Propaganda and Bribery - The Bush Administration Will Pay Both at Home and in Iraq for Buying Puff Pieces in the Media

BURN THE WITCH

It seems such a tiny, insignificant thing. Why worry about planting a little propaganda and bribing a few journalists when your men in the field are dying day after day? "This is war," says the Pentagon. Yes indeed, adds the sonorous senator who chairs the armed services committee, "this is war". And in war, of course, anything goes (even including bombing al-Jazeera) because ... well, it's war, isn't it?

So two linked stories rise, then fade away. Maybe there was outrage last week when the LA Times reported that the department of defence had hired a Washington company called Lincoln Green to harvest phoney tales of triumph written by US army personnel in Iraq - then, duly translated, feed them back to the "free" Baghdad press Donald Rumsfeld loves so much. Maybe eyebrows flickered when it emerged that some Iraqi reporters and editors are on America's payroll. Maybe the Arab world was still fuming over alleged threats to its favourite 24-hour news channel.

But, war changes - and excuses - everything. Events move on. We slide swiftly back to a status quo where politicians seek to make the media the villains of every piece. Re-enter Alastair Campbell, singing his greatest hits (against the BBC). The director of al-Jazeera arrives in Whitehall demanding to see Tony Blair, who turns out to be somewhere else. Dirty, dud yarns don't seem to matter a jot.