Oceania Has Always Been at War With Eastasia*

Jacob Weisberg has a great column in Slate on the "planting" of pro-U.S. news stories in Iraqi papers, and how it fits into a pattern of propagandistic behavior on the part of this Administration that goes way beyond the spin we normally hear from our national leaders. Money quote:

In a way, what's most troubling about the Bush's administration's information war is not its cynicism but its naiveté. At phony town hall meetings, Bush's audiences are hand-picked to prevent any possibility of spontaneous challenge. At fake forums, invited guests ask the president to pursue his previously announced policies. New initiatives are unveiled on platforms festooned with meaningless slogans, mindlessly repeated ('Plan for Victory'). Anyone on the inside who doubts the party line is shown the door. In this environment, where the truth is not spoken privately or publicly, the suspicion grows that Bush, in his righteous cocoon, has committed the final, fatal sin of the propagandist. He is not just spreading BS but has come to believe it himself. (emphasis added).

On a tangentially related note, check out Jefferson Morley's article today in the WP, on the Department of State's elimination of a long-standing web site reporting on foreign media coverage of U.S. policies. I guess with only four in ten Americans approving of his performance in office, the Torture President can't afford to spend taxpayer dollars gathering information that casts him in an unfavorable light. Maybe he even hopes we won't figure out on our own how much of an international pariah our country has become under his leadership. Fortunately, unlike Bush, some of us still actually read the papers.

*Again, to steal from Brad DeLong, I'll stop calling this Administration Orwellian when they stop using 1984 as an operations manual.