Yes, "lettergate" is a painfully bad construction, I know. But I couldn't pass up using it because it's a midnight-movie-bad kind of word.
This is getting more attention in the press. USA Today reports that 500 of the letters were sent out. Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, the commanding officer of 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, is claiming they were his idea.
Dana Milbank in the Washington Post puts this mass-mailing campaign in the context of Bush's current happy-talk PR campaign over the Iraq War:
The effort by Bush to reach out to about 10 million Americans through the regional broadcasters -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer had similar sessions previously -- came two days after it emerged that soldiers in Iraq have sent form letters home to local newspapers asserting that the U.S. troops had been welcomed "with open arms" in Iraq. ...
The form letter from the troops, like the Bush interviews with local media outlets, stems from a frustration with the national media and a desire to circumvent what the administration views as unfairly negative coverage of the Iraq conflict.
Hesiod has several news entries on the subject: Astrotruf Whodunnit Edition, More on Astroturf and Pentagram (astroturf=fake grass roots), with additional links including this AP story:
The Pentagon said Tuesday that the Army battalion, which is in Kirkuk, Iraq, should not have sent the letters and that it has been told not to do so again.
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