Dancing for the Ministry

“I’m not gonna be your mascot, I’m not gonna dance for the Ministry….I’m not gonna put on the Monkey Suit for you and your political aspirations! I won’t pretend that things are cool for your approval ratings. Oh, Rufus Scrimgeour! I’m inclined to believe you’re a vampire, ’cause you’re gonna to suck the truth…out of the situation at hand. And we’re not gonna win this war, we’re not gonna win this war with LIES!” -Harry and the Potters

Despite Rufus Scrimgeur’s pretty intimidating request at the Burrow, Harry Potter flatly turned him down. He was not going to use his status as “the Boy Who Lived” or “the Chosen One” to make people think that the Ministry’s incompetent behavior was okay.

But Unfortunately there are those who we in the public think highly of who don’t have the same integrity as Harry Potter. The same group we are partnered with in the “Rocking Out Against VoldeMedia” campaign is calling for an investigation right now into the US Ministry getting high profile folks to lie to the American people in a pretty extreme way.

Do you remember in 2003 watching military experts on tv news talking up the reasons the US needs to invade Iraq? And do you remember after the invasion when things weren’t going well, military experts saying “hey things are going well! Keep supporting this war!” And Americans believed these guys because they are military experts. Why would they lie?

Well, it turns out that up to 75 of the experts were actually plants that the Pentagon fed information to. When things weren’t looking good in Iraq, the Pentagon pulled a Rufus Scrimgeur and said, “hey, just go on tv and lift people’s morale by telling them things are going really well.” Some of these experts believed the folks at the Pentagon who were giving them positive news about Iraq. Some realized that the Pentagon was lying to them but didn’t want to risk losing all the money they were making in private contracts in Iraq. I repeat: they were willing to lie to the public because the lie was making them a lot of money.

Whatever your opinion of the Iraq War is, I’d hope you’d agree that it’s not cool when the government actively plants experts to lie about the evidence so they can make money. Sorry to be a downer. This is pretty darn disturbing. This not only violated every conceivable standard of journalism – it may have been a break of federal law.

Please join the call to Congress to open an investigation on this. When leaders do everything they can to keep us from the truth that we need to know as many of them make millions should we let them get away with it?