A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers.”
Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence… to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering.
Jesus… sometimes it seems that everybody is making money off of blogging except me.
rhp6033 spews:
Well, that might explain a few of the right-wing bloggers here – they claim to be “producers” but apparantly work full-time commenting on this site.
N in Seattle spews:
Well, I’m sure they’ve already recruited (and rapidly promoted) The General.
You can’t get more manly and heterosexual than that.
jacob spews:
“Jesus… sometimes it seems that everybody is making money off of blogging except me.”
April fools was yesterday…
rnnr spews:
So much for an independent military; is a coup next?
SeattleJew spews:
Is this meant for INTERNAL activity or is it a foreign operation? I assume we covertly fund thngs like this in other countries as they do in ours. Has anyone here ever been to an alliance francaise meeting?
6033 & Counting spews:
“(T)hat might explain a few of the right-wing bloggers here – they claim to be “producers” but apparantly work full-time commenting on this site.”
Got us confused with Slacker Rabbit, the left-wing stock flipper & time waster who wastes most of his time right here.
Roger Rabbit spews:
FAA Pressures Employees To Alter Safety Reports
“(April 2) — Government officials have blocked enforcement of safety rules at major airlines … because they have a cozy relationship with the companies, according to the testimony of U.S. inspectors who will appear before Congress Thursday.
“The testimony alleges for the first time that inspectors have been pressured by Federal Aviation Administration officials to change findings or to soft-pedal enforcement actions for … airlines ….”
Quoted under fair use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://news.aol.com/story/_a/f.....0909990001
Roger Rabbit Commentary: The news that Bushies are selling airline passenger safety down the river is completely unsurprising. They’ve done the same thing with drugs, food, and other consumer products. With a government like this, we don’t need terrorists to kill us by flying planes into buildings; as long as Republicans govern in this country, we’re perfectly capable of doing it to ourselves.
Roger Rabbit spews:
@6 “Got us confused with Slacker Rabbit, the left-wing stock flipper & time waster who wastes most of his time right here.”
I’ve made a thousand bucks so far this morning and the market isn’t even closed yet! Sure beats working! Pays better, and taxes and lower. Why should I work or produce anything under this fucked-up system that rewards people for inheriting or flipping, and punishes them for working? Another fucked-up value set brought to you by the common-sense challenged GOP.
Roger Rabbit spews:
Oops, the market is turning and now I’ve made only $240 today … ah well, easy come easy go. Fortunately, I don’t have to depend on the market to make a living, because I’ve got a state pension coming in and in a few weeks I’ll get my first Social Security check! Those sources of income are much more reliable than the stock market or trying to keep an employer happy. I feel sorry for all you lame Social Security-hating, boot-licking wingnuts who depend today on your boss’s good graces and will depend tomorrow on a kinder and gentler stock market to keep your IRAs and 401(k)s feeding you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to “work” flipping stocks before the market closes … capital gains tax rates, man ya gotta love ’em!!!
Little Big Mouth spews:
Brave Dave Ross (dross@bonneville) took typically cheap shots at Monson this week, and got away with it. Why, you ask? Because Monson’s out this week, doing better things than KIRO.
The cheap-shotting was about McDermott, who panted up like a poodle to Ross’s show while giggling his perv giggle (heh heh heh) about not showing up for Dori.
Brave Dave went thru the cherade of asking tough questions about McDermott taking dirty dollars from Saddam, then let Big Mc giggle his Scott-Simon giggle. And filibuster.
Question 3: Where was Peacenik Jim when Bill Clinton sent us, without the approval of Congress or of the UN, into Bosnia on an elective preemptive mission that was less relevant to our interests than was the liberation/invasion of Iraq?
That’s an interesting question that deserved but didn’t get an answer. Benjamin Schwarz of The Atlantic noted four years ago that our rush to Balkans war was based on exaggeration. Tony Lewis of the Jayson Blair Times hyped and overhyped stories of “genocide” to push General Clinton (Bill, not Howling Commando Hillary) into a war and place where we had no reason to be. The cost? C. 3000 Serb civilians collaterally damaged to death by Clinton’s bombs dropped from 30,000 feet.
But Brave Dave said later that Bill’s excellent adventure in warfare was a success because it worked, and Iraq didn’t. Maybe, but 10+ years later, long after we were promised by Clinton we’d be gone, we’re still in Bosnia/Kosovo, and it looks like we’ll be there, oh, about 90 years more. One of those 100-years-wars McCain was talking about. And, to nobody’s surprise, Kosovo is still a Krapistan.
Welcome back, little buddy! spews:
Trust-fund liberals! Man, ya gotta love ’em!!!
Ayn Rand spews:
Would you buy a manic recession from this mullah:
http://images.google.com/imgre.....n%26sa%3DG
?
Tlazolteotl spews:
Not very different from what Bushco has already done, paying some journalists to promote certain messages. They got fired when they got caught.
