This is truly bizarre:
The sheets of paper seemed to be everywhere the lawmakers went in the Green Zone, distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank. So when Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) asked a soldier last weekend just what he was holding, the congressman was taken aback to find out.
In the soldier’s hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen’s meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. “Moran on Iraq policy,” read one section, going on to cite some the congressman’s most incendiary statements, such as, “This has been the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history.”
The bio of Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.) — “TAU (rhymes with ‘now’)-sher,” the bio helpfully relates — was no less pointed, even if she once supported the war and has taken heat from liberal Bay Area constituents who remain wary of her position. “Our forces are caught in the middle of an escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq, with no end in sight,” the bio quotes.
It has been a while since I was in an Active Duty unit, and I recognize that things have changed, but this is completely different from my experiences. When we had VIP visits, there were several things that were always the same:
1.) We stopped doing things the way we did them, and instead did them the way we are ‘supposed’ to do them.
2.) VIP visits were generally disruptive, a pain in the ass, and meant more work.
3.) No one ever knew who the VIP was. Ever. It was always somebody important from somewhere, but we didn’t know and we generally didn’t care and it generally didn’t matter. Unless it was a General. THEY matter. Generals and Sergeant Majors (or is it Sergeants Major- I forget) are forces to be reckoned with (think Hurricane Katrina in camo).
The idea that soldiers would be given bio sheets of VIPS, thus separating the “sympathetic” VIPs and the “hostile” VIPs is not an experience I ever had, and only reinforces my perception that everything we get from Iraq is being massaged. It probably goes without saying that this is a colossal waste of military manpower when they should be doing more important things.
Person of Choler
“…more important things”? Like giving up and going home?
rachel
The Bushites politicized everything else against the democrats, so why did you think they’d leave the armed forces out?
Zifnab
I can’t help but wonder what the soldiers think, reading over this stuff. Do they turn actively hostile towards the VIPs? Do they cheer and ask for a ride home? At this stage of the war, this deep in the military, I don’t know what I’d think. It’s not like the military hasn’t strangled off mil-blogs and other avenues of communication that they can’t effectively brainwash active duty soldiers with “Democrats are worse! Democrats are rooting for the terrorists!” rhetoric.
If the Bush Administration wasn’t so ham-handedly incompetent, I’d say we would be in serious trouble well past Jan ’09. As it stands, this sort of crass politicization probably pisses off as many soldiers as it “enlightens”, but I don’t know.
Mr Furious
What kind of liberal pansy-ass military were you in, John? the French Foreign Legion? A real man’s army gets issued talking points along with ammo…
Rudi
This fits in with the Reardon Groupthe Pentagons and this administrations propaganda war within this war. Remember that Ed Schultz(progressive/liberal radio) was blocked from being heard on Armed Forces Radio(I think it’s this network), while Hannity and Rush Limpbaugh were heard.
The Other Steve
Ahh, the Emerald City in all it’s glory.
Cyrus
I get that your general point is that a disturbing change for the worse, but “they should be doing more important things” seems way the fuck down the list of problems with this.
demimondian
What’s the point of priming soldiers with talking points? I don’t see how that would change anything about the way the soldiers behaved.
glasnost
Frankly, this is reprehensible behavior of the greatest possible magnitude. It’s shocking.
myiq2xu
We used to joke that “If the Army wanted you to have an opinion they would issue you one.”
I guess it ain’t a joke no more.
Tractarian
Nothing in the quoted sections of the “rap sheets” seems to me to be “incendiary” – Moran and Tauscher were simply telling the truth about the situation. They, unfortunately, are playing right into the media trap by objecting to the military distributing these comments. By objecting, they appear to be saying “we don’t want the troops to see what we said” when in fact they should be proud of what they said.
That said, this passage combined with the Craig affair confirms my belief that reality is now being authored by second-rate comedians:
Tom Hilton
Yeah, I posted about that bit. Unbe-fucking-lievable.
