The Defense Department wants to make sure Americans get the “right stuff” now that Mr Bu$h has decided we’re going to continue to occupy Iraq for as long as he occupies our Oval Office. The “right stuff” being, of course, the message that we’re winning.

Got that, you cheese-eating, liberal swine? Winning!!!

WASHINGTON -

Shaping the Bush administration's message on the Iraq war has taken on new fervor, just as anticipation is building for the September progress report from top military advisers.

For the Pentagon, getting out Iraq information will now include a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week Iraq Communications Desk that will pump out data from Baghdad - serving as what could be considered a campaign war room.

According to a memo circulated Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, is looking for personnel for what he called the high-priority effort to distribute Defense Department information on Iraq.

By gum, that’s just what we need. Some good news to stiffen the spines of those milquetoast Democrats who are sweating about our heroes being sent back to Iraq for five or six or nine tours. They’re happy and honored when they think about spending the next 20 or 30 years out there protecting ExxonMobil’s oil, and don’t you ever think otherwise.

Things will change once America starts hearing about those painted schools.

The Pentagon dismissed suggestions that the communications desk will be a message machine or propaganda tool, and instead said it is being set up to gather and distribute information from eight time zones away in a more efficient and timely manner.

"I would not characterize it as a war room," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Friday. "It's far less sinister than that. It's more like a library."

Morrell called it a "smarter way of doing business" and said the intent is to "create a central clearinghouse of information so we can pull in all that is coming out of Baghdad and Iraq and have it come into one point, so we can better be able to share it with people who are interested."

Some of the information collected, he said, would include data from briefings in Iraq, which take place when people on the U.S. East Coast are sleeping.

Holy Molasses on a chalupa! They’re going to put briefing information on the internet? Don’t they understand how sneaky and evil and dangerous the enemy is? They have computers and WiFi out there in those caves in Waziristan. This could be uglier than Geraldo Rivera drawing operational maps in the sand.

A curious man might wonder why the DoD feels it needs to create its own Iraq-dedicated flack shop when for the last 6 ½ year the press has happily swallowed any copwollop they were fed and loyally regurgitated it on paper and TV screen, with nary a question or murmur of disbelief.

Surely Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert can’t be knocking them back on their heels that much?

Defense officials familiar with the plan said it will provide information to other federal agencies, including the White House and State Department, so that officials can speak more consistently and accurately about the war.[emph added]

Giggle. That’ll happen.

To learn more about Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, see here, where we discussed his last major project at the Pentagon. Mr Smith established a rapid response office to armtwist news organizations to change their reporting when DoD felt it was unfair (or too accurate.)