Published on Tuesday, February 14, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle
Bush PR Costs Taxpayers $1.6 Billion
by Jennifer Dlouhy


The Bush administration spent at least $1.6 billion on public relations and advertising campaigns over 30 months, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The report, requested by congressional Democrats, shows that government agencies are relying on outside consultants to help pitch their messages to the public, whether it's to bolster public support for the war in Iraq, deter buying prescription drugs from Canada or recruit for the armed forces.

"To communicate these messages to the general public or particular target audiences, departments contract with media-related vendors ... for a wide range of services, including communication plans, marketing design strategies, public relations campaigns, public service announcements and educational materials," according to the report.

Democrats complained that the White House was using propaganda to spin the public its way on the war on terror and other initiatives.

"No amount of money will successfully sell the Bush administration's failed policies, from the war in Iraq to its disastrous energy policy to its confusing Medicare prescription drug benefits," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, leader of the House Democrats, who criticized what she called the White House PR machine.

The White House did not return calls for comment Monday, but the Education Department in the past has defended its public relations spending as a legitimate way to disseminate information to the public.

The GAO report did not single out any project for special attention but, in a separate study a year ago, the agency said the Bush administration had illegally engaged in covert propaganda for paying conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to praise the No Child Left Behind Act, the 2002 education law, in newspaper columns and on television.

The Bush administration also was rapped for issuing prepackaged "video news releases" that touted administration initiatives to broadcast media outlets, some of which aired the programs without disclosing their source.

Government auditors studied the spending by seven different cabinet-level departments for 30 months covering all of fiscal 2003 and 2004 and the first half of fiscal 2005. They focused on government contracts with public relations firms, advertising agencies and media organizations -- anyone the GAO said would "create (or) distribute content through various outlets, such as radio, television (and) newspapers."

Using federal procurement data, the government auditors found spending over two and a half years on 343 media contracts. The vast majority of the contracts were with advertising agencies.

For instance:

* The Army paid $2.5 million to develop a plan to present its "strategic perspective in the global war on terrorism."

* The Department of Health and Human Services paid $29,900 in 2004 and 2003 to an advertising agency to convince Americans that buying prescription drugs from Canada and other countries is risky.

* The government spent $116,088 over two years for a "Be Whale Wise" campaign -- complete with billboards and radio advertising -- to educate residents of Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., about how recreational boating was dangerous to marine mammals in Puget Sound.

A private group that watches government spending said that while the report covers plenty of legitimate public relations spending, some of the costs should raise eyebrows.

"People see (military) recruitment ads on TV all the time, and I don't think anyone objects to that," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a not-for-profit watchdog group. But targeted, specific programs deserve a closer look, Schatz said.

The Interior Department complained that a host of legitimate contracts had been swept into the report and inaccurately labeled as public relations spending. For instance, department officials said the GAO should not have included spending on brochures or exhibits at National Park Service visitor centers.

No other government departments responded to the report.

© 2006 San Francisco Chronicle

Heard that this morning.

$1.6 Billion for propaganda. That's outstanding. Let's not use all the money we can for No Child Left Behind (as one example), let's use a bunch of it to promote No Child Left Behind to the American public.

__________________
"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

The irony of it all is that after $1.6Billion, he is still a moron to most people here and abroad!

Maybe thats why the 'Today Show' never mentions it... no budget for it.
You know it costs between 100,000 - 500,000 $ to qualify as news over there.

__________________
-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html

I'd think a lot better of all of them if they'd shut up and spend less.

Hm, I geuss it also depends on the program, huh? I mean, if it is to advertise benefits for the veterans, poor, old, and indigent some people would hate it and others would love it. If they spend money on military recruiting, some people would love it and some would hate it. Biodiesel? Ethanol? Etc.

Regardless, let them quit advertising about ways to spend tax dollars.

Bot

Dream on buddy. NOT IN OUR LIFETIME!

February 14, 2006
Istanbul Journal
If You Want a Film to Fly, Make Americans the Heavies
By SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL, Feb. 13 — The crowd cheered, clapped and whistled as the Turkish agent plunged the knife into the chest of the enemy commander.

"Valley of the Wolves — Iraq," which opened last week in movie theaters in Turkey, Austria and Germany, is a Rambo-like action story involving Turkish gunmen who seek revenge against a tyrannical occupying army.

In this version, however, at $10 million the most expensive movie ever made in Turkey, the enemy is no oppressive third-world dictatorship. The commander's name is Sam — as in uncle — and the opposing forces are the Americans, who are being punished for offenses against Turkish as well as Iraqi pride and honor.