As of today, “at least they had electricity” becomes my standard response to every catastrophic clusterfuck that comes my way.
Darkwater
Actually, from what I’ve seen, distribution of VIP’s official biographies within the DoD occurs regularly. Of course, one’s official biography doesn’t include talking points on current policies, but is an actual short-form, bullet-list biography.
rawshark
Mr. McGoo can’t be trusted. Listen to the wind.
Rome Again
Watching children’s cartoons is monitoring the world? Who knew?
Rome Again
According to Think Progress, the votes of these VIPs were misrepresented, citing that the latest vote of Tauscher and Moran on the Iraq war were against the war when they were not.
Marion Cunningham
The issue isn’t that the quotes weren’t valid, but that they were cherry-picked.
The Dem congressmen had their most recent anti-iraq quotes listed–leaving all of their pro-iraq quotes off of the charts.
In addition, these bio’s were not the ones provided by the congressmen themselves.
Tom Hilton
Monitoring the world…as Republicans understand it.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Stop the presses! A Washington Post reporter sticks to reporting things he is qualified to report on — what’s going on inside the Green Zone. Let’s hope this is a trend. It beats reporting on the joint Sunni-Shia non-violence fatwa that Big Media is being so hush-hush about.
As far as the story goes, some bios get made (by somebody, but the reporter doesn’t find out who) and distributed (by somebody, but the reporter doesn’t find out who), containing quotes on the war effort from each pol on the trip. Hmmmm, I can narrow the source down to anyone in Iraq with access to the internet.
Meanwhile, an “American” in the Green Zone (apparently not a soldier, presumably not a tourist — a fellow journo, perhaps?) is “whisked away” away from the Congressmen as he “urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort” (ooooh, a reporter AND a psychic!).
There’s another Pulitzer for the Post!
Jim
Yet another reason, among so many others, why you simply can not believe anything, ANYTHING, that comes out of this administration. It is all about spin, and political gain. Ironically, I don’t think they realize that efforts like this, rather than bolstering support for the war, actually undermine it by destroying whatever credibility they might have.
Tom Hilton
Hmmm…I’m not sure the article Protein Wisdom linked to actually says what you seem to think it means. From the quoted section:
So, to sum up: Al-Jazeera, French newspapers, and the left-leaning Guardian are all more reliable on Iraq than the Gringolandian press, which depends heavily on official U.S. sources. That is what you intended to say, isn’t it?
Cassidy
Sergeants Major
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
It doesn’t say that they are necessarily more reliable — it only indicates they might actually see the stuff that they write about. You can’t factor out editorial bias, of course.
But the fact that the few American journos in Iraq hole up in the Green Zone with Al Jazeera TV, a cellphone and the internet (then go directly to their Narrative), knowing full well that they “only know 1% of what’s going on in Iraq,” is shocking. I think APs tag line on every Iraq story should read, “We only know 1% of what’s going on!”
Psycheout
If the liberal media only knows 1% of what’s going on, the other 99% must be good!
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Fixed. Sorry I can’t do anything, ANYTHING, about your BDS. Heh.
I mean, if a Washington Post reporter won’t say the bios came from the Administration, then it didn’t come from the Administration. Agreed?
And what’s the harm in allowing the soldiers to inform the Congressmen about the realities on the ground, in relation to those comments with which the soldiers might disagree? Are the pols that thin-skinned? Call it a “teachable moment.”
DougJ
Odd? Where have you been the last 6 years? I’d be surprised if they weren’t doing this.
This is par for the course.
Jason Van Steenwyk
So quoting them accurately is “sliming” them?
What pussies.
Punchy
So on your next job application, we’ll just leave off your diploma and extensive work experience, and only list your 4-years ago arrest for public intoxication.
After all, it’s accurate, right? It won’t negatively and unfairly influence your prospective employer, since it’s accurate, right?
Jason Van Steenwyk
That would be your right.
