Military Defends Paying Iraqi Newspapers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday expressed concern about the U.S. military secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles, but the military said it was important to spread the truth while insurgents were "lying to the Iraqi people."

Here is a tempest in a teapot. oh yeah the Democrats are all wigged out that a newspaper go paid to print an article. In a war zone, in a foreign press, when the enemy has a major media outlet in Al Jazeera what would you do? In W.W.II Hollywood made propaganda films by the pallet load, and that was a good thing.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, was asked during a briefing in Baghdad whether paying off Iraqi news organizations to run pro-American stories undermines the credibility of the U.S. military and of the new Iraqi media

"We don't lie. We don't need to lie. We do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public, but everything we do is based on fact not based on fiction," Lynch said.

Lynch did not explicitly confirm the practice of paying newspapers to run pro-American articles, first reported on Wednesday by The Los Angeles Times, but other officials did confirm it. The Times also reported that the military had bought an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station to disseminate pro-American views.

This is the point. Al Qeada spews its bile and views its horrors on AlJjazeera so we put the truth out as a balance. It's part of a sound strategy in winning the war on terror. As far as buying a newspaper and radio station, has anyone forgotten Radio Free Europe? This is not new nor is it rocket science. The complaints and hand wringing comes from the no shame and crocodile tears. The perfidious nature of this revelation is what should be the issue. There is an effort to knock the legs out from under every success in Iraq. Some one needs to take names and deal out wood shampoos.

Breakfast with Basil
The Captian disagrees