Greg Mitchell posted an saddening, incensing and conscience-rattling post today about the findings of further probing into the suicide of Colonel Ted Westhusing.  The beleaguered military ethics scholar left a suicide note, revealing the extent to which personal greed, corruption and lies behind the policy formation decisions and behavior of his commanders in Iraq left Westhusing guilt-ridden and plagued with despair, which, upon his return to the U.S., caused him to take his own life. As it turns out, one of the two commanders Westhusing was referring to was none other than David Petraeus, the point person behind the recent "surge" campaign.

Christian Miller reported in the L.A. Times that, "Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military."

Unfortunately, what is publicly known about the extent to which corruption and deceit is rooted in the activities of U.S.-led initiatives in Iraq is probably just the tip of the ice burg. Not only has the Pentagon manipulated the structure of power and responsibility to eliminate any system of accountability, but there have been increasingly eerie reports on the ways in which the American public has been receiving incomplete, absent, manipulated or slanted news coverage on the war (and how the DoD has been behind a large part of this).

Reports reveal that in the first quarter of 2008, media coverage of the war dropped to a meager 3.5 percent (at the height of Iraq War reporting, immediately following the initial invasion, reporting was at around 30 percent). Two details make this even more appalling: first, that this past month marks the bloodiest thirty-day period in more than six month regarding both U.S. troop casualties and Iraqi citizen casualties. Second, reports show that this drop in war coverage has allowed stories reporting on Britney Spears' personal woes to outnumber reports on the war.

It has long been a known fact that the administration has made it a personal policy not to do body counts, learning the lessons from Vietnam that visibility in casualties leads to public outcry. But two new reports indicate that the administration and their party supporters are stepping up efforts to stifle the information that reaches the American public about the reality in Iraq.

A report indicates that the Pentagon is considering hiring, commissioning, or co-opting bloggers to attempt to influence public opinion on the "internets:" The study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggests that "hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering." This coincides with a GOP strategy to bolster support for the presumed Republican nominee, McCain (a staunch supporter of the war) by launching multi-lateral attack campaigns against what they see as Democratic attempts to "legislate defeat" in Iraq. This strategy will consist of a steady stream of pro-war, anti-Democrat op-eds, speeches, blogs, and TV and radio ads.

Oddly enough, before the recent explosion of violence in Iraq, one of the key goals of the strategy was to bring the war to the forefront of the media. Something tells me they are reworking this aspect of the plan...

Bottom line: whether its through the tragedies of formerly deployed troops upon their return stateside, the depletion of our economic infrastructure by the careless and fraudulent spending of our tax money on the war, or the descent of our international reputation from the surfacing stories of contractor corrosion, the consequences of the administration's mishandling of the war will follow us home. We need to take action while our country still has some integrity to defend. Sign Progressive Future's petition to enforce accountability for the events that take place in Iraq in our name.