The Bush administration got such great press after paying right-wing pundits like Armstrong Williams and others to praise their policies in print—as if right-wing pundits wouldn’t praise Bush and his policies for free!—that they Iraqified the practice. The AP reports…

…the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military “information operations” troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops…