How is the Lincoln Group spinning the US authorizing torture? As Bush's poll numbers since November indicate, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the administration's efforts to attempt to covertly buy good press in Iraq through such an outfit as Lincoln. After all, so much for the spin machine employed by this administration at home or abroad when the single most used word American citizens tell pollsters they associate with the president is "incompetent" -- (closely followed by "idiot" and "liar," according to Pew). In some ways, perhaps the best Lincoln's funders could hope for is that its influence campaign convinces Iraqis that the US's foibles in Iraq are the result of incompetence rather than some malign intent. The White House's position on torture would seem however to erode the "bad apples" defense the Bush White House characteristically employs when acts of gross abuse by US personnel are uncovered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and eat away at the US's image in the world, far more than any Pentagon-funded Lincoln Group influence campaign could ever manage to counteract. Why not reevaluate the policies that erode US soft power rather than throw a few hundred million dollars at it through the likes of Lincoln? As Bush's own tanking credibility among the US populace indicates, spin -- covert and overt -- can only take you so far.

Posted by Laura at March 26, 2006 12:09 AM