Maybe the media will now find space to inform the American people how we were duped by Bush's top military brass doing what amounted to infomercials for his Iraq war and their companies profiting from it....that Lee Iaccoca piece posted here yesterday couldn't have been more correct....where is the outrage?!
Editorial: Spinning the news out of control
06:40 AM CDT on Tuesday, April 29, 2008
When it comes to the Iraq invasion and its disastrous aftermath, public support has hinged significantly on the sage analysis of various retired generals who insisted before the television cameras that, in spite of appearances, the White House was pursuing the right course.
Many worked as paid consultants to the networks at a time when the administration's credibility was in steep decline. Some generals minimized the importance of Iraq's insurgency in 2004. Others played down the reportedly bad conditions at the Guantánamo U.S. military prison.
When the public was turning increasingly against the war, they were upbeat and positive.
What the public didn't know was that these experts were actually Pentagon spin-control surrogates, known in military parlance as "message force multipliers."
Briefed at taxpayer expense, their job was to shape public opinion about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Several also supplemented their incomes by working for top military contractors while those companies profited handsomely off the perpetuation of these wars.
The public deception was made even worse when various congressional committees called these same experts to testify on subjects directly related to the business dealings of the private contractors they represented.
Retired Air Force Gen. Thomas G. McInerney appeared before Congress to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq and later was a paid consultant to Fox News, while serving on the board of directors of Alloy Surfaces Co., a munitions corporation and defense contractor. He's now urging U.S. military action against Iran.
Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a paid consultant to NBC News, regularly testifies on Capitol Hill about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. At the same time, he serves as a director of DynCorp International, which has multibillion-dollar government contracts to train Iraqi and Afghan security forces.
The Pentagon felt compelled last week to halt its special briefings for its spin-control surrogates – but only after this unholy alliance was exposed in The New York Times. The lack of full disclosure is appalling and can serve only to deepen the public's mistrust of government and the high-profile television journalists who cover it.
The fact that administration officials instructed these experts on what to say underscores their desire to manipulate public opinion.
The fact that the networks let it happen shows a shocking lack of familiarity with their own consultants.
Few alliances are as ugly as one linking journalists, private military contractors and the Pentagon. Had all been doing their jobs properly, this alliance should never have developed. |
