Friday, October 26, 2007

Freedom to Distort


The United States government doesn't care to give its citizens an open and honest picture of its performance. Proof lies in a recent event hosted by FEMA and an ongoing practice by the Pentagon. A supposed "press conference" on the handling of the California wildfire emergency, reporters were actual FEMA employees. FEMA later apologized, calling the action "inexcusable and offensive." If only they had a ready made group of pseudo reporters at their beckon call.

The Pentagon has a public relations war room that caters to right wing bloggers. It's called the Blogger's Roundtable. The military brass has daily conference calls with enrolled bloggers to spread the good news. Many people reached overload on the debacle in Iraq long ago. It's difficult to face the millions displaced as in or out of country refugees. It's hard to look at the promises of freedom and democracy that ring hollow from Paul Bremer's order #17 putting private contractors above the law and George Bush's Executive Order 13303 which puts Iraq's oil industry and those working inside it above that same law.

After the State Department's recent performance on security contracts, it seems they could use a Blogger's Roundtable. Someone needs to share what's going on as news reports hit showing the government doesn't know what it got for $1.2 billion paid to DynCorp to train Iraqi police.

The man who promised to run an open and transparent government after his swearing in in early 2001 has delivered neither. Apparently we have the freedom to distort. Thus it must be exported...