Pentagon Worries About Another Vietnam Syndrome

by Mary

This administration seems to have a proclivity for disinformation, believing that the big lie will always win out over the truth. As we learned earlier this year, Chalabi and his crew were being paid by our government to plant stories in the press to make it look like there were a number of different sources that showed the danger from Saddam and his huge stockpile of WMD. But as usual, when the government believes that lies trump the truth, the problem comes when the wrong people believe the lies.

[D]uring the 80's one of the objections the professional agents had to the intelligence product of Team B was because they would find reports based on the disinformation that had been planted in the foreign press by the CIA.

The CIA analysts, however, knew the charges were bogus partly because they were based on "black" or false propaganda that the CIA's operations division had been planting in the European media.

Today, the LA Times reports that some in the Pentagon are worried that the practice of having uniformed spokesperson giving out disinformation will lead to yet another problem that was part of the Vietnam war.

"Pretty soon, we're going to have the 5 o'clock follies all over again, and it will take us another 30 years to restore our credibility," said a second senior Defense official, referring to the much-ridiculed daily media briefings in Saigon during the Vietnam War.

Based on the Pentagon study that came out recently, hearing that the Iraqis are unhappy with the American occupation, some of the administration nutcases believe that it is because we haven't explained our actions well enough.

"The worst outcome would be to lose this war by default. If the smart folks in the psy-op and civil affairs tents can cast a truthful, persuasive message that resonates with the average Iraqi, why not use the public affairs vehicles to transmit it?" asked Charles A. Krohn, a professor at the University of Michigan and former deputy chief of public affairs for the Army. "What harm is done, compared to what is gained? For the first year of the war, we did virtually nothing to tell the Iraqis why we invaded their country and ejected their government. It's about time we got our act together."

So they continue work to pervert the information so that they can spin their story never quite believing that they won't be able to convince people that their intentions are all good.