On the other hand, it might be better than what's in the Plain Dealer now
Predictably, the latest conservative meme regarding false stories being planted in Iraqi newspapers is, in the words of one officer-turned-pundit, "The U.S. Army trying to place stories in the Philadelphia Inquirer or the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that would be wrong, but when we're at war, and we are certainly at war with insurgents and terrorists, you do what you legitimately can and this is legitimate."
The problem with this distinction is that it is explicitly contradicted in the much hyped National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. According to that document, one of the "conditions on the ground in Iraq" that is necessary for victory is the "continued support of the American people." If you buy both arguments, you'd pretty much have to support planting false stories in American papers as well as Iraqi ones. Which, if you think about it, is how we got into this mess in the first place.