The USDA as a propaganda machine

Apparently the administration recently emailed USDA officials with suggestions about how they could include good news about Iraq in their routine statements about chickens or whatever. This would be a pretty funny joke but apparently the emails were real...

From the emails:

"Please use these message points as often as possible and send Harry Phillips , USDA's director of speechwriting, a weekly email summarizing the event, date and location of each speech incorporating the attached language. Your responses will be included in a weekly account sent to the White House."

"Several topics I'd like to talk about today -- Farm Bill, trade with Japan, WTO, avian flu . . . but before I do, let me touch on a subject people always ask about . . . progress in Iraq."

"I'd like to take a moment to talk about a nation that is just now beginning to rebuild its own agricultural production. Iraq is part of the 'fertile crescent' of Mesopotamia...In recent years, however, the birthplace of farming has been in trouble."

"But revitalization is underway. President Bush has a clear strategy . . ."

"The major poultry producers in Iraq . . . are using [U.S.] loan guarantees to buy U.S. corn and soybeans. . . . This in turn provides a cycle of income that is being used to update 25-year-old chicken houses,"

"'The Iraqis have also discussed specific products, like tomatoes, which they are anxious to export into the world community'"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/07/AR2006050700898.html

I think I'd be more amused by this if it weren't *quite* so -- what's the word -- Orwellian?