The Bush administration is worried about the Pentagon's credibility, and with good reason.  The latest gambit in their war for the hearts and minds of the world is to have the newly created Office of Strategic Influence (doubtless named by the overworked Department of Orwellian Nomenclature) distribute false and misleading news stories in the foreign press.  Some Bush officials fear this might backfire, further undermining the War Department's already strained credibility.

The Pentagon has hired a former advertising executive to run its Influence office, and plans a coordinated effort to plant these self-serving stories.  To avoid detection, the stories will be provided by email from seemingly commercial dot-com sources rather than the usual dot-mil addresses.  They are hoping that they can fool enough of the people enough of the time to reverse the anti-American attitude that’s sweeping the world.

This covert scheme replaces an earlier, more public incarnation which had the US create and operate its own cable news network in the Middle East to compete with Qatar’s successful and respected Al Jazeera network.  Clearly they decided that co-opting existing media is better than going head-to-head against them.  The Pentagon knows it can’t win a fair fight of ideas.

But there's more at stake than whether foreigners believe the US spin on current events.  When this clearinghouse for propaganda gets rolling (it's likely been taking place on an ad hoc basis for some time), the truthfulness of any news story related to US government activities or interests will be suspect, and the scope of “US interests” grows daily.  If successful, the scheme will likely be adopted to support US businesses as well, complete with innuendoes of Airbus reliability problems preceding big airplane contracts.  As the White House acts more like the Kremlin, many prominent overseas news sources will look increasingly like Pravda.

In pursuing this policy, and actually having the cheek to publicize it, the Bush administration is again thumbing its nose at the foreign public.  Senior writers and editors are too savvy to be taken by the dot-com return addresses, which simply provide them with plausible deniability.  In countries with an independent press, prominent news outlets which accept these "free" stories rather than pay for real news, will cynically allow themselves to be bribed while counting on a gullible public to continue subsidizing profits by buying their product.  In much of Asia and the Middle East, where state-run media is more the norm, the carrot and stick approach will doubtless be applied behind the scenes to ensure that these planted stories are run.

In light of the US government's policy of supplying tainted news stories to overseas sources, is there any reason to trust their homeland pronouncements?  Wouldn't the pampered, sycophantic members of the Washington press corpse be justified in publicly questioning the veracity of the information they’re given at the next Pentagon briefing, or simply boycotting the entire charade, and doesn't their failure to do so prove their status as concubines of the state?

Implicit in this public announcement is that lies and spin are the Bush administration's only hope of swaying public opinion, and the tacit admission that their current terror campaign doesn't hold up under rational scrutiny.  Surely it's no coincidence that the hatching of this latest scheme follows on the heels of Bush's ill-advised and baseless "axis of evil" tirade, and the ceaseless saber-rattling over this week's bogeyman Saddam Hussein.

In order to create or maintain a reputation for impartiality in the face of this form of backdoor propaganda, reporters and media outlets both in the US and overseas must publicize the Pentagon's covert policy, and give notice that they will accept stories only from authenticated sources.  While the US government uses America’s victim status to justify an irresponsible foreign policy, we can hope that the rest of the world loudly rejects this latest gambit from Washington.