Don't Tell The Lincoln Group About This ...

Oh boy, I smell trouble ...

The Wired's Danger Room had this yesterday;

Military Report: Secretly 'Recruit or Hire Bloggers'

A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers."

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," write the report's co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.

And this;

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence…to pass the U.S. message. … On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog.

Don't the different branches of the Bush Grindhouse talk to each other?

Someone ought to wake up these military people, as what they are proposing is already in place.

It's called Fox News.

Along with those like Matt Sludge, Michelle "Stalkin" Malkin, Dennis Miller, Ann Coulter and a whole bevy of other Right Wing, Freakshow bloggers and pundits who echo Fox News, simply recite the Bush Grindhouse talking points, or just make up their own stories.

And there's The Lincoln Group.

You remember them, don't you? ... The propaganda company the Pentagon hired to plant pro-USA stories in the Iraqi newspapers and media?

Is this a turf fight in-the-making?

Will the propaganda pro's have to compete against the pajama-clad, basement dwellers?

Holy Baghdad Bob, what a bubbling bruhaha, Batman!

Wait a minute!

How do we know this story, this study, isn't a planted piece?

Yikes!

They're trying to flush something out .... Or maybe, its to see how many of the previously-referenced Right Wing, Freakshow bloggers and pundits raise their hands, salivating at the opportunity to start shoveling it for the government.

Cuts down on the recruiting costs, I suppose.


Bonus Spiked Media Riffs

The Carpetbagger Report: The military plan to ‘clandestinely’ put bloggers on the payroll

Jeff Fecke/Shakesville: Working Undercover for the Man

When A Michelle Malkin Quits The O'Reilly Factor, And No One is Around To Hear it, Does It Make A Sound?

White House "Embarrassed"; Bush Victory Strategy Speech Written By PR Agency; Gave President Wrong Folder; Iraqi Newspaper Prints Slams Against Murtha, Kerry, Pelosi

Rumsfeld Blames Contractor, If Media Plant Stories True, But Defends Outsourcing Program; Says "Still Gathering Facts"; If It Turns Out Positive, Will Be Adopted Into New 'National Victory Strategy' Plan

Secretary Says No Reflection That We Don't Know What's Going On; More Bush Troubles As Rice Backtracks, Corrects Comments, Blames Lincoln Group; Meant To Say Was Surprised Levees Breached, Not By Hamas Election Victory; Backs Pace That There's No Civil War

Leave It to Rumsfeld ... There's Not Enough Lying Going On!

What cosmic forces came together, what asteroid-sized dice rolled a seven, to have former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld come out - the day a quantified and detailed report was released (and with a searchable database) on laying out the Bush Grindhouse's documented lying - and make a call for a new, U.S. Propaganda Agency, ostensibly, to win the hearts and minds of people who, presently, don't like us very much?

You can't just let stuff happen, you have to make stuff happen.

From Wired's "Rummy Resurfaces, Calls for U.S. Propaganda Agency";

Private media does not get up in the morning and say what can we do to promote the values and ideas that the free Western nations believe in? It gets up in the morning and says they're going to try to make money by selling whatever they sell... The way they decided to do that is to be dramatic and if it bleeds it leads is the common statement in the media today. They've got their job, and they have to do that, and that's what they do.

We need someone in the United States government, some entity, not like the old USIA . . . I think this agency, a new agency has to be something that would take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that exist today. There are multiple channels for information . . . The Internet is there, pods are there, talk radio is there, e-mails are there. There are all kinds of opportunities. We do not with any systematic organized way attempt to engage the battle of ideas and talk about the idea of beheading, and what's it's about and what it means. And talk about the fact that people are killing more Muslims than they are non-Muslims, these extremists. They're doing it with suicide bombs and the like. We need to engage and not simply be passive and allow that battle of competition of ideas."

Notice how effortlessly, how easy, how endemic it is for these Neocons to include the fearmongering in their speech. Here, much like the continuous thread of the Bush Grindhouse, if we don't engage in a propaganda program, terrorists are going to come and kills us.

Ol' Snowflakes doesn't, necessarily, distinguish how this will be different, from the propaganda machine he manned from the Pentagon during his reign of terror ... Or, how it is different from the on-going operation out of the Bush Grindhouse

Rumsfeld was one of the featured speakers yesterday, at the Network Centric Warfare 2008, sponsored by a handful of mega-corporations, many, no doubt, that have a vested interest in ramping up the warfare propaganda, the better to curry fat contracts if the volume is amped up.

I'm sure, the shadow, play government that he and fellow weekend warrior, Vice President Dick Cheney, operate already have a fully-functional Propaganda Agency up-and-running, no doubt, capable of seamlessly turning into our official, working Propaganda Agency.

So many logistics to work out.

Would this compete with, or augment, the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and White House Iraq and Iran Group (WHIIG)?

When will this be launched - August is out, per the razor-sharp thinking of Andy Card?

Hmmm ... Maybe Rumsfeld's wishful, and wistful, statement, is a ruse? Maybe it's already in action and Rumsfeld is just out there to throw people off the scent?

This project, shamelessly, but certainly, could be something that would come out of a Rumsfeld-styled propaganda agency

Sigh ... You know what they say ... You have to go to war with the propaganda you have, not the propaganda you might want or wish to have at a later time ...


Bonus Rumsfeld Ramblings

Rumsfeld Blames Contractor, If Media Plant Stories True, But Defends Outsourcing Program; Says "Still Gathering Facts"; If It Turns Out Positive, Will Be Adopted Into New 'National Victory Strategy' Plan

“They’re coming here for the American experience”; Rumsfeld Weighs In On Immigration Battle; Won’t Tie It To War With Iran Suggests Army Recruiting Woes Could Be Solved With Mandatory Service By Illegal Aliens

Top Ten Cloves: What Would Be Different If Rumsfeld Was A Dog, But Still Secretary of Defense