Bipartisan Congressional Bill Would Authorize the Use of Propaganda On Americans Living Inside America

Washington's Blog

Because Banning Propaganda “Ties the Hands of America’s Diplomatic Officials, Military, and Others by Inhibiting Our Ability to Effectively Communicate In a Credible Way”

Michael Hastings reports:

An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill….
The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.

The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State.

In a little noticed press release earlier in the week — buried beneath the other high-profile issues in the $642 billion defense bill, including indefinite detention and a prohibition on gay marriage at military installations — Thornberry warned that in the Internet age, the current law “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.”

The bill’s supporters say the informational material used overseas to influence foreign audiences is too good to not use at home, and that new techniques are needed to help fight Al-Qaeda, a borderless enemy whose own propaganda reaches Americans online.

Critics of the bill say there are ways to keep America safe without turning the massive information operations apparatus within the federal government against American citizens.

Little Caution Used in U.S. Drone Assassinations, Authorities Say

OpEdNews
Sherwood Ross

Although President Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser says caution is exercised when making drone attacks, official U.S. announcements often state that suspects are killed. This very word betrays the fact that every drone attack is a crime because it is illegal in any civilized society to kill suspects. The Pentagon and CIA killings are murder, pure and simple.

(Only last week, Washington announced it killed four "suspected militants" by drone attack in Pakistan, resulting in a formal protest from Islamabad "strongly condemning" the killings. "Such attacks are in total contravention of international law and established norms of interstate relations," the  Pakistan statement underscored.) 

Moreover, the Washington Post  quoted a Pakistani government official who reminded: "When a duly elected democratic Parliament says three times not to do this, and the U.S. keeps doing it, it undermines democracy." 

Presidential adviser John Brennan told a group of academicians at the Woodrow Wilson Center, "We only authorize a strike if we have a high degree of confidence that innocent civilians will not be injured or killed, except in the rarest of circumstances," Charlie Savage of The New York Times reports in the April 30th edition. 

But Brennan acknowledged "instances when -- despite the extraordinary precautions we take -- civilians have been accidentally injured, or worse, killed in these strikes. It is exceedingly rare, but it has happened. When it does, it pains us and we regret it deeply, as we do any time innocents are killed in war."