You don’t think soldiers as individuals have a legitimate interest in what their own representatives have said about the war?
Good luck selling that idea.
Tom Hilton
We don’t disagree that too much of Gringolandian reporting on Iraq is from the bubble. The point you’re missing is that they’re getting way too much of their ‘information’ from official U.S. sources.
And by the way, in practice embedded reporters just report from a different kind of bubble. The only real reporting is from outside the Green Zone and independent of the military…which at this point is extraordinarily dangerous.
demimondian
In fact, I *do* think that the soldiers have a legitimate interest in what their legislators had said about the war.
That wasn’t what was in those “bios”, though, Jason.
lou
So you don’t think soldiers would care about this little bit of crucial information about Tauscher?
“For one, the quotations appeared to be selected to divide the visitors into those who are with the war effort and those who are against. For another, they were not exactly accurate. Under “latest Iraq vote,” Tauscher’s bio noted that she had voted in favor of legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days of the bill’s enactment.
She did vote that way — in May. On Aug. 2, Tauscher voted in favor of her own bill, which mandates that troops be granted a leave from combat at least as long as their last combat deployment before being shipped back to Iraq. That vote might have been a little too popular with the soldiers she was meeting, Tauscher said.”
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
“They?” You mean, the Masons? The Trilateral Commission? The Indigo Girls?
Who are “they?” The reporter never gives any indication that these bios were in any way official (and he seems very incurious about where they came from, and who distributed them, which to me screams “it was just a soldier on the internet.”).
Rome Again
No, it merely means the reporter won’t say where they came from. Whatever the reporter has to say about these bios does not necessarily affect the origin of them, unless the reporter wants to say they came from somewhere else, and even then, that is not proof either that the administration created this propaganda or not.
My guess, the RNC created this propaganda, with the blessing of Cheney/Bush and Rove as a last hurrah before Rove leaves. One last funtime in the sandbox for old time’s sake.
Tsulagi
That level is bizarre, but not surprising. If field reports come in that give a different picture than the known-truth canvas, not infrequently the first reaction isn’t “oh, shit.” Instead sometimes more along the lines of “which party does he/they belong to?” or “have we looked up which political campaigns they’ve contributed to?”
You need to be ever vigilant to maintain the truthiness, otherwise the Democratic terrorists have won.
Rome Again
Or perhaps the reporter rubs elbows with people who shouldn’t be outed in the reporter’s mind, for one reason or another.
Or, perhaps the reporter knows something you don’t and has no intention of bringing it out in the open.
Or…
You really are jumping to conclusions here Lambchop, and with little to go on.
myiq2xu
why would soldiers need a “thumbnail bio” anyway? All they need to know is that a congressperson is coming to visit and the name of that particular politician.
Party, voting record, and other details are irrelevant. They should be treating all visiting VIP’s the same, telling the the same things, shoing them the same places.
The only exceptions would have to do with security clearances, but generally speaking, all members of congress will have the same clearences, and lower enlisted troops don’t get to make decisions on those issues anyway.
Jason Van Steenwyk
I suppose you’re going to want a freaking political commissar to sit on every printer in theater and approve everything a soldier might write or publish.
Lefties are turning more and more into fascists every day.
Rome Again
You think a soldier created these flyers? Okay, say you are correct. It as said that these flyers were all over the place during this VIP visit, so, where did a soldier get all the paper and ink to create the flyers? There were graphic photos of the two (Tauscher and Moran), that takes a lot of ink. Did the soldier use his very own printer in his very own VIP apartment? I was under the impression soldiers didn’t have such luxuries.
myiq2xu
Soldiers aren’t supposed to do things like that without permission or instructions.
The question is, who was responsible for making and distributing the “bios?”
Will this be like Abu Ghraib where nobody except some lower enlisted troops were held accountable?
