Remember The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence. and how it was allegedly killed when it was discovered that its mission was essentially to plant false information with foreign journalists. Remember how outraged the White House was at the idea of such a program? Or, more honestly, how outraged they were when they were caught redhanded?
The Office of Strategic Influence still exists and is actively pumping out disinformation. Since CNN was totally snookered, it’s best to read the story elsewhere. The question is whether this disinformation was meant to trick those Iraqi insurgents out into the open to fight American troops (huh? They don’t fight like that anyway…) or whether it was meant to trick the American people prior to the election.
Note the fact that regardless of what the intent of the disinformation about Fallujah was, that the White House lied about its stance on spreading false stories to the public. Whether the actual Office of Strategic Influence exists intact as the entity it was, the White House insisted that it could never back the Pentagon using such a dishonest, Machiavellian plan.