Good for Sen. Feingold
From Feingold’s letter:
According to the article, the documents suggest that the Pentagon supplied retired officers serving as analysts for several major American broadcasters with private briefings with Sec. Rumsfeld, talking points in anticipation of appearing on TV, and commercial airfare. Allegedly, the Pentagon discouraged the analysts from publicly describing the nature of their relationship with the Pentagon. This clearly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
Feingold wants the GAO’s “legal views as to whether the Department of Defense violated appropriations prohibitions on publicity or propaganda activities.”
Full letter here.
Go for it and investigate it to the fullest. This was an outrageous con game played by military men and the Pentagon looking for payoffs as well as selling a war to America.
No Trackbacks To “Feingold questions legality of Propaganda Program“
Wake up America . . . this isn’t America anymore and hasn’t been in quite some time. Oh that’s right, most of you don’t give a damn. Oh well. So much for the “Great Experiment”.
Im movin to dubai..
Murikans need t’understand dat I’m da d’cider.
An investigation? The pentagon must be really worried now. :P
I wonder how far that will go? In a week the only info you’ll be able to find on it are the original articles because faux will be busy flooding the airwaves with further ‘wrightisms’. You know, because they’re so concerned about providing relevant commentary about issues.
Where’s the collective spine of these retired military brassario? They were lied to and told to go pedal the muck. They’ve got to be pissed.
what we are forgetting here is the talking points flow to the editors and journalists as well.
In an interview with Rumsfeld, Stephanoplis made a reference to Rummy advocating the invasion of Iraq. Rummy replied “Come on George you know better than that!”
I always felt that was an indication of the agreements that are made with the journalist about what is to be said and what is not to be mentioned on air or during an interview.
We shouldn’t be so surprised. CNNBCBBCABCFOX are pure talking points, if not for politics, then for corporations.
What grates on me is that the sheeple who watched those analysts believed everything they said, were happy with what they heard, but are probably not following whats emerging now. They will continue believing that the war is good and we are winning. After all, it’s much easier than coming to grips with your own government going through convolution after convolution to screw you over.
Its all play-back these days as the powers that be just tell people what they want to hear because they need us calm and quiet. They have a very real fear that the people will storm the whitehouse and drag those fuckers out into the street and skin them alive.
Personally, I think the people who should be skinned alive are the banking families and their subsidiary cartels- then the whitehouse fucksticks.
I wonder just how long and how much we are going to take of this bullshit.
Scy @ 1:
How very true and how sad that we have given away so much for so little in return.
Folks, you have got to see this Youtube clip. in this clip James carville, george Stephanopoulos and Cliinton Advisor Mickey Kantor talk about folks in Indiana ( Indianans “Shit”, “Worthless White N*rs”), this is awesome.. Watch the clip….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN_nQOHj__s
obama feingold 2008
ak @ 10:
No thanks.
It’s been posted around but I’m not interested. I’m well aware of the type. They’re called ‘politicians’.
marko @ 11:
I second this motion
Great! Another investigation where every will say, “Yeah, this was wrong and totally innapropriate…in fact, it’s veven damned illegal!!!! But, we won’t do anything or hold anyone accountable…so f*ck you, America! We’ve got your oversight right here!!!!”
(The Bush administration and the Pentagon, joined by GOP members of Congress, then gather outside on the lawn of the Capital, grab their junk through their pants and shake it at America!)
YourMom @ 13:
I do too… thought I’d rather see Russ as the Senate Majority Leader.
well if we can have our druthers i,ll take kucinich ,edwards 08!!!!
Investigate? About three hundred million of us should storm the goddamn gates!
++++
Once again, Feingold shows why he’s one of America’s best assets in the US Senate.
Coup Coup Kachoo!
We are run by the military and warhawks and have been. All laws as we knew them have been tossed out the window because “we’re at war!”. And no one wants to let go of their war time power.
Feingold wants the GAO’s “legal views as to whether the Department of Defense violated appropriations prohibitions”
Legal views? We don’t need no stinking LEGAL VIEWS!
We are BushCo. We make reality and rule the world.
They don’t even let the US government’s international broadcaster the Voice of America (VOA) to broadcast within the United States. Before the intertoobz you had to have a shortwave radio and pick up signals reflected back from their SC transmitter or from overseas.
But hire a bunch of cronies to sell a war to the American public? Calling the Creel Commission!!
Arizona @ 18:
Why is that? Because he points out the dreadfully obvious, yet nothing is EVER done about it? Sounds like he accomplishes little telling the media what everyone already knows.
It is long past time we got rid of a bunch of these federal jackass groups who think they are above the law,cia,nsa and about 100 other packs of shitfaces. tomjs@17 Thats more than likely what its going to take!—-CEO, have handcuffs,will travel.
Feingold rules!
Hopefully the left and the citizens in general arew learning that this propaganda from both ends of the microphone is the modern playing field. We need to move on from Whaa Fix News is at it again. How could they. Time to immobilize Fix or reconstruct the playing field to counter the Fox operation. The blogs are doing a good job. Still there is much more to do.
The politicians can be doing a way better job at constructing a proper framework around the fix news machine. Need to figure a way for the minority 20 percent not to have 90% of the voice.
It is necessary legal pro forma. Someone with the authority to rule it legal or not must do so.
With a cast of characters the likes of the Bush crime family, this is an uphill battle.
Mayhap this will start the house cards a’tumblin!
liberalHUSSEINmoderation @ 26:
dammit! house OF cards!