But I want to know: What kind of Dilbert-speak moron wrote this
the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital
That makes my head hurt.
Tlazolteotl spews:
I think that’s what they used to call “ineffectual middle management suck-up.”
Tlazolteotl spews:
‘Important questions’ are only to be asked of Democrats, I see. Nobody asks Republicans why they gave carte blanche to Little Boot’s No-so-excellent Iraq adventure, which also was not sanctioned by the UN (and since when did you righties think that was important anyway, ya fucking hypocrites?).
Hannah spews:
@10 – We went to Kosovo and Bosnia WITHOUT congress approval? Did I read that right?
ST(laz)D spews:
No declaration on the use of force. No declaration of war. Just like Bill’s invasion of Haiti.
Let’s be fair, balanced: I know of no Congressional declaration of war for any of our wars since WWII.
Overwhelming questions: Rarely asked of Goldycrats. The questions Tlazolteotl wants asked of Duh-bya are those asked by the Senate at (any day now!) impeachment hearings.
UN: Little Boots was more respectful of the UN than the UN deserved … more their problem than his. Powell premised our rush to Iraq on a UN flipchart presentation showing all those Saddamite mobile weapons labs. Oh well.
Bush based much of his case, to the UN and his willing coalition, on Iraq’s violation of 1 1/2 dozen UN resolutions.
McD based his all-expenses-paid vacation to Baghdad in 2002 on the assertions of Saddam’s left-wing cheerleaders that UN sanctions were killing Iraq’s children. What trustworthy Saddam did not tell McDermott and other useful leftist idiots was that he was using UN sanctions to divert billions of dollars — via the corrupt oil-for-torture program — away from medicine for Iraqi children and into aggrandizement of his palaces and phanton weapons labs. Labs that Saddam apparently believed he had, or pretended that he had to deceive Iran.
We know, useful idiot Scott Ridder knows, that Saddam had enough anthrax — later ‘unaccounted for,’ — to kill a big piece of the planet. Which way did it go?
YLB spews:
we’re still in Bosnia/Kosovo, and it looks like we’ll be there, oh, about 90 years more.
If that chimp you voted for twice is so hot, why are we still there? We sure need the manpower in his excellent adventure in Iraq.
ST(laz)D spews:
Don’t have a link for this, but it’s out there: About four years ago the New York Review reviewed Han’s Brix’s (that’s TeamAmerica spelling) book about our rush to Iraq war. According to the review, Blix wrote that Saddam was utterly unwilling to readmit UN weapons inspectors (expelled druing Lewinsky) into his corrupt country until about the second month of 2003 when he had 150,000+ armed Americans on his border.
In other words, from late 1998 until early 2003 we and you were flying blind about what was going on over there. That’s why most of the world’s best intel affirmed a conclusion that Clinton rushed to in 1999: Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and he would ‘use them.’
Google Clinton’s declaration of Desert Fox, 1998-1999, to get a clue about what a real American warmonger looks like in print.
Trots & Bonnie spews:
You are so deucedly clever, YLB. Let’s blame Bush for the 62+ years we’ve been in Germany or the 53+ years we’ve been in Korea.
Or let’s ignore McCain’s clear context (citing our prolonged presence in Korea, Germany, Bosnia) when he made his “100 year” remark, and tell Obama-lite lies about what McCain meant.
Trots & Bonnie spews:
For a bad trip down memory lane, go to The Savage Stranger archives, Independence Day 2002, for Doorknob Dan’s clear and cogent statement of the case for the invasion of Iraq. Savage made the coherent arguments that Bush was unable or unwilling to make.
Since all of Seattle agrees that Bush is a moron, can we agree that, on his own, he lacked the brains for war? That Dub couldn’t have done it without Dan?
Yes, we can! We’ve all agreed! Time to impeach Dan Savage for war crimes. Send your tax-deductible contributions to the Savage Warmonger Legal Defense Fund, c/o me.
Daddy Love spews:
Bosnia was a NATO operation, and we didn’t lose 4000 AMericans there in a failed occupation of a hostile state with an active anti-AMerican insurgency. Or kill 100K Bosnians. Or open torture prisons.
Daddy Love spews:
Goldy
Re: blogging for money. You’re just workin’ for the wrong side, pal. You should get yourself some of that MTR money.
Daddy Love spews:
20 TB
John McCain is in fantasy land. The U.S. does not maintain a strong contingent of troops in “every conflict,” as history has shown:
– Vietnam: After President Nixon announced a phased withdrawal (http://thinkprogress.org/2007/.....i-vietnam/), the “last U.S. combat troops” withdrew in August 1972 (http://www.historyplace.com/un.....-1969.html). “The last remaining American troops withdrew” by 1973. In April 1975, “the last Americans, ten Marines from the embassy, depart Saigon, concluding the United States presence in Vietnam.”
