Pentagon PR

Ken Silverstein spies what he says are "court bloggers" in a program originally dubbed, according to one source, as "Surrogates Operation." He updates with this:

Before these bloggers start to complain that they’ve done nothing wrong, I’d like to ask how they would feel if a group of handpicked, administration-friendly liberal bloggers had done the same thing during the Clinton years. I believe they would have objected vociferously–and I would have agreed with them. No one, on any side, should let themselves be used to spread the administration’s gospel. At least not anyone who can pretend to journalistic standards.

I'm not sure I'd be as upset. The Pentagon has a policy of appealing to partisans under this administration. Hence the Petraeus-Hewitt interview. It doesn't help sell the policy to those who don't already agree with it. But we've discovered that the Bush GOP is uninterested in persuasion. It's interested in mobilization. The only problem is that the core group they are mobilizing keeps getting smaller and smaller.