Propagandapalooza

The pay-for-play continues:

A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees.

The Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations company…spent about $144,000 on the program from May to September. It is unclear how much of this money, if any, went to the religious scholars, whose identities could not be learned.

More on propaganda in Iraq here, and a recap of some of the propaganda at home:

The Bush administration was found guilty of violating the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda after the Office of National Drug Control Policy produced and distributed television news segments about the effects of drug use among young people, and was also found guilty of the dissemination of covert propaganda after paying columnist Armstrong Williams to produce favorable coverage of No Child Left Behind. Later, it was revealed the Bush administration had also paid synidacted columnists Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus to endorse a Bush-approved marriage initiative. Additionally, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, ordered the removal of the words gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender from the title of a talk about preventing suicide in the GLBT community, and at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, made and distributed hundreds of television news segments during Bush’s first term, with many of them ending up in local news broadcasts across the country, without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

That’s quite a record. You know, it almost gives the impression that Bush’s policies are so bad, that the only people who will publicly support them have to get paid to do it.

Ahem.