The Terrorist Dictionary informs us that the Pentagon has spent at least $6.7 Billion on the Joint IED Defeat Organization to counteract the effects of IEDs in Iraq. This money employs “thousands of private contractors” to – get this now, not find better armor to resist the weapons, nor better technology to detect them, but merely to reduce their influence as “Weapons of Strategic Influence.

Bombs killing and maiming the troops is bad, but Americans being influenced by the knowledge of what these bombs do is a more serious threat.

As the death toll and the maimed escalate, Mr Bu$h has requested $6.4 Billion for next year.

According to its website, the JIEDDO's mission is "to eliminate IEDs as weapons of strategic influence."

So the problem with IEDs isn't that they kill or injure our troops. It's that they influence public opinion. They are weapons of propaganda.

"It can be mitigated, minimized, made into a nuisance," said Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs (ret.), the JIEDDO director, taking a page from John Kerry's anti-terrorism playbook.

How do we defeat "weapons of strategic influence"? Not by outfitting our troops with armor. Not by improving our intelligence and infiltration of insurgency groups. No.

We defeat them by funding sources of counter-propaganda: pro-war think tanks, pundits, and bloggers.

It’s a near-perfect embodiment of that 4th generational warfare theory that ideas are more deadly than bullets. Well, considering the effect our propaganda has had in the Middle East over the last five years I’d say it’s time to buy more bullets, or hire some adults to make peace.

The damage Donald Rumsfeld did to our Army extends far beyond his arrogance and lack of knowledge. His clumsy and fascistic attempts to control the media through message manipulation lead logically to yet one more cesspool of office drones trying to create “good news” and force the media, and therefore the public, to focus only on happy news as opposed to reality. Germans who lived through WWII on the home front told me that radio news would proclaim great victories on the Eastern front, and as they compared the news reports to maps, they saw the “victories” were slowly moving westward.

This inability to report truthfully was a signifier of a despotic regime, and Americans would be well-advised to consider the lessons of history when viewing this little ego-adventure in the sand.

Notice also that the little JIEDDO’s antheap in northern Virginia employs many contractors, which is a euphemism for graft to the party faithful. Most of it of course goes to the propaganda mills like AEI, but surely some trickles down to third-tier warbloggers like Michelle Malkin and the Flopping Ace. After all, this is a Republican economic operation, and they developed trickle-down economics.

There is no scarcity of lunacy on the nitrogen-breathing side of the universe as they twist and turn, trying to turn back the hands of the clock.

A commenter over there suggests the obvious solution: ban journalists and cameras from Iraq. That way they can have their never-ending victories and their painted schools. Since cameras and journalists are already banned at Dover and Andrews Air Bases, where the wounded and dead arrive, all they have to do is find some way to keep reporters and cameras out of the military hospitals.

A tip of the too-small Kevlar helmet to Armchair Generalist.