– Somalia: “All UN and U.S. personnel were finally withdrawn…in March 1995.” (http://www.history.army.mil/br.....ia.htm#p24)
– Haiti: The “last American combat troops in Haiti returned home” in 1996 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f.....A960958260). Final withdrawals were completed in 1999 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f.....A96F958260).
The long-term American presence in several nations post-WWII were part of the American “containment” policy vis-a-vis the USSR, which, I should point out to you, no longer exists.
McCain has repeatedly supported a heavy U.S. presence in Iraq, and has supported permanent bases. Andrew Bacevich of Boston University says that McCain’s hundred-year scenario would likely entail a combat-heavy engagement for U.S. troops (http://www.boston.com/news/nat.....ar_remark/):
So tell me, when does McCain’s “100 years without casualties” start? Did we miss it?
Love Daddy spews:
NATO R Us, Dad. When Wesley Clark almost started WWIII with Russia at the Sarajevo airport, Russia would have launched against us, as in US, not against NATO.
Iraq’s a failure? Oh dear, who knew? Pls say it isn’t so!
(I knew by April Fools’ Day 2003 that we’d been Fooled Again by Dan Savage.)
GBS spews:
@ 16:
Do you know any contemporary history? Seriously, you should take a Current World Issues class.
Trots & Bonnie spews:
Scott Ridder = Scott Ritter. Whatever.
Speaking of Trots & Bonnie, from Seattle’s own Shari Flenniken: Anyone have any of her stuff to share?
GBS spews:
Love Daddy @ 24 wrote:
”Iraq’s a failure? Oh dear, who knew? Pls say it isn’t so!”
“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed., the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different— and perhaps barren— outcome. ”
~ George H.W. Bush, 41st President and Commander-in-Chief of Desert Storm. Quoted from his book: A World Transformed.
Apparently, Bush’s Daddy knew Iraq would’ve been an abstract failure. Looks like Lil’ Bush just had to prove how right his Daddy was and how STUPID he is.
Typical conservative loser.
Hannah spews:
@ 25 – I was being sarcastic!
But Little Big Mouth has a point!
T&B With T&A, Please spews:
Yes, 28, I know.
Recall that McDermott Democrats assailed Old Bush’s Iraq War of 1990 – 1991. Rather than admit error, McDemocrats moved the goal posts, saying that Old Bush had not finished the job and had allowed Saddam to live. Young Bush fell for Democrat nonsense and frogmarched us in where his old man had feared to tread. The dope, GWB, got roped.
But the point of this discussion was not to find final solutions to wars past and present. Was only asking about McDermott and Clinton’s war in Bosnia and Kosovo. Was McDermott a consistent hapless pacifist, inveighing against Clinton’s preemptive elective war? Did he take dirty dollars from Slobo and Ratko for a Serbian vacation? Did I miss all that?
Or was McD a selective warmonger, monging war for his preferred party?
Noble spews:
Like the guy at stuffwhitepeoplelike, who got a $300,000 book deal as a result of his blog. Maybe you should write a book Goldy…
rhp6033 spews:
T&B @ 30:
I don’t recall Democrats criticizing G.H.W. Bush for not going all the way to Bahgdad in Gulf War I. That was mostly the right wing of the Republican Party which was doing that, many of whom ended up supporting Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot in the 1992 elections. I think George W. Bush listened to those complaints too much, from the neo-cons who blamed the 1992 loss to Clinton on the failure to go all the way to Bahgdad.
The Democrats did, however, point out that Bush’s decision to stop ground combat after 100 hours was more of a public relations stunt than dictated by the military situation. It came about when (then Secty of Defense) Dick Cheney pointed out to G.H.W. Bush that as the military victory seemed just about complete, that a victory within that time period might place the “100 Hour War” within the same catagory of overwhelming military victories as the 1967 Israeli victory now known as the “Seven-Days War”.
Gen. Franks said (in his book) that the order came just as his forces were about to hit the Iraqi’s Republican Guard armoured divisions in north-eastern Kuwait. It came just short of closing the trap on the Iraqi forces in Kuwait. Swartkopf (sp?) complained (in his book) that If allowed to continue for another 12 hours, the cream of the Iraqi army would have had to walk home without tanks, vehicles, or weapons, and been in no position to put down the Kurd & Shiite insurgencies which arose shortly thereafter. In the finger-pointing that occured afterwards, Dick Cheney blamed Swartkopf (sp?) for giving him misleading information about the extent of the advance, and Swartkopf blamed Cheney for not understanding the difference between the use of helicopter scouts which preceed an armoured advance, and the actual occupation of territory by ground units.
Perhaps this was just a mis-communication from a war zone to the commander-in-chief? Or was it Dick Cheney (the go-between) communicating what he wanted to hear, as opposed to what the Generals were saying? Or was it an example of someone who doesn’t have any military experience (such as Dick Cheney), but thinks he knows the military well, getting in over his head?