U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press
`As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.
The articles, written by U.S. military “information operations” troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. [..]
Iraqi newspaper editors reacted with a mixture of shock and shrugs when told they were targets of a U.S. military psychological operation. [..]
[One editor] said that if his cash-strapped paper had known that these stories were from the U.S. government, he would have “charged much, much more” to publish them.’
