Oh, what a lovely war

March 31st, 2006 at 16:35 Björn Hallberg

The Independent has documented some of the discrepancies between the news written up by the Lincoln Group and reality.

“The Iraqis did not know who was writing the stories and the US troops did not know who the Iraqis were,” said the former employee, who declined to be named. It is not known whether the stories included here were ever printed or simply prepared for publication, but he said it was normal for around 10 stories a week to be printed. He said US troops routinely fabricated their quotations.

John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based defence think-tank, who reviewed some of the Lincoln Group stories, said he found them unconvincing. “Anybody who knows about propaganda knows the first rule of propaganda is that it should not look like propaganda,” he said. “It’s embarrassing enough that [the US military] got caught … but then for their product to be so cheesy … It’s just embarrassing.”

Indeed, most of the texts sound like they have been copypasted from “Starship Troopers” or “1984.”

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