The commander, Sam William Marshall, played by an American actor, Billy Zane, is a sociopath, killing people without a second's thought and claiming that he is doing God's will. While fictional, some of the movie is based in part on real events, and many of the scenes elicit knowing looks from the audience. The opening sequence portrays an incident that made headlines here in 2003, when a group of Turkish special forces soldiers in Iraq were taken into custody by American marines. The Turks, mistaken for insurgents, were handcuffed and held with hoods over their heads, which rankled many Turks.

Other scenes show ruthless marines killing Iraqis and soldiers mistreating inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as an American Jewish surgeon, played by Gary Busey, who takes what look like kidneys from inmates during surgery to New York, London and Israel — all, according to the screenwriter, Bahadir Ozdener, inspired by real events.

"These were only a few of the human rights violations by the U.S. in Iraq that the press covered and we followed," Mr. Ozdener said. "We did not intend to insult American people or their values, but only wanted to portray a real tragedy there."

The plot focuses on the hooding incident and its aftermath. The commander of the Turkish soldiers returns home in humiliation, believing that his honor has been so compromised that he has no choice but to commit suicide. But he leaves a note to the hero, a Turkish intelligence agent named Polat Alemdar, pleading with him to defend the country's honor that he had so disserved. So Alemdar leads a small team of special operations soldiers into northern Iraq, where they are astonished and outraged at what they find.

"They were after the man who insulted the Turkish soldiers, but they couldn't believe their eyes when they saw the situation there," reads the movie's Web site. "The people of Iraq's values, personalities and history were completely being disregarded. The desired new order was forcing an unacceptable change on the people. The one who is responsible for these unendurable crimes against humanity is a Special Forces commander called Sam William Marshall."

Marshall then orders a raid on a wedding, where trigger-happy marines get spooked and kill scores of civilians. It is all in pursuit of his plan to pacify the people through intimidation and violence, all according to God's will and for their own good. Until, ultimately, Alemdar catches up with him.

Mr. Zane, who got his start in "Back to the Future" and has a great number of grade B credits since then, said he was not bothered by the movie's anti-American tone, adding that the horrors of war should be exposed. "I acted in this movie because I'm a pacifist," he said in a televised interview. "I'm against all kinds of war."

Whatever its artistic merits, the movie — which has already broken Turkish box office records — has highlighted a growing discrepancy in how America is seen in Turkey.

Officially, the two governments have been enjoying much improved relations after a low point in 2003, when Turkey refused to allow American troops to operate from its territory to invade Iraq. On the street, however, public opinion of America has been steadily declining since the invasion and the disclosures about the abuse at Abu Ghraib and the "rendition" and torture of suspected members of Al Qaeda in secret prisons.

Outwardly, the two countries are committed partners in fighting terrorism. But Turkey has been fighting with Kurdish separatists seeking independence since the 1980's, and the United States, along with the European Union, lists the Kurdish Workers Party, known as the P.K.K., as a terrorist organization.

With the invasion of Iraq, however, the United States military has been reluctant to act against the P.K.K., allowing them to operate freely in northern Iraq, which has distressed many Turks. "No matter how good our official relations are, the P.K.K. issue is a wall against all our bilateral efforts for the better," said Egemen Bagis, foreign policy adviser to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister. "Capture of the rebels by the American forces in Iraq would demolish this wall overnight, and cause U.S. popularity to surge."

To make matters worse, from a Turkish perspective, Washington has tolerated a de facto Kurdish state in northern Iraq. "People think that the U.S. supports an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and therefore threatens the unity of Turkish land," said Nilufer Narli, a sociology professor at Bahcesehir University here.

As a result, popular opinion of the United States has been steadily declining. Anti-American novels, including one that portrays a war between the United States and Turkey, have been selling briskly, and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" was a best seller last year.

Despite its popularity, the film has not touched off widespread anti-American violence or prompted any street demonstrations.

"It doesn't show anything that we did not already know," said Fahri Kaya, 22-year-old private security guard. "It was more like a group therapy that gave people a chance to let go of their negative feelings against what's been happening in Iraq as they shouted, clapped and cried."

Despite the movie's success, Mr. Bagis said it would take more than that to shred the countries' good relations.

"Our alliance with the United States has very strong roots," he said. "A movie or a book just cannot destroy it."

February 15, 2006

Quick Rise for Purveyors of Propaganda in Iraq
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — Two years ago, Christian Bailey and Paige Craig were living in a half-renovated Washington group house, with a string of failed startup companies behind them.

Mr. Bailey, a boyish-looking Briton, and Mr. Craig, a chain-smoking former Marine sergeant, then began winning multimillion-dollar contracts with the United States military to produce propaganda in Iraq.

