Blowback

Broken yesterday by the Los Angeles Times, Knight Ridder and the New York Times have major installments on the story that the Pentagon is paying the Lincoln Group tens of millions of dollars, and Iraqi journalists hundreds of dollars per month, to plant US written and storyboarded propaganda in Iraqi newspapers disguised as journalism. And guess what? The revelations are unpopular with top uniformed US military commanders:

...Military spokesmen in Washington and Baghdad said Wednesday that they had no information on the contract. In an interview from Baghdad on Nov. 18, Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, a military spokesman, said the Pentagon's contract with the Lincoln Group was an attempt to "try to get stories out to publications that normally don't have access to those kind of stories." The military's top commanders, including Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, did not know about the Lincoln Group contract until Wednesday, when it was first described by The Los Angeles Times, said a senior military official who was not authorized to speak publicly.