{"id":2305,"date":"2007-08-24T05:41:48","date_gmt":"2007-08-24T10:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2007-08-24T20:36:50","modified_gmt":"2007-08-25T01:36:50","slug":"the-congress-and-media-of-freedom-doesnt-come-cheap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2305","title":{"rendered":"The Agencies of Freedom Don’t Come Cheap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pro-war group spends millions on ad campaign<\/strong>
\n By Jackie Kucinich, The Hill, 22 August 2007<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A new group formed to pressure members of Congress to continue supporting U.S. military efforts in Iraq launched a $7 million ad campaign Wednesday that mostly targets members of both parties who have voted or spoken out against continued operations in that country.<\/p>\n

Freedom Watch, which counts former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer among its supporters, is targeting several Republicans who are deemed vulnerable in 2008, including Reps. Heather Wilson (N.M.), Jon Porter (Nev.) and Jim Gerlach (Pa.).<\/p>\n

The group says it is “dedicated to fighting to protect the ideals and issues that keep America strong and prosperous” and wants to refocus the Iraq debate on the threat to U.S. security.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Update: See Justin Raimondo’s column, Home Front ‘Surge<\/a>‘<\/strong>)<\/p>\n

(Update): The Empire Knows No Parties, Only ‘The Party’
\nDaniel McAdams, LewRockwell.com, 21 August 2007<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I had a sense that I was on to something in my last post about how The Party was shifting against Iraqi elected Prime Minister al-Maliki and in favor of previously appointed prime minister Allawi (advocating a tougher stance against Syria and Iran), but I had no idea how right I was.<\/p>\n

Turns out I was sent this morning in my official capacity as a foreign affairs advisor to a Member of Congress, a copy of Allawi’s op-ed in the Washington Post along with, conveniently, a copy of the article outlining Senator Levin’s determination to unseat the current elected Prime Minister of Iraq by — wait for it — a public relations firm called “Barbour Griffith & Rogers, LLC.” Hmmm, Barbour: didn’t he have something to do with the RNC? And I see my old friend Stephen Rademaker formerly of the House International Relations Committee is now a vice president in this firm as is — whoa! — Philip D. Zelikow, Ph.D., who was “Counselor to the U.S. Department of State in December 2006 after serving in that position since February 2005. Before that appointment, Dr. Zelikow served as the Executive Director of the 9\/11 Commission… He has been a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.”<\/p>\n

This is serious semi-Inner Party stuff! [Read more<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maliki’s New Street Cred<\/strong>
\n Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com Blog, 22 August 2007<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As I said in my Monday column<\/a>, it’s all about what Seymour Hersh calls “the redirection<\/a>.” The new enemy is Iran, and that means the Shi’ite government we installed in power is now being treated as an Iranian proxy – or, at least, an ally of Tehran. Levin’s call for Maliki’s ouster, apparently on behalf of the Allawi lobby<\/a> in Washington, is congruent with Hillary Clinton’s recent statement<\/a> endorsing the alliance with Sunni insurgents in Anbar and Diyala provinces, and averring that “We have to be preparing to fight the new war.”<\/p>\n

Ah yes, the new war. That’s what the people voted for<\/a> in the last congressional elections – or is my memory playing tricks on me?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Christina Davidson\/Iraq Slogger<\/strong> has posted documentary evidence<\/a> of Allawi’s contract with Barbour, Griffith, & Rogers (BGR).<\/p>\n

And from ThinkProgress<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Petraeus’ September Report Will Be Written By The White House<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times reports<\/a> that Gen. David Petraeus’ upcoming Sept. 15 report on Iraq will be authored by the White House:<\/p>\n

“Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House<\/strong>, with inputs from officials throughout the government.<\/em><\/p>\n

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, the Sept. 15 report promises to be much like the July mid-term report which purported to show “satisfactory performance on 8 of the 18 benchmarks<\/a>.” A closer look into those claims revealed that the progress was purely White House spin<\/a>. Yet, the report accomplished its primary objective of producing media reports which suggested that the overall picture in Iraq was “mixed.”<\/p>\n

The White House has repeatedly employed Petraeus as a PR flack<\/a>, using him to promote failing Iraq policies<\/a> and the war czar nomination<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pro-war group spends millions on ad campaign By Jackie Kucinich, The Hill, 22 August 2007 A new group formed to pressure members of Congress to continue supporting U.S. military efforts in Iraq launched a $7 million ad campaign Wednesday that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-Bb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}