again. Hey, did the USDA grow that strawman for you, JWG?
The Dem Platform for 2006/8: Total F%#in’ Anarchy!
I can’t believe it’s now a major party’s position that the President shouldn’t be in charge of the Executive Branch … but there you go.
Uh, *actual*, that is.
Goatchowder, this is why I had to take a backseat in my union (I used to represent a team of people in a successful co-operation with the management). The trouble is, you are then expected to give a damn about unionisation in Chad or St Nevis or some such, and sometimes you just don’t. And even if you’ve managed to improve productivity, quality of product, training, working arrangements and such, you still have some boot-faced official treating you like shit because you stick to the stuff that only affects you. It wasn’t worth it. So now, if somebody needs help with bullying, or with a free will (one of the best things IMO we do), I help out without all that nonsense.
Yes, and when I link to the USDA mission stating that they “provide food aid and technical assistance to foreign countries” (which would include Iraq right now) you claim I’ve raised a strawman?
Show me where recycling White House propaganda is part of the FAS’s job. That’s the argument we’re having, not whether the FAS exists or not.
From http://www.fas.usda.gov/aboutfas.asp
“Around the globe, FAS responds to special needs as they arise, such as contributing to reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, including helping them develop appropriate agricultural institutions and policies.”
You and Oliver call it propagandizing. I call it supporting the war effort. Try it some time.
This reminds me about how my superintendant asked that throughout the year teachers share with the press how their classroom activities are linked with people in the community so that the public is more aware of the school/community connections. According to Oliver and TomY, my superintendant is a bad, bad man.
Shhh…the USDA works in Iraq and Afghanistan…but they shouldn’t say anything about it…it’s “propaganda” if you report about your mission when a Republican is in office. Just do your job and keep quiet about it.
I guess it’s ok with the cons if we use the failures in Iraq when we talk about unrelated subjects.
“Barry Bonds has failed to win the hearts and minds of baseball fans, due to his arrogance- just like in our failed mission in Iraq”.
“The price of gasoline has soared to a new high- almost as much as our policy in Iraq has cost Americans.”
“The Republicans move to prohibit embryonic stem cell research is wasting American lives: not unlike our mission in Iraq.”
fc: It’s silly, but’s OK by me…
Way irrelevant!
They are. They shouldn’t be allowed to talk about it?
Funny how you think the unelected media should be in complete control of the public debate and not the very folks that the public voted into office.