Jason Van Steenwyk
Well, that’s because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Tom Hilton
Because they don’t do that now. Nope, no crackdown on milbloggers critical of the war…nothing to see here, move along…
myiq2xu
Here is a perfect example of what
headshrinkerspsychologists call “projection.”Rome Again
Really Jason, where did all that paper and ink come from? Did the soldier go out to Walgreens to get these items?
Justin
Hm. Can’t be good for the troops morale, to have their commanders publishing this stuff and telling them. The troops clearly hate the trooops.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Irony is not dead, after all.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Won’t or can’t. Then that’s a pretty shit reporter, innit? He probably should’ve shut his wordhole until he could answer the very Basic Journalistic Questions. This would be considered shoddy reportage if it came from Atrios, much less from what used to be a respected newspaper.
No, it’s far better to publish and let you guys immediately jump to the conclusion that this is a Dastardly Bush Plot to…well, to…to make anti-war Senators clarify their remarks for the soldiers? Oh, no, the horror! We thought Rove had gone!
myiq2xu
They already have one censoring what they can read. ThinkProgress has been banned by the military.
whippoorwill
That’s the Army for you. Order toilet paper get right propaganda leaflets.
Rome Again
I’ve often wondered how you keep telling yourself the things you do. I read what you write and I feel like I’ve been through Cirque Du Soleil’s contortionist acrobatic training.
Agreed, but I’m not a babysitter for journalists, they don’t listen to people like me, they only listen to people that get them into press conferences and events where they can rub elbows with the fun Washington kiddies. My point was merely that if the journalist wouldn’t say where the information originated, that does not rule out the Bush administration, as you are so want to do.
Rome Again
Lambchop, answer this:
Who benefits?
rachel
Either way, you have something to wipe your ass with.
DougJ
Give it up, Mac.
Xanthippas
An approach which is completely justifiable, as with the Bush administration we have learned that often where there is smoke, there’s fire. Let’s just say that if in a week or two some intrepid blogger or journalist figures out who actually printed up these little “bios” and it happens to be some PR flunkie or commander in the military or the civilian administration in Iraq who thought this would be a great to make life difficult for Democrats, nobody’s really going to be all that surprised.
Try to imagine someone in the military printing up flyers about the Republican members of Congress that listed all of their glorious predictions for Iraq from say 2003, 2004 and 2005, and then distributing that prior to their visit. Can’t imagine it? Yeah…me neither. Why is that?
Jason Van Steenwyk
Well, surrender monkeys don’t poll well among warriors.
Who knew?
demimondian
And what do you know about being a warrior, Van Steenwyk? Your service in the Army certainly didn’t teach you much about it, apparently.
Jason Van Steenwyk
I suspect you’re pathetically unqualified to make that assessment one way or the other, demi.
demimondian
You know something, Van Steenwyk?
It’s not impossible that you’re alive because of work I did. No, I won’t tell you what it is; I can’t. You’ll just have to accept that, and go on with your life. It was important, and it kept people alive and, yes, it did so by helping soldiers in the field kill bad guys. I’m proud of that work — it was good work, for a great nation.
But, yes, as a result, I am qualified to judge what you’ve written. The Army I gladly served has been perverted by a modern-day Caligula and his cronies for their own glory, putting party above nation. You’ve been a part of that, slandering those who disagreed and trying to intimidate those who spoke against the clique of rulers and their nepots.
Can you tell me I should be proud of how the Army has been used during the occupation of Iraq? With a straight face? I can certainly be proud of how it’s performed, but that’s not what I asked. Can you tell me that we civilians — and that includes you, now, too — should not be calling for a change in national strategy? It’s our job, you know, to act as a counterweight to ambitious politicians without honor or morals. Would our legislators not be deficient if they did not question the purpose and goals of the invasion? Particularly when so many of the stated goals and justifications have turned out to be lies?
And for that you call them “surrender monkeys”? Van Steenwyk, those are the words of a petty political hanger-on. If you use such words, expect to be called on them.
Jason Van Steenwyk
You know, your thinking is so sloppy, you didn’t even grasp my point.
You could be Audy f’in Murphy, and you still wouldn’t be in a position to make that assessment, because you cannot draw any conclusions about whether or not I know something about being a warrior by what I post on Balloon Juice.
Further: you write that civilians should be calling for a change in national strategy. I don’t think that’s warranted at all. Actually, I think abandoning our current strategy, the surge, at this point, would be beyond stupid.
But that’s beside the point. I accept that citizens have a right to make their views heard. They have a right to freedom of expression. And they have a right to annoy politicians with that freedom of expression.
My point is that I object to you protofascists trying to squash soldiers executing those same basic freedoms.
Further, you object to my use of the term “surrender-monkeys” as “the words of “a petty political hanger-on,” in the very self same comment in which you use the term “modern day Caligula?”
You’re beyond parody.
Spare me.
Patrick S Lasswell
Where the paper, ink, and printer could come from:
1. The AAFES exchange on base. Also the laptop/desktop, desk, chair, and reading lamp. If they did not have it in stock, they could order it.
2. Civilian employees of the government in the green zone.
3. Contractors in the green zone. (A lot of these guys are military retirees and veterans without a love of Congress.)
4. Iraqi political operatives in the Green Zone. (I’ve met some of these guys and it would be a mistake to call the stupid or incompetent.)
5. A reporter looking for a story…
Seriously, the Office Depot aspect of this story is the silliest thing I’ve seen yet. The Green Zone is way the hell in the rear with the gear. You should have been asking where they got the internet bandwidth to search for the Congressional records…then I would have pointed to this link offering satellite internet service to the troops in Iraq: http://www.ts2.pl/en/iDirect-service-over-Intelsat-10-02
The outraged left never fails to disappoint when the subject of military living conditions and attitudes comes up. The guy with the “I was part of a special team that I cannot tell you about…” is particularly pathetic. If you can’t talk about it…don’t talk about it.
Jason Van Steenwyk
Well, yeah, that’s always a red flag with me, too. A lot of times it’s followed by “my records were destroyed in a fire.”
Jason Van Steenwyk
Patrick,
Thanks for your post. That’s precisely what I was getting at when I told another poster he didn’t know what he was talking about.
To your list of sources for office supplies, I would also add that military headquarters at all levels generate a mountain of paperwork. Just about every headquarters in country down to platoon level – and in many cases, down to squad level – has its own full computer setup, complete with a printer, reams and reams of paper, and Internet access.
In many cases, these computers and printers are not even government property – they were purchased and contributed by soldiers, and remain their private property. Even the Internet connection may well be via a satellite dish locally purchased from Iraqis – “Haji-net” we called it. So you can’t even raise the argument that it was an inappropriate use of government equipment – though I have no problem with the use of government equipment to print accurate position statements and quotations from visiting dignitaries as they pertain to the war. Their statements are public record.
Furthermore, it’s a simple matter to purchase laptops, printers, toner, or anything else you want off the Iraqi economy, or order it from the U.S.
After all, that’s how I got my laptop.
Patrick S Lasswell
4.) Things are so bad, the military seems to have dedicated precious man-hours to try to convince us things are not really that bad. Staged visits, complete with background bios of the VIPS, are the norm.
Because security forces that run around screaming “All is lost, run for your lives!!!” are so much better than ones that exude confidence in difficult times.
If it is fair for Al Qaeda to target the sensitivities of our elected representatives with hyperbolic fear-mongering, why is it out of bounds for our military to target the sensitivities of our elected representatives with the potential for accountability for their stated positions?
Maybe it is unfair since the military actually pays attention to history to expose elected representatives with that most fearsome of military virtues. It must be terrifying for people geared to the 24 hour news cycle to meet people who debate Clausewitz and Lawrence. I’m trying to get worked up about the unfairness…and it just isn’t coming.
Jason, you got anything?