Department of Malicious Falsehoods

The Public Affairs Office at the Department of Defense has long figured as a redoubt for the Neoconservatives. At times, I've wondered about the name “Public Affairs.” Don't they really mean something more along the lines of “Department for the Political Instruction of Cadres”? I first marveled at their brazen misconduct and proclivity for heavily ornamented deceit when Seymour Hersh came out with a major story in the New Yorker describing the “Cooper Green” program. The program operated under the authority of Stephen Cambone and with an okay from Donald Rumsfeld and it authorized the use of illegal interrogation techniques, which we subsequently learned were the hallmark of the Bush Administration. I had discovered some key aspects of this program shortly before Hersh's article and discussed them with Hersh. After his article appeared, it was aggressively denounced by the Public Affairs Office as some sort of journalistic hysteria, and they proceeded to go after Hersh himself. I recall reading the statement and puzzling over it. They knew, and I knew, and Hersh knew that their statement was dishonest. Why would the Department of Defense issue a grossly false statement like that and then proceed several steps beyond it, assaulting the integrity of one of the nation's premier exposé journalists?...

~ Read on... ~