Now their company, Lincoln Group, works out of elegant offices along Pennsylvania Avenue and sponsors polo matches in Virginia horse country. Mr. Bailey recently bought a million-dollar Georgetown row house. Mr. Craig drives a Jaguar and shows up for interviews accompanied by his "director of security," a beefy bodyguard.

The company's rise, though, has been built in part by exaggerated claims about its abilities and connections, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Lincoln Group employees and associates, and a review of company documents.

In collecting government money, Lincoln has followed a blueprint taught to Mr. Bailey by Daniel S. Peña Sr., a retired American businessman who described Mr. Bailey as a protégé.

Federal contracts in Washington can supply easy seed capital for a struggling entrepreneur, Mr. Peña says he advised a youthful Mr. Bailey in the mid-1990's when the two men started a short-lived technology company. "I told him, 'When in trouble, go to D.C.,' and the kid listened," Mr. Peña said.

Mr. Bailey defends his company's record, saying, "Lincoln Group successfully executes challenging assignments." He added that "teams are created from the best available resources."

Lincoln won its contracts after claiming to have partnerships with major media and advertising companies, former government officials with extensive Middle East experience, and ex-military officers with background in intelligence and psychological warfare, the documents show. But some of those companies and individuals say their associations were fleeting.

Lincoln has also run into problems delivering on work for the military after its partnerships with more experienced firms fell apart, company documents and interviews indicate. The firm has continued to bid for new business from the Pentagon and has hired two Washington lobbying firms to promote itself on Capitol Hill and with the Bush administration.

"They appear very professional on the surface, then you dig a little deeper and you find that they are pretty amateurish," said Jason Santamaria, a former Marine officer whom the company once described as a "strategic adviser."

The company's work in Iraq, where Mr. Bailey and Mr. Craig visit from time to time to direct operations, is facing growing scrutiny.

The Pentagon's inspector general last month opened an audit of Lincoln Group's contracts there, according to two Defense Department officials. A separate inquiry ordered by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, after disclosures late last year that Lincoln Group paid Iraqi publications to run one-sided stories by American soldiers, has been completed but not made public, military officials said.

A spokesman for General Casey, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, declined to comment on Lincoln Group, citing the ongoing investigation.

In interviews, Mr. Bailey, 30, and Mr. Craig, 31, said they had succeeded by anticipating the military's need for help communicating with and influencing the Iraqi public, just as the insurgency was building. "We saw that it was very hard for the U.S. to do that work," Mr. Bailey said. "They didn't do media and outreach very well. We had local offices in a tough environment where traditional U.S. contractors would not operate."

He disputed suggestions that Lincoln had experienced difficulty delivering on work for the military, saying the firm had "successfully executed" more than 20 contracts from the Defense Department.

Lincoln's roster of advisers and other businesses assisting it has continually changed, Mr. Craig said, because "our work in often hostile environments has occasionally proved to be too risky or challenging for some of our partners."

Little in Mr. Bailey's background indicated he would end up doing propaganda work in Iraq. Born in Britain as Christian Jozefowicz, he changed his name when he graduated from Oxford University and moved to San Francisco during the late-1990's dot-com boom.

There he founded or advised several companies and plunged into the Silicon Valley social scene, according to Mr. Bailey and several friends and former business associates. Among the companies were Express Action, a company that planned to develop an Internet service to calculate duties on overseas purchases, and Motion Power, which intended to invent a shoe that would generate its own electrical power to run portable consumer devices.

"You would have been proud had you seen this 23-year-old kid pitching, with no product, no customers, no business plan," Mr. Bailey wrote in a letter to Mr. Peña, describing how he raised $15 million from investors for Express Action.

Mr. Bailey later moved to New York and sought investors for an investment fund, according to documents filed with the National Futures Association. In 2003, he moved to Washington.

Mr. Craig's path to the capital began when he dropped out of West Point to pursue, he says, his interests in business and national security.

Enlisting in the Marines in 1995, he began working in military intelligence. He earned an undergraduate degree in information technology while stationed in Okinawa and Australia through the University of Maryland and a masters in business administration from National University, which runs academic programs on military bases. He left the Marines in 2000.

By 2004, Mr. Bailey had moved into Mr. Craig's house near downtown Washington, and the two had formed the company that eventually became Lincoln Group.

Their original goal was to make money exploiting Iraq's most obvious surplus — its shattered infrastructure. But those efforts faltered.

A project to export scrap metal fell apart after the Iraqi government banned scrap exports in 2004, Mr. Bailey said. A pile of scrap metal, purchased with a loan from an Indonesian bank, has been sitting in Basra ever since, according to two ex-employees. Like several other former Lincoln workers, they asked to remain anonymous because they had signed confidentiality agreements with the company or still dealt with the firm.

Lincoln also spent about $50,000 for two portable brick-making machines from Texas. The company had hoped to set up a brick plant near Mosul, where the demand for construction materials was vast, according to a presentation Mr. Bailey made to potential investors in Dubai. The machines, though, were principally designed for homeowners or small contractors. Lincoln would not comment on the project.

Eventually, Lincoln began working with the American military, which was spending millions on contractors for a broad range of services. The firm rented a one-story house inside the Green Zone, the heavily fortified government compound in central Baghdad. Furnished with two sofas and a sheet of plywood that served as a desk, the house had a single telephone and an overloaded electrical outlet.

Lincoln formed a partnership with The Rendon Group, a Washington company with close ties to the Bush administration, and won a $5 million Pentagon contract to help inform Iraqis about the American-led effort to defeat the insurgency and form a new government. One contract requirement was to get Iraqi publications to run articles written by the military, according to several ex-Lincoln employees.

Rendon soon dropped out and Lincoln handled the contract alone. But the company had fewer than two dozen workers and little experience with public relations, according to several ex-employees.

Problems arose from the start. In a 2004 briefing to the military, Lincoln conceded that it was "not yet fully staffed" and that "media monitoring software" required by the contract was "not ready."

And the government did not provide that much work at first. The military's public affairs office produced only a few articles a day during that period, one Lincoln ex-employee said. A small State Department contract to assist small businesses had just been cancelled, he said, and the firm was having difficulty making its payroll.

Lincoln lacked the armored vehicles or security guards employed by more established contractors. When venturing outside the Green Zone, employees would grab weapons and climb into one of two beat-up Proton sedans, which employees were told were chosen to blend in with dilapidated Iraqi vehicles on the streets.

After winning a small contract from the Marines to do polling, the company hired Iraqis to go door-to-door in Anbar Province with questionnaires. To protect themselves from possible insurgent reprisals, they were told to say they were working for an Iraqi university, according to a former Lincoln employee.

Last August, gunmen came to the home of one of the Iraqi workers, killing him and three others, according to an ex- employee. Mr. Bailey said it was not clear whether the killing was related to the polling, but the company decided to move a Lincoln office staffed by Iraqis in downtown Baghdad to a less noticeable location.

Back in the United States, Mr. Bailey and Mr. Craig worked to drum up more business.

In late 2004, Mr. Craig traveled to Fort Bragg, N.C., to meet with officers of the 18th Airborne Corps, which was preparing take over management of Lincoln's public affairs contract in Iraq, according to a former employee and company documents. Despite the problems with the existing work, Lincoln said it could assist the military in the more secretive realm of "information operations," according to a transcript of the briefing. Unlike public affairs work, information operations are meant to influence and help defeat foreign adversaries, using deception, if necessary.

The briefing also touted the firm's "strategic advisers," including Mr. Santamaria, the former Marine officer, who received a master's degree from the Wharton business school and was co-author of a business book called "The Marine Corps Way."

Mr. Santamaria said he reviewed several investment proposals for Lincoln during a two-week association in late 2004. But after becoming "concerned about their methods," he said, "I severed ties with them as quickly as I could."

A Lincoln spokesman, William Dixon, said "it was a mistake" to include Mr. Santamaria's name in the December briefing because he was no longer affiliated with the company.

Lincoln may simply have been following another principle taught by Mr. Peña. "How do you create an instant track record?" Mr. Peña says he told Mr. Bailey. "You joint-venture with someone who has a track record."

Early last summer, military commanders made Lincoln Group the main civilian contractor for carrying out an aggressive propaganda campaign in Anbar Province, known as the Western Mission project. Over the next several months, the military transferred tens of millions of dollars to Lincoln for the project, records show.

The company hired dozens of employees, including academics and former military personnel, as well as hundreds of contract workers in Iraq and elsewhere, a number that fluctuates by contract requirements, according to Mr. Dixon, the Lincoln spokesman.

With the new duties came substantial new requirements, including producing television and radio ads, buying newspaper ads and placing many more articles in the Iraqi press. The military also approved paying Iraqi editors to run stories, according to ex-Lincoln employees.

Lincoln also enlisted the New York advertising executive Jerry Della Femina, chairman of Della Femina Rothschild Jeary & Partners. Mr. Della Femina said he was introduced to Mr. Craig last spring by a Washington lobbyist.

