Same Old Tricks

I have been encouraged lately by what seemed a more balanced approach to reporting the news by CNN recently but teaser paragraphs like this just show me that they are still marching to the Whitehouse media machine's beat though slighly out of step. The quote below connects the latest suicide strikes to Murtha's comments yesterday about withdrawal. This is by association and not directly but it will have the same effect in many minds. If you read the entire article you will get a different picture but to a large degree all of the damage is already done by the lead in.

Suicide bombers killed dozens of people today in Baghdad and near the Iranian border in Khanaqin. The U.S. military said 55 people were killed; Iraqi police reported 65 dead. The blasts came a day after Rep. John Murtha, a Democratic hawk on defense issues, sparked a firestorm of debate when he called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

As a side note, there is a quote from Scott McClellan that gives us a preview of the latest administration psyop tactic for attacking the questioners of the Iraq debacle.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan compared Murtha with anti-war filmmaker Michael Moore and echoed earlier statements by House GOP leaders in accusing him of "surrender."

Linking the concept and word "withdraw" with the emotionally loaded word "surrender". If you talk about withdrawal you are talking about the U.S. losing in Iraq and surrendering to Osama.

This is psyops and brainwashing at its finest. Keep and eye out for other examples, which there will be, of the Whitehouse taking legitimate words used in the Iraq discussion and linking them to emotionally charged words such as "losing", "surrender" and "defeat".

This kind of stuff only works if you accept the linkage and legitimize it in your mind.