The U.S. media told the public for weeks that a big, offensive battle was taking place in Marja, in Afghanistan, a "city of 80,000 people" in Helmand province which was also the logistical hub of the Taliban. The description gave the impression that the U.S. presence in Marja was a major strategic objective, and that the city was more important than other district centers in the province. But the picture the military painted of Marja and duly reported by a biddable news media was one of the most dramatic pieces of misinformation so far in the entire war, aimed at hyping the offensive as a big turning point in the conflict. In truth, Marja is not a city or even a town, but either a few groups of farmers' homes or a large farming area encompassing much of the southern Helmand River Valley. The sparsley populated area is completely rural, with no incorporated city or town. The fiction that Marja was a city of 80,000 got started at a briefing given by officials on February 2 at the U.S. Marine base called Camp Leatherneck. Officials referred to Marja as a populous city. The Associated Press put out an article that same day saying they expected up to 1,000 insurgents were "holed up" in the "southern Afghan town of 80,000 people," a statement that evoked a picture of house-to-house, urban street fighting. ABC News perpetuated the myth the next day, in a story that referred to the "city of Marja" and claiming that the city and its surrounding area were "more heavily populated, urban and dense than other places the Marines so far have been able to clear and hold." The rest of the news media fell in line, giving fake descriptions of a densely populated, urban Marja, often using the terms "city" and "town" interchangeably, without fact-checking the descriptions. On February 22, the Washington Post reported that the decision to launch the big offensive against Marja was intended largely to impress U.S. public opinion with the military's effectiveness in Afghanistan by showing that it could achieve a "large and loud victory." The false idea that Marja was a significantly large city center was an essential part of that message.

The private military contractor Blackwater -- which rebranded itself as "Xe" in February, 2009 to distance itself from negative incidents like the September, 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square that killed at least a dozen people -- has created a shell company called "Paravant" to try and keep winning lucrative government military contracts. Both Paravant and Xe are owned by Eric Prince, owner of Blackwater. Paravant won contracts to operate in Afghanistan without identifying its affiliation with Blackwater/Xe to the U.S. government. Paravant has been operating as a subcontractor to global defense contractor Raytheon, but the new name and hidden identity haven't changed Blackwater/Xe/Paravant's behavior. In September, 2008, a Paravant employee signed out more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles from a bunker in Afghanistan that held weapons designated for the Afghan National Police and Army. The employee signed the weapons out using the name "Eric Cartman," the racist, obnoxious character from the cable TV cartoon "South Park." The rifles were signed out even though employees had been denied permission to carry weapons on several occasions. Some of the weapons were still unaccounted for for months afterward. Two days after the rifles were taken from the bunker, a Paravant contractor shot another contractor in the head after his AK-47 accidentally discharged.

The Campaign for a U.S.-Afghanistan Partnership is being exposed as an insidious pro-war front group. Aram Roston reports in the The Nation magazine that "As President Obama prepares a massive military buildup in Afghanistan, a House subcommittee has launched an investigation into whether Defense Department contractors are paying off the Taliban to protect American supply lines. ... One of the contractors under investigation is NCL Holdings, a U.S. firm headed by Hamed Wardak, the Afghan-American son of Afghanistan's defense minister, General Abdul Rahim Wardak. ... Parallel to his business ventures, he's been running an aggressive foreign policy campaign in Washington to keep the U.S. heavily vested in Afghanistan. A confidential lobbying memo obtained by The Nation shows that Wardak commissioned a blue-chip lobbying firm to push for an extended U.S. presence in Afghanistan -- a potentially lucrative outcome for NCL. Earlier this year Patton Boggs LLP, Washington's most monied lobbying firm, established a nonprofit front group (Campaign for a U.S. - Afghanistan Partnership) on Wardak's behalf to act as the 'face' of a campaign for increased US engagement in Afghanistan, according to confidential legal records." Blogger Steve Hynd first reported critically on this front group in a posting on October 29, 2009.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently released updated figures for the number of civilian contractors killed in American war zones since September 1, 2001. A minimum of 1,688 civilians have died, and there have been over 37,000 injuries reported among people working for U.S. contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan -- but the DOL acknowledges that the report is incomplete. Civilian contractors make up about half the total U.S. forces in war zones, but the Government Accountability Office quietly issued a report last week that said the Pentagon still hasn't implemented a Congressional order to track fatalities among U.S. contractors. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the State Department or the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) can give an accurate figure of how many contractors are employed, or how many have been injured or killed. A contracting officer at the State Department said there was no need to track local Iraqi hires, even though statutory language exists to the contrary. The bottom line is that nine years into the most contractor-intense war in U.S. history, no one can say for sure how many contractors are working for the U.S. in the war zones, what they are doing, or how many of them have been killed or wounded.

General Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. military and NATO commander in Afghanistan, wants to change strategic communications goals there from a "struggle for the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan population to one of giving them 'trust and confidence'" in their government and their future. He also wants to focus on exposing insurgents' "flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran," which is already a talking point for U.S. military-funded public relations contracts in Afghanistan. The Washington Post notes that "McChrystal's approach mirrors one that U.S. intelligence operatives are taking covertly, with some success, in the Middle East, where direct and indirect support is being given to Islamic leaders who speak out against terrorists." In his assessment (pdf) of the situation in Afghanistan, McChrystal also stressed the importance of cultivating third party advocates -- "getting 'authoritative figures' such as religious leaders and tribal elders to deliver the messages 'so that they are credible.'"

The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that the Pentagon was using one of its favorite public relations firms, the Rendon Group, to produce profiles of reporters requesting to embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan; that the profiles graded reporters' past coverage as "positive," "neutral" or "negative," sometimes suggesting how to "neutralize" expected negative coverage or how to design embeds to "result in favorable coverage"; and that, in some cases, the profiles prompted military officials to reject reporters' embed requests. After the series of exposes, the Pentagon announced that it was terminating the Rendon contract. Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith told Stars and Stripes, "As the senior U.S. communicator in Afghanistan, it was clear that the issue of Rendon's support to US forces in Afghanistan had become a distraction." In a statement on the firm's site, Rendon maintains that its profiles did not rank reporters, and weren't "provided as the basis for accepted or rejecting a specific journalist's inquiries." The statement doesn't mention that the profiles suggested how to shape reporters' future coverage. Rendon is infamous for organizing the pro-regime change Iraqi National Congress and has also worked in Colombia, Haiti, Kosovo and Zimbabwe.

"Our immediate neighbors Pakistan, India, and China are contracting over a dozen prominent lobbyists. ... In addition, these countries have employed public relations firms before and amid political events to lobby for more specific agendas," reads a confidential memo (pdf) from Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, Said Tayeb Jawad, to the country's finance minister. Ambassador Jawad requests "annual funding that is at least roughly one tenth of what Pakistan spends on lobbying in Washington." In 2002, DLA Piper began donating lobbying services to Afghanistan. Five years later, the firm "negotiated a small monthly retainer of $10,000, but even that has been a stretch for the embassy," reports Mother Jones. Ambassador Jawad told the magazine that the Afghan government "doesn't know exactly how Washington operates... They ask, 'Is this legal, to buy influence?' Yes, everybody's doing it!" In the memo, Jawad lists Pakistan's and India's present and past lobbying firms, along with "additional lobbying vehicles" such as the U.S.-India Political Action Committee.

"In recent months, the U.S. command in Afghanistan has begun publicizing every single enemy fighter killed in combat, the most detailed body counts the military has released since the practice fell into disrepute during the Vietnam War," reports the Wall Street Journal. The change comes in response to concerns "that at home, the common perception is this war is being lost," explained a military spokeswoman. Enemy body counts are only released for U.S. troops separate from the NATO-led forces, as European nations feel that publicizing deaths "would prove politically unpalatable at home and counterproductive in Afghanistan." In addition to making "it harder for insurgents to credibly claim victory," the U.S. military says releasing body counts will also help "debunk ... enemy propaganda" over civilian casualties. Afghan officials, local human rights organizations and U.S. military personnel often disagree over how many civilians have been killed by military operations, leading to "public-relations chaos."

Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill sees the liberal Center for American Progress teaming up with leading neoconservatives and going to bat for Barack Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan. On April 3 CAP hosted a forum titled A New Way Forward in Afghanistan to release their report Sustainable Security in Afghanistan. Scahill notes the event includes "a leading neoconservative activist, Frederick Kagan, one of the lead proponents of the 'surge' in Iraq. In addition to being a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, which was basically Dick Cheney's bunker away from the bunker in the 1990s, Kagan was also a major figure in advocating the agenda of the neocon-Project for the New American Century, which molded the Bush administration's conquistador foreign policy. Kagan's brother Robert Kagan along with William Kristol started a new version of PNAC a few weeks ago, called The Foreign Policy Initiative. Another key figure in the group is Dan Senor (who is married to CNN's Campbell Brown), formerly L. Paul Bremer's righthand in Iraq."

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) turns 60 and some ask why the Cold War alliance still exists, NATO is launching new media and public relations efforts. The NewsMarket, an online source of b-roll and video news release footage, is providing NATO-produced videos to journalists. Not surprisingly, given Barack Obama's controversial plans to increase troops in Afghanistan, the NATO / NewsMarket channel features videos on "mentoring the Afghan Army" and "taking the fight to the Taliban," along with an interview of U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones, a proponent of NATO expansion. "NATO Public Diplomacy Division has developed a comprehensive strategy to engage with young audiences," according to the NATO / NewsMarket press release. NATO's youth outreach includes an "Internet TV" channel and "unconventional advertisement videos" posted to YouTube. NATO spent 500,000 Euros (U.S.$666,000) on the videos, which use the slogan "Peace and security. That's our mission."