Ed&Pub's Greg Mitchell Follows Up on US Propaganda on al Zarqawi et al

I couldn't believe this story which I highlighted yesterday got almost no attention today - the media was too busy trying to discredit Sy Hersh today for his "we're gonna nuke Iran" article - specifically, that the US government has planted propaganda to increase the supposed importance of terrorist players like al Zarqawi. But at least Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell was paying attention.

I encourage you to read the piece in its entirely, but here's a snippy-snippet:

“Leaks to reporters from U.S. officials in Iraq are common, but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter is rare,” Ricks observed. He quoted Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's chief spokesman when the propaganda campaign began in 2004: "We trusted Dexter to write an accurate story, and we gave him a good scoop."

Filkins, in an e-mail to Ricks, said he assumed the military was releasing the Zarqawi letter "because it had decided it was in its best interest to have it publicized." He told Ricks he was skeptical about the document's authenticity then, and remains so now.

But Ricks' article, if anything, underplays the impact of the letter in February 2004--and if Filkins had qualms about its authenticity, it hardly deterred him and his paper from giving it serious, and largely uncritical, attention.