Sunday, April 20, 2008
Dugout Doug didn't have PR this good
And MacArthur is famous in military annals for his ability to project himself and his image of what is happening into the media. The NY Times takes a sharp look at the current Pentagon efforts to get their favored spin on military events, whether in Iraq or Guantanamo Bay.
MUST READ: Juan Cole's post today on this and yesterday's NYT piece on the old fart's Iraq policy, including this paragraph.
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.It is cheaper and more effective to bullshit the public than to get it right. But what do we know, we just get to pay for it.
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.
MUST READ: Juan Cole's post today on this and yesterday's NYT piece on the old fart's Iraq policy, including this paragraph.
McCain can't come out and say we need to crush the Armed Iraqi Revolution, because that would be an admission that the US has been fighting Iraqis for 5 years and still hasn't defeated them. So he and the Republican strategists and the retired generals and their Pentagon handlers make up this "al-Qaeda" business, as though people in Baquba would be gunning for Americans if Americans hadn't invaded their country and turned it upside down.
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