Last Throes

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum questions the timing of the recent reports:

"On Wednesday, Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi of the Los Angeles Times broke a story about the U.S. military secretly writing stories and having them planted in the Iraqi media with the help of a consulting outfit called the Lincoln Group.

"A few hours later Knight Ridder posted a story by Jonathan Landay that covered the same ground and added that "U.S. psychological-warfare officers have been involved in writing news releases and drafting media strategies for top commanders."

"Thursday, Jeff Gerth and Scott Shane of the New York Times chimed in. They made it clear that they had been chasing this story on their own before the LA Times printed it.

"All of these articles are the product of weeks of research, and it's not just coincidence that all of these reporters have been working on the exact same story. Somebody's been trying to get the word out about this. Somebody who's not very happy with this program. But who?"

Andrew Sullivan defends the tactic but says it's dumb anyway:

"The only problem with this scheme, it seems to me, is not that it's somehow unethical to use propaganda in wartime. . . . This is war, as some people still refuse to understand. The problem is that media is now global, the free citizens of Iraq can access information from almost anywhere on earth, and these stories will leak and backfire."

The Pentagon program gets no such pass from Mark Jurkowitz of the Boston Phoenix:

"Now, some of the posters on this blog -- taking what I guess we would call a relativistic, pragmatic, wordly view -- seem to see nothing fundamentally wrong with an effort to plant stories with hidden motives and disguised authors in the Iraqi media. Maybe if I were a neocon war planner in Dick Cheney's office, I'd agree. The problem is I'm a journalist. And watching my country pervert my profession (which has enough problems of its own making, by the way) in this manner is disgusting. On the other hand, it's not surprising for an administration that has tried its share of bought-and-paid-for bogus journalism right here at home. (Hello Armstrong Williams and the video news releases.)"

I did wonder whether this was the administration's fantasy for the home front. (I'm Karen Ryan, reporting!)

Slate's John Dickerson deconstructs the latest Iraq move by Kerry, almost like it's 2004 all over again:

"Responding to the president's Wednesday speech on the war, Sen. John Kerry charged that George Bush didn't understand a fundamental reality on the ground in Iraq: that the presence of U.S. troops itself fuels the insurgency. Even Bush's top officer overseeing operations, Army Gen. George W. Casey, has testified to this and yet, Kerry charges, the president is oblivious.