No Iraq Trip for Rep. Who Opposed Bush on Ports

Staff / Truthdig Mar 4, 2006 The prominent opposition of Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) to Bush's Dubai Ports deal may have earned him some punishment from the White House: The Pentagon isn't providing him a plane for his planned delegation to Iraq. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Army Pays Nearly All Disputed Halliburton Charges

Staff / Truthdig Feb 27, 2006 The military contractor will get reimbursed for nearly all its disputed costs in connection with a $2.41-billion no-bid contract to deliver supplies to Iraq, despite the Pentagon's findings that more than $250 million of that was "potentially excessive or unjustified." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Iraq Not ‘Standing Up’ Anytime Soon

Staff / Truthdig Feb 27, 2006 The Iraqi army now has ZERO battalions capable of fighting the insurgency without U.S. support. (The one battle-worthy battalion that the White House was so proud of has been downgraded.) Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Navy Warned Pentagon on Torture

Staff / Truthdig Feb 20, 2006 Two years before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the Navy's general counsel warned the Pentagon that its wink-and-nod policies on torture would invite abuse, reports The New Yorker. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Joint Chiefs Protest a Cartoon

Staff / Truthdig Feb 2, 2006 All six Joint Chiefs of Staff write a very rare letter to the editor of the Washington Post, protesting an editorial cartoon by Tom Toles, which they say demeans wounded American soldiers. | story (Broken by AMERICAblog)Well, despite the fact that Toles has a valid satirical point to make about the Pentagon's overextension of troops in the field, we have to wonder: With the insurgency gaining strength every day, and reconstruction efforts crippled by high-level incompetency, this cartoon is what's upsetting our nation's military leadership? Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Pentagon Propaganda Finding Its Way Back to U.S.

Staff / Truthdig Jan 28, 2006 A Georgetown think tank secures the release of a secret 2003 Rumsfeld-approved "road map" for psychological warfare abroad. | postAccording to the document, our government takes no responsibility for propaganda that boomerangs and returns home--as long as the U.S. public isn't "targeted." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Army Stretched to the Breaking Point, Study Finds

Staff / Truthdig Jan 25, 2006 Whoa, whoa, whoa, dock those Swift Boats! It's not a liberal Democratic senator making the charge. It's a retired Army officer working for the Pentagon. | story Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Gov’t Agency Paints Dire Picture of ‘Out-of-Control’ Iraq

Staff / Truthdig Jan 18, 2006 This official U.S. assessment is much darker than what the Pentagon is peddling to the public. It was drawn up for contractors bidding on rehab projects. | storyCall us cynical, but why exactly are they getting different intel than the rest of us? Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Iraqi Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda

Staff / Truthdig Jan 2, 2006 The same Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print pro-U.S. stories written by American soldiers masquerading as indepenent journalists has also been "compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work," according to the New York Times. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Chalabi Zeros Out

Staff / Truthdig Dec 27, 2005 The slate headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a man the Pentagon once packaged as the George Washington of Iraq, may not get a single seat in the new Iraqi legislature. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Propaganda? What Propaganda?

Robert Scheer / Truthdig Dec 13, 2005 "There is no U.S. footprint" is the proud boast of one of the Pentagon's propaganda contractors, and it prompts the questions: Why not? What are they ashamed of? One thing is that most of us in this democracy did not know we were paying for this vast official propaganda operation until we read it in Jeff Gerth's excellent investigative piece in The New York Times. A truly free press is our most valuable export, and its reputation should not be undermined by the Bushies' addiction to government propaganda. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Congress Should Probe U.S. Propaganda in Iraqi Press

Robert Scheer / Truthdig Dec 2, 2005 Now that the Pentagon has admitted to subverting the fragile efforts to build democracy in Iraq, will Congress begin an investigation of how this happened? The first question should be who in the Pentagon decided that he or she had the right to put words in the mouth of the Prophet Muhammad. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )