One more example

Of the unbelievable abuse of power by this Administration.

This time? Well, they are paying Iraqi newspapers to run favorable stories. Some people might call that propaganda, but certainly those people are unpatriotic fools who don't support the troops and love terrorists.

And they know it's wrong!

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.

All the while...

It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.

Underscoring the importance U.S. officials place on development of a Western-style media, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein. The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.

Of course, they ARE shoing them how we do it here..

The Bush administration has come under criticism for distributing video and news stories in the United States without identifying the federal government as their source and for paying American journalists to promote administration policies, practices the Government Accountability Office has labeled "covert propaganda."

And of course, the theme of the entire war:

"Absolute truth was not an essential element of these stories," said the senior military official who spent this year in Iraq.

Read the whole thing. It's incredible.

I used to think nothing would be worse for this country than the 8 years with Bill Cinton as President - I was horribly, horribly wrong.