More. Fake. Media. My. God.

While all presidencies have used PR to their advantage, the techniques used by the Bush administration are unprecedented. In Bush's defense, the less your policy makes sense, the more you’re going to have to spin in order to sell it. However, whenever I update the blog regarding Bush Administration fake media, I like to recap what we've found so far:

- Fake news stories that are prepared and sent to local television stations to pass actors off as real journalists.

- Fake town hall meetings where pre-screened Bush supporters get the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ask tough questions of their President, such as, “I just want you to know my family and I pray for you and Laura every day.” (Although it should be noted, sometimes an intruder sneaks past security.)

- Fake journalists, paid with tax dollars to construct stories in newspapers/magazines you’ve purchased to tout Bush administration policy.

- Fake Q&A’s with the troops using them as props for carefully organized PR stunts.

- Fake members of the White House Press Corps providing cushy “recovery questions” those in the administration depend on to rally from a difficult questions posed by an actual reporter.

- Fake photos of White House events not taken by journalists, but by hired hands asked to take pictures of the President in a positive light, limiting the chance of a more actual portrayal taken by an independent photographer actually working for the press.

Some of what you see above has earned the White House a few scoldings from the bipartisan Government Accountability Office, finding the Bush administration actually violated propaganda laws. Despite the fact that political scientists typically measure a nation’s legitimate Democracy and “freedom” by the extent to which the press operates without government interference, this doesn’t bother freedom-spreading Bush supporters in the least (and yet the Bushies who comment on this site tell me I’m the one who hates America). And chances are, neither will this:

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program…The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

"The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends," said (Col. Derek) Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So what’s the problem with propaganda such as this?

Specifically, it hinders and obstructs the truth coming out of Iraq that not just the bulk or most of the insurgency – but the overwhelming majority of the insurgency, is coming from the Iraqis themselves. You’ll remember them as the group of people for whose liberation we are fighting, according to conservatives. Of course, the more we link an Al Qaeda member like Zarqawi to Iraq, the more we’re linking the Iraq effort to “fighting the terrorists over there so we’re not fighting them over here,” and the more the Bush administration can provide a relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

In other words, not only did this relationship not exist before the war, it actually hardly exists now!

So, the Democracy loving, pro-fight-them-over-there group that loves America more than they love their own kids isn’t bothered by:

1). The damage to Democracy state-run media can cause to our own nation
2). The irony that we’re trying to free a nation from a government that used propaganda to stay in power.
3). The fact that we’re fighting not insurgents or Al Qaeda or terrorists in Iraq, but rather the very people we are told we’re liberating.

And they call LIBERALS the friend of Saddam? Right.

I can’t say this enough about Bush supporters – Black is White, Up is Down.