Submitted by Laura Miller on
"At the request of Congress, the State Department is launching an inquiry into its campaign to polish America's image in Muslim countries over the past two years," PR Week writes.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Five days before the war began in Iraq, Rand Beers resigned his White House job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," Beers told reporter Laura Blumenfeld. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
Victoria "Torie" Clarke is resigning from her position as Department of Defense assistant secretary for public affairs. Clarke says she's leaving her top spot as Pentagon spin doctor for personal reasons.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Derrick Z. Jackson examines the "numbing prattle" from US military officials "about the precision of our weaponry, precaution to avoid needless carnage, and promises to investigate possible mistakes." During the war, officials said pledged investigations into civilian casualties, but are now admitting that the "investigations" were never conducted. A recent Associated Press report counted more than 3,000 civilian deaths.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"President Bush's recent claim that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq highlights two disturbing trends in rhetoric from the White House," observes Bryan Keefer. The first "is the Bush administration's record of factual misstatements and distortions.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"The US army has launched a glossy patriotic magazine to rally its 3rd
Infantry Division, whose troops face hostile action in the badlands of
western Iraq a full two months after Saddam Hussein's ouster," Agence France-Press reports. "Called the 'Liberator', the 16-page in-house publication carries rousing reports from the field to win over homesick troops who might be doubting the rationale for the US presence more than six months after they first arrived
in Kuwait to train for the invasion."
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Journalists and government officials complained last week that the Bush administration has virtually abandoned its public affairs operation in Baghdad," PR Week reports. "Moroccan ambassador Margaret Tutwiler was sent to oversee the operation in April after major hostilities ended. But according to administration sources, she returned to Morocco within a month.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a US invasion of Iraq, said Greg Thielmann, who served as director of the strategic, proliferation, and military issues office in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research during the months before the war. "What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say," said Thielmann. "The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field."
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"While policy makers and analysts in Washington discuss curbing the spread of militant Islam in the abstract, a political struggle between the American military and hard-line Iraqi religious leaders is steadily intensifying in Iraq," reports David Rohde. U.S. Lt. Col. David Haight recently arrested Sheik Jassim al-Saadi, a young Islamic cleric accused of incitement against the U.S. military presence in Iraq. "Across the country, young American military officers are competing with young, politically savvy Shiite and Sunni clerics for popular support," Rohde writes.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Although the U.S. is allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit Iraq briefly, it has rejected calls for the return of United Nations inspectors to Iraq to join in the hunt for alleged weapons of mass destruction, and chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has sharpened his public criticism. In a BBC interview, Blix said he had been disappointed with the tips his office received prior to the war from British and US intelligence. of the information he received prior to the war from British and U.S. intelligence sources.
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