Personally, I am not the least bit surprised to find - as disclosed in this New York Times article - that the Chimperator's regime and the Pentagon gave mainstream media millitary analysts (who often are NOT disinerested parties) false information so that the media helped sell Chimpy and Cheney's lies. Let's face it, when the Chimperator and Cheney are talking (the same goes for their subordinantes) the safest assumption to be made is that they are lying. I hate to say it, but I believe that is the true bottom line. *
In some ways the bigger surprise is that it took the mainstream media so long to figure out that it was played for a fool and was utilized as a principal means of disseminating false information. No analyst is unbiased if he/she works for military contractors who are in bed with the Pentagon. As such, the mainstream media needs to rethink who is employed as a "military analyst" to insure that an objective view will be provided. Otherwise, the media is acting much like the German press under Hitler or the former communist regimes. It is a truly sad state of affairs. Here are some story highlights:
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To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
*The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.
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Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. *
In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access. A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis. Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show.
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Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation. These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated. Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”
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