Mr. Della Femina said his firm "did a great deal of work" on advertising ideas for Lincoln to present to the military's Special Operations Command, which last summer was soliciting bids for contracts, potentially worth millions, for psychological operations.

Lincoln listed Mr. Della Femina as a "creative director" in materials presented last spring at a meeting with Special Operations officers in Tampa. But Mr. Della Femina said his firm pulled out before executing any of the ideas. Three months after ending the collaboration, Mr. Della Femina said, he discovered that Lincoln's Web site listed him as one of its partners.

"I was surprised that they had our name on their Web site in the first place," he said.

After he asked that his name be removed, Mr. Craig said, "we honored his request within the week."

By that time, Lincoln had already been notified by Special Operations Command that it and two other companies had been chosen to compete for work under the contract.

Lincoln later told Special Operations Command that one of its principal subcontractors was Omnicom Group Inc. of New York, an advertising and marketing conglomerate. A proposal signed by Mr. Bailey in October said Lincoln "has exploited the extensive experience and expertise of the Omnicom Group."

But Pat Sloan, an Omnicom spokeswoman, said she could find no evidence it has ever worked with Lincoln Group. "We're not aware of any relationship with Lincoln Group," she said. She noted that Omnicom had once owned 49 percent of Mr. Della Femina's agency but had sold the stake in early 2005. Michael J. Jeary, president of Mr. Della Femina's agency, said Lincoln's claim of Omnicom as a subcontractor was an "honest mistake" because he had never told the firm Omnicom had sold its minority stake.

Although Lincoln Group's work in Iraq is now under scrutiny in two Pentagon investigations, the firm is hunting for more government work. Last month, Mr. Bailey attended a going-away reception at the Virginia condominium of a mid-level government employee on her way to a new job at the American Embassy in Baghdad. Her job: overseeing contracts.

ublished on Thursday, January 16, 2006 by the Associated Press
Bush Plans Huge Propaganda Campaign in Iran
· Congress asked for $75m to fund programme
by Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger


The Bush administration made an emergency request to Congress yesterday for a seven-fold increase in funding to mount the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Tehran government, in a further sign of the worsening crisis between Iran and the west.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said the $75m (£43m) in extra funds, on top of $10m already allocated for later this year, would be used to broadcast US radio and television programmes into Iran, help pay for Iranians to study in America and support pro-democracy groups inside the country.

Although US officials acknowledge the limitations of such a campaign, the state department is determined to press ahead with measures that include extending the government-run Voice of America's Farsi service from a few hours a day to round-the-clock coverage.

The sudden budget request, which follows an outlay of only $4m over the last two years, is to be accompanied by a diplomatic drive by Ms Rice to discuss Tehran's suspect nuclear weapons programme. She is to begin with a visit to Gulf states. Ms Rice told the Senate foreign affairs committee that Iranian leaders "have now crossed a point where they are in open defiance of the international community".

She added: "The United States will actively confront the aggressive policies of the Iranian regime. At the same time, we will work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy in their country."

The US is to increase funds to Iranian non-governmental bodies that promote democracy, human rights and trade unionism. It began funding such bodies last year for the first time since Washington broke off ties with Iran in 1980. A US official said all existing citizens' groups and non-governmental organisations in Iran had been heavily infiltrated by the Tehran government, so the US would seek to help build new dissident networks.

US officials depicted the new pro-democracy spending as just one side of a multi-faceted diplomatic offensive aimed at increasing pressure on Tehran. They said Ms Rice would make Iran a focal point of her talks with Middle East leaders in her tour next week, put it centre-stage at the upcoming G8 meeting in Moscow, and call a meeting of political directors from the Nato alliance in late March or April solely to talk about policy towards Iran.

US propaganda efforts in the Middle East since September 11 have been relatively unsuccessful. Analysts say its Arabic news station al-Hurra (the Free One) is widely regarded with suspicion in the Middle East and has poor listening figures.

The move follows talks in Washington last week with British diplomats specialising in Iran. The Foreign Office yesterday welcomed the US move, noting it meant the continued pursuit of diplomatic means rather than hints of military action.

The Foreign Office funds the BBC World Service, whose Persian service has built a following in Iran. This month Iran began blocking the Persian service website.

A senior US official claimed there was now "a broad degree of concern" in the Middle East and around the world about the recent actions taken by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that the proposed US offensive had been greeted "very enthusiastically".

The stand-off between Iran and the west worsened on Tuesday when an Iranian official said Tehran had resumed small-scale uranium enrichment, a necessary step towards achieving a nuclear weapons capability.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Fear is one of the best sales tactics on the face of the planet. The propagation of fear is the sole goal of several industries, including it seems, our government.....

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"