BDSMSM

This is really extraordinary. Greenwald listens to The Politico's Mike Allen talking to Hugh the Halfwit as he gushes over the brilliance of the guy who manipulates the media for the Cheney administration.

HH: Schmidt's -- by the way, I've never met him. I've heard about him for years. He went out and he ran Arnold's campaign, and he did a tremendous job.

MA: You have a great memory, and Steve is awesome.

HH: Where'd he go?

MA: He was a consultant to the McCain campaign, but he has his own business, they're in Sacramento, California, and he works a little bit with the Mercury Public Affairs group. But Steve is awesome, he's a bulldog, he's intense. He will call you up about these stories like, remember the story about John Kerry's house and the taxes on it?

HH: Yeah, yeah.

MA: I was so tired of hearing about that house, like I thought that whatever we were going to learn from that we'd already learned. But Steve was relentless about it, and --

HH: Why don't they put him in charge of war message management, because the Bush White House is just not good at this.

MA: Right, and this is part of the talent drain that's occurring in this White House -

HH: Yeah.

MA: - because as you know, Steve was a very high official in the Vice President's office -

HH: Right.

MA: And he also went over to Iraq to look at the communications capabilities, and he came back with a number of recommendations about even some of the logistical things to help people get those stories out. Now I think the military's getting smarter about it, as you know. . . .

HH: Yeah.

MA: The military organized the O'Hanlon-Pollack tour, and I didn't know until I read your interview with Mike O'Hanlon that they'd had an interview with General Petraeus . . . .

HH: Right.

MA: That had not been reported before. That was very fascinating. But I think that shows you that the military's getting better at this.

When Allen gushes that "the military's getting better at this," what he means by "this" is "media and political messaging about the war." As has been evident for months now, the U.S. military in Iraq has been devoting far more efforts to all sorts of propaganda campaigns designed to shape American public opinion about the war. Many of those media management efforts by the (absolutely nonpolitical) U.S. military have been shaped by the same individual responsible for media management in the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and, subsequently, in Dick Cheney's office.

"Steve is awesome... Remember that thing about Kerry's house?"

You would think that a member of the EMESSEM would, you know, revile members of the administration whose job it is to manipulate the press and get them to stenograph administration and Pentagon talking points. But in Mike Allen's case, you'd be wrong.

Wonder what size collar he wears.