Let me tell you how Pelosi, Reid, et. al FAILED as a congress. Or rather let me ask you, why did they not, from the first 100 days on, begin holding tenacious hearings on war profiteering? Did they think it would divide the country for us to know where our tax money was going? They should have been following the money from day one, and I’ll tell you we probably would have known about this little scheme months earlier. They would have discredited the neocons by following the money, the pres and his minister of vice if they had followed the money, would probably have had enough muscle for timetables tied to funding squeak through the senate if they had followed the money, they’d probably be bringing up a few indictments by now including some in the pentagon and the justice dept….
Overall that has been their absolute biggest failure, simply not making clear where the money has gone. One more question. Why not? I bet it’s because too many of them, like Diane Feinstein, are likely complicit in the money grabs.
The awesome thing, that people know little about, is that at any time, we feel our government is being ran in a tyrannical fashion, we do have the right to over throw it. Time to use our constitution to its fullest before we let other nutters completely abolish our given rights as citizens to be the deciders.
ak @ 10:
Jesus H Hockeysticks - this is a clip from 1992! Relevance to today????? It’s not like Kantor is advising Shillary.
we need to shake this notion that this is something different than what was happened for decades in america.
yes, this is a new tactic, but the use of grey propaganda on the american public is nothing new. and, it seems, that with every new administration there is, once again, shock that *gasp* we are lied to on a regular basis.
the pentagon, and the media, deserve our total lack of trust. they assert something, assume the opposite is true.
that said, feingold is one of the very best we have. and any effort he can make to charge these fucks with a crime the better. that might be one way to curtail the regular lies emanating from the govt, that is supposed to be ‘for the people’
As I have said before,
America will not heal unless there are trials and prosecutions for the crimes committed against it’s people.
If that doesn’t happen, we will continue on as an Autocracy with our right eroded no matter what party is in the Oval Office. Powers are not given up easily once they have been enjoyed. We either heal or we heel.
CEO,citizens,eyes,open @ 23:
Good Luck!
There’s a nice warm bed waiting for you in Guantanamo.
I have never been so depressed about our country then I am now. All scandals in the past cant measure up to this President and his henchmen. We are the laughing stocks of the world, that fact that he was reelected still boggles me. The criminality of our government is to awful to bear. I wish I could(like many other Americans) stick my head in the sand and black out everything, but I cant. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.
liberalHUSSEINmoderation @ 27:
LOL … House Cards sounds like a fixed game … so your correct both ways.
No one in the MIC makes any money without a Bogeyman.
Dr. Acula @ 30:
About as relevant as Obama sitting in church for twenty years or the weather underground of twenty years ago. But what is relevant is the way the bush thugs have taken this country to the edge of a pure dictatorship.
ak @ 10:
P.D. @ 34:
Watching the daily news grinding out in horror is hard work.
John Amato correctly notes that “This was an outrageous con game played by military men.” This is true as far as it goes. But what has gone unnoticed and is equally outrageous is the fact that there have been no anti-war activists on television, where so many Americans receive their news, who would easily demolish the lies that were and are put forth by these military “experts.” Even that quasi liberal Keith Olbermann rarely sees fit to have any anti-war voices on his program while allowing people like Colonel Jack Jacobs and General Barry McCaffrey to utter their propaganda unchallenged. This happened before the buildup to the war and, amazingly, it is still happening today on the corporate airwaves. Thankfully, there is an alternative source to be found and that is Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.
And the CORPORATE / REPIGLICAN/ GOVERNMENT MEDIA = MAFIA repression of this continues .. but hey THE CORPORATE PIMP CALLED BRIAN WILLIAMS AND THE REST OF THEM ARE STILL MAKING THEIR MILLIONS ….
Here’s a nice read:
http://uspolitics.about.com/od.....aganda.htm
I think our country needs to strengthen laws against lying/propaganda against it’s citizens. See also The Smith-Mundt Act.
Fiengold/Obama
If I hear about Obama and Hillary again, I’m going to scream! I have been reduced to watching reruns of Malcom in the middle and King of the Hill. The rehashing of the polls and election coverage have been mind-numbing. God, save us from MSM!
We’re still the biggest and most inefficient and wasteful GLUTTONS on earth.
We put a whole recycle bin a week out front with junk mail and catalogs we never even open or look at.
You can’t even get them to STOP. They just keep on sending it.
See, ex military *are* encouraged (and paid) to speak out on the war - as long as they’re delivering the government’s message.
I agree with those who think that nothing will ever be done about this.
Talk about whoring. These retired military pricks are an embarassment to their uniforms. Anyone with a once of military knowledge, experience or has read up a little on military history KNEW the Iraq clusterfuck was bound to fail. Yet these bastards went on TV and lied for the government. They deserve to be arrested, indicted and convicted for their deeds.
But, of course, that won’t happen.
L.A. Confidential @ 44:
Send them back, postage due.
It works… so I’ve heard.
MargeAggedon @ 48:
Yeah but the problem still is . . We’re still the biggest and most inefficient and wasteful GLUTTONS on earth.
Determined to make the World our Slave Laborers and Natural Resource providers to keep it up.
Scy @ 1:
Amen to that.Fiengold`s letter may be letter is right on the money,but this administration pays no attention to operating within the law.What will happen? Nothing substantial, nothing at all..
Sen Feingold:
If you wont even CONSIDER impeachment, then dont even bother with all this peripheral medial crap. You’re just showboating.