America Supports Propaganda

[babylonsister]

http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2295


America Supports Propaganda
by: RockRichard
Fri Dec 12, 2008 at 22:39:05 PM EST


Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, you've heard or seen PSAs for the government program America Supports You. The program was originally established to be an avenue for Americans to show their support for deployed service members. That's an idea we can all get behind.

However, soon after its inception, the program supported actual troops less and less, and began using ASY to drum up support for a war that was growing less and less popular:

Meanwhile, ASY began to spend millions - not to help the troops, the Inspector General says, but to help itself. "Instead of focusing on its primary mission of showcasing and communicating support to the troops and their families, the ASY program focus building or soliciting support from the public," the Inspector General's report notes. In 2006 and 2007, for instance, more than $600,000 was spent ginning up support for America Supports You among schoolchildren. Another $165,000 went to a pro-ASY concert aboard the USS Intrepid, docked on Manhattan's west side. And $15,000 went to actor and musician Gary Sinise's "Lt. Dan Band" to play a separate show. The report calls all of these "questionable and unregulated actions."

But propaganda wasn't the only misuse of the program. ASY became a flag wrapped vessel of money laundering, corruption and croneyism:

From fiscal years 2004 to 2007, the Inspector General's report notes, Barber funneled $8.8 million in contracts to the public relations firm Susan Davis International - to set up the myriad events, and to promote the ASY "brand."
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But what made it even harder to stomach was that Davis was a friend of {the Pentagon official in charge of ASY), and a well-known Republican operative, according to former Defense Department lawyer Diane Beaver.

Worse still, in the eyes of many, was that Barber used the Stars & Stripes newspaper as a kind of money-laundering service, to pay Davis and Semel. The paper is partially financed by the Pentagon, and was part of Barber's American Forces Information Service. But Stripes has a decades-long tradition of fierce independence. Editors were galled to discover that Barber's office was pouring money into the paper's coffers - and then paying Davis and Semel out of accounts with less congressional oversight and fewer spending restrictions than typical Defense Department funds.

The way the Wired article describes it, most of the corruption ends about the time Gates takes control of the Pentagon. But this should be a lesson as to why we can't let those who would rather sell a war than support a Soldier back into Washington.