Today's Washington Post tells us the following:
Another new arrival in the West Wing set up a rapid-response PR unit hard-wired into Petraeus's shop. Ed Gillespie, the new presidential counselor, organized daily conference calls at 7:45 a.m. and again late in the afternoon between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Embassy and military in Baghdad to map out ways of selling the surge.
From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and last week, the office put out 94 such documents in various categories -- "Myths/Facts" or "Setting the Record Straight" to take issue with negative news articles, and "In Case You Missed It" to distribute positive articles or speeches.
It's no surprise that Ed Gillespie and his minions have "mapped out a way of selling the surge".
It's also no surprise that the "email blitz" has worked in the favor of the White House. The media has lobbed a "surge is working" softball that David Petraeus and the White House believe they can hit out of the park.
Today's Media Matters gets out in front of the White House report in Myths and falsehoods about progress in Iraq
Summary: Supporters of the Iraq war -- rather than waiting for testimony by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on the effect of President Bush's troop increase in Iraq -- have engaged in a campaign to convince the media and public that progress is being made in Iraq and that the "surge" is "working." Media Matters has compiled some of the most pervasive myths and falsehoods advanced by opponents of withdrawal in service of the "surge is working" message, which many in the media have been complicit in perpetuating.
Yes, as they've been doing for years, the media is "complicit in perpetuating" the White House message. Their latest sin is failing to challenge the "surge is working" message. It becomes increasingly clear that they are responsive to the White House "email blitz".
Here are some of the highlights of the Media Matters piece. I urge everyone to refer to it over the coming days.
Media Matters addresses several myths:
Myth: "The surge is working"
On the August 20 edition of Fox News' Special Report, host Brit Hume said that "evidence mounts that the troop surge is working as planned." An August 16 editorial in Investor's Business Daily was headlined, "A Surge of Success." And on the August 21 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, U.S. News & World Report editor-in-chief Mortimer B. Zuckerman asserted: "[T]he fact is that, by far, the consensus is that the surge is working." However, by the administration's own standards, the national political reconciliation that the Bush administration identified as essential for the success of its escalation strategy has not occurred.
But the definition of "is working" has changed.
As Media Matters has noted, when announcing his so-called surge strategy in January, Bush specifically stated that success had to be measured in terms of military progress and political progress by the Iraqi government on the benchmarks established by the United States. Bush declared that "[a] successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations" and will include a political component: "hold[ing] the Iraqi government to the benchmarks [America] has announced."
So much for the "political progress" part of Bush's equation.
Further, a report released by the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) on September 4 found that the national Iraqi government was making little political progress. The GAO concluded that the Iraqi government had met only one of eight legislative benchmarks and partially met one other.
Myth: "The surge has reduced violence in Iraq"
On the August 28 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry uncritically aired President Bush's assertion from his August 28 speech to the American Legion that "[s]ectarian violence has sharply decreased in Baghdad. The momentum is now on our side." Henry gave no indication that he had attempted to verify Bush's assertion. Further, The Washington Post printed an August 28 op-ed by O'Hanlon defending the New York Times op-ed he co-authored in which, relying on data supplied by the U.S. military, he repeated his previous claim that "Iraqi civilian fatality rates are down." During a report containing an interview with Petraeus, on the September 4 CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric did not challenge Petraeus' assertion that "if you look at the country as a whole ... the number of ethnosectarian deaths, you name it, the number of incidents has been reduced dramatically."
However, numeous sources do not support the claims made by such investigative reporters as Katie Couric whose office is clearly part of the "email blitz".
According to the GAO in its report issued September 4, the goal of "[r]educing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security" was "not met," meaning that "there was no clear and reliable evidence that the level of sectarian violence was reduced and that militia control of local security was eliminated."
Myth: "U.S. military deaths are down this summer"
On the August 30 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, guest host Christine Romans repeatedly claimed that American troop deaths in Iraq "are down this summer."
The three networks all followed suit. Clearly they were part of the White House "email blitz"
Similarly, on August 1, all three broadcast networks' evening news programs -- ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams -- reported that the death toll for U.S. service members in Iraq was down in July. However, none of the programs noted at the time that U.S. troop death numbers for July, while lower than previous months, meant that this July was the deadliest July of the war. Nor did any of the news reports note that the death toll for U.S. service members during the months of June and July were the highest for this two-month period since the war began. Furthermore, while the number of troops killed in Iraq for the months of June, July, and August makes the summer of 2007 the deadliest summer of the war for American soldiers, a Media Matters review of the three network evening news broadcasts found that none of them have reported this fact.
Myth: Democrats agree the "surge" is "working"
In the last month, as several Democrats have commented on the current situation in Iraq, the Republicans and the media have routinely mischaracterized their statements about progress in Iraq to suggest that Democrats believe that Bush's troop increase is working and that the strategy has been successful.
And it's not just the Republicans and media that have mischaracterized Dem responses. There are numberous posts and diaries here at DailyKos which repeat the same incorrect statements in an effort to slam the other guy's candidate. It's the trickle down theory of the White House "email blitz" - the White House peddles lies to the AP and some gullible Kossacks repeat as needed.
On Sen. Clinton
In an August 20 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) said: "We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working. We're just years too late changing our tactics. We can't ever let that happen again."
But that was twisted into "the surge is working"
Several media reports following Clinton's speech, however, said that Clinton had conceded that the "surge" is "working." For example, MSNBC, the New York Post, the Associated Press, and The Washington Times all reported that Clinton said the Bush administration's so-called "surge" policy is "working."
Similarly, on the August 26 edition of CBS' Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer falsely claimed that Clinton is "saying it looks like ... maybe the surge is working in the sense that there is less violence there."
There is much much more at Media Matters. The fight begins, as Ed Gillespie knows, by gaining the upper hand in the propaganda battle.
White House Communications Director Kevin Sullivan is quoted in today's Washington Post as saying:
"The whole idea is to take these things on before they become conventional wisdom. We have a very short window."
Kevin Sullivan is right as rain. We do have a very short window to counter the White House PR machine that has already handed the media "proof" that the surge is working.
It's up to us to make sure that their message is shouted down and that the truth rises to the top.
It's football Sunday and all the best teams know how to recognize a blitz. And once the blitz is recognized, it leaves the other team vulnerabie.
But it must be recognized quickly.
It's up to us since, as we've seen for years, the media is wholly incapable of recognizing the blitz.