http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20031...ge/121390.shtml
Not surprised by this turn of events!

Typical W-style crapola. Form letters which soldiers don't even realize are being distributed, all in an effort to paint the mess W created in the most positive light! And they wonder WHY no other countries--except Turkey, which has an interest in suppressing the Kurds' independence in northern Iraq--are at all interested in either contributing dollars or cannon fodder? Do W and company (Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, all the other wacko marketing fanatics and profiteers) think the entire world is just plain stupid?

I actually don't blame the military (and the pentagon which is undoubtedly behind this effort) for wanting to generate some positive PR. That'a what I would do also. generate some feel good letters for the hometown press.

But the bungling nature of this "good idea turned hellishly inept" is one more reason to think that not a lot of deep thinking is done by whoever is in charge.

I mean........ FORM LETTERS????? Would it have been that difficult to say, "hey. anyone wanna write letters to papers back home? We'll give you some free time to do it."

Did they re4ally think that the press is so inept and witless to not notice that all these letters are exactly the same?

Just incredibly bone-headed effort by Defense..... again. They really need to hire a good PR firm. or else stop assuming that everyone else is a blithering idiot.

Ah, yes, write a letter while surgeons are trying to pull shrapnel from your legs; or reattach your wrist; or your retina; or your eardrum; or while military psychologists are treating you for emotional trauma...etc.

The idea that you can simply SPIN and MARKET reality has totally gotten out of hand with W and Co. He's flying all over the country promoting a failed jobs program and an unnecessary war, and Cheney is burping ferocious rhetoric still tying Saddam to Al Qaeda (which even W has disavowed), and claiming the WMDs are in Iraq. Maybe they're all addicted to painkillers like Rush and can't tell the difference between truth and reality.

That's not the issue for some, though, is it? The suffering of the soldiers and Iraqi people be damned. Lie, and try to find a better marketing specialist. Psychotic, to say the least.

pretty sad huh ive heard my friends over there now they are really pushing this, you can be for damn sure when im in afghanistan no letters for this boy. its a very sad attempt by rumsfield and his cronies to build up support.
i just think its a real shame, the rabbi at my synagogue made a great speech at the services before Yom Kippur saying we need to leave iraq and leave iraq now and i fully support that. the sooner the better. it really upsets me about all the guys getting killed an injured every day just so some already rich bush cronies can get more money. its very obvious they had no exit stragetry and had no idea on how the people in iraq would react. Damn shame. I'd really like to thank all of you for the kind words to me about my upcoming deployment and i pass it on to my friends over there every day.

This is pathetic. At some point ChimpCo Inc. is going to have to call a spade a spade - this "war" was total fraud and failure.

I'm sure there are many soldiers in Iraq who have been mislead and believe in their hearts they are doing good. I feel so sorry for those soldiers who don't want to be there and are, quite probably, forced to sign their names to letters like this. I wish something could be done to bring all of our troops home. Our word for the day, boys and girls, is quagmire.

[ October 13, 2003, 08:39 AM: Message edited by: bobby78751 ]

I feel sorrier for those soldiers committing suicide. The numbers are untrustworthy because of the military's reticence to talk about it, but I can imagine that with a lot of young people entering the armed forces for financial or psychological reasons in the first place, getting stuck in this quagmire is somthing they were not prepared or trained for. Worst still a town here in Pennsylvania is reconsidering naming a VFW post after a soldier after it turns out he may have committed suicide. Pathetic. What patriots!

This column about the outrage also reveals, among other Orwellian tactics, that our latest Congressional team to visit Baghdad was FLOWN BACK TO KUWAIT every night of their "stay." A testament to how secure things are, along with Rep. Kay Granger's dazzling explanation of why the car-bomb attacks are *good news* for us!

Looks like the new Iraq "marketing"/PR campaign is in full swing....

Ignore those body bags,
LOOK, LOOK over here, we built a new SOCCER FIELD!!!!!

A soccer field, ah yes! Is it anywhere near the numerous UNSECURED weapons stashes that once belonged to Hussein?

Another point: why aren't the US media talking more about the very troubling issue of Turkish troops in a country with which Turkey has had problematic relations for some time? Not only are the Kurds threatened by Turkey's presence, but the mostly Shi'a Arabs probably aren't happy to have Sunni Turks (who are NOT Arab) standing alongside other Western occupiers, especially given the history of Ottoman domination of Iraq!

Are the idiots in the Pentagon also Vicodin addicts? Do they have any clue of how they're bungling this? I mean beyond trying to explain away the steady diet of attacks and murders of US soldiers, Iraqi officials, and the suicide bombings, which are occurring with increasing frequency?

There is an editorial in today's NYT about this:

Fighting the War at Home
Published: October 15, 2003 - NY Times
The Link to the below editorial
Letters home from the war front are some of the revered aspects of history, a treasury of soldiers' impressions and firsthand narratives that hold a value apart from the individual lives put firmly on the battle line. It's all the more disturbing, then, that an apparently orchestrated campaign of letter writing has arisen among some of the American forces in Iraq to highlight what are alleged to be overlooked success stories. What amounts to a warmly worded form letter telling of open-armed welcomes and rebuilt infrastructure was printed by hometown newspapers in the mistaken belief that it was the individual composition of the undersigned soldier in Kirkuk, a relatively peaceful city in Iraq. According to the Gannett News Service, which uncovered the deception, one soldier said his sergeant had distributed the letters to the squad, while another traced his to an Army public affairs officer.

The susceptibility of local editors to the letter, in which each Private Everyman describes Iraqi children "in their broken English shouting, `Thank you, Mister,' " is understandable. But the misleading letter, uncovered by Gannett after it was published in 11 newspapers, coincides with the Bush administration's renewed program of defending the war in an ambitious speaking campaign across the nation. With polls registering rising public doubts, the president and his aides are claiming that the news media unfairly play up negative developments and ignore progress in Iraq.

The Pentagon denies that there is any sanctioned propaganda drive behind the five-paragraph letter, but one soldier told of speaking to a public affairs officer about what he thought would be a news release, then being surprised to hear he was being presented as a letter writer whose words had been published in a newspaper back home.

Firm endorsements of the letter's description of the situation in Kirkuk have since been re-registered by most of the soldiers who were supposed to have written letters, but that matters little to anyone who ever marched in the military command system. The Pentagon should nip the form-letter barrage and make sure it is not repeated, if only because it is so counterproductive. Fakery is the worst possible way to answer the public's rising demand for information about the true state of affairs in Iraq.