Well it's the way it's done at home

"THE US military has named a navy admiral to investigate an "information operations" program that paid some Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles, defence officials said today. News of the program last week sparked complaints from some members of the US Congress who said paying Iraqi media to print positive articles could undermine the credibility of the United States at a time when Washington was trying to foster democratic institutions, including a free media, in Iraq.

Rear Admiral Scott Van Buskirk, already serving in the US military command in Iraq, will conduct a fact-finding investigation that could lead to recommendations on possible punishment, officials said. "He has been given authority to do as thorough a job as necessary to determine whether the placement of stories is in accordance with all legal guidelines and is appropriate to the situation," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said by email.

Lt-Col Johnson indicated that the program is continuing. "There has been no directive by MNF-I (the US command in Iraq) for the program to ... discontinue operations."

The command said it would review whether the program was functioning differently than intended and would investigate any improprieties. The US command in Iraq has argued that it is important to take steps to counter what it says is misinformation and propaganda spread by insurgents and aimed at discrediting the United States and the US-backed Iraqi government. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday criticised news coverage of the matter, saying, "That story has been pounded in the media ... but we don't know what the facts are yet."

Mr Rumsfeld also questioned whether Lincoln Group, the Washington-based defence contractor given a multi-million dollar contract to help deal with the Iraqi media, was implementing the policy properly. Lincoln Group issued a statement last week saying that "we counter the lies, intimidation and pure evil of terror with factual stories"."

US probe into planted stories

Frankly, the leftist wimpies have been way off the mark in their derision of this matter. They say this is no way to try to export democracy to Iraq. They say we should be setting a better example of the way democracy works. Who are they zooming? Isn't that the way democracy is practiced in the West?