TV Generals Make for a Dangerous Picture

From 1999 until the end of last year, I was a military analyst for NBC News, one of the few non-generals in that role. During the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, I worked with generals who were retained by NBC and MSNBC and found them mostly to be valuable. I saw the tasks they did behind the scenes, from educating correspondents and producers to facilitating access to the military.

The New York Times' investigation into the relationship between the Pentagon and retired military officers who serve as paid "analysts" for television focused on the wrong issues. The problem is not necessarily that the networks employ former officers as analysts, or that the Pentagon reaches out to them.

The larger problem is the role these general play, not just on TV but in American society. In our modern era, not-so-old soldiers neither die nor fade away -- they become board members and corporate icons and consultants, on TV and elsewhere, and even among this group of generally straight-shooters, there is a strong reluctance to say anything that would jeopardize their consulting gigs or positions on corporate boards.

During my time at NBC, one general -- Barry McCaffrey -- stood out for consistently criticizing the Pentagon on the air, and to this day he is among the most visible of the paid military analysts on television. Part of it is McCaffrey's personality and decisive voice. And while he was one of the earliest and most forceful figures arguing that more troops were needed, much of his analysis of Iraq in 2003 was handicapped by a myopic view of ground forces and the Army, and by a dislike of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that was obvious and outspoken. (To be fair to McCaffrey, few former or active duty generals read the war or its aftermath correctly.)

They say in the military that there's the tactical, the operational and the strategic. Television itself does a good job of capturing the tactical -- the combat of platoons and companies and battalions, the bombing attacks, the single incidents. The phenomenon of embedded reporters in 2003 gave an almost-live view of a war at the tactical level.

The job of the analysts (and I sat at 30 Rock for weeks doing this) was to make sense of the accumulation of the tactical into understanding the bigger battle. The generals would use their knowledge and plumb their contacts to get a sense of what the divisions and corps and the coalition formations were doing at a higher level. The non-generals who were analysts (there weren't many of us) and the correspondents and producers would use their skills and perspectives and do their own reporting, and the idea was that the final product provided a richer understanding of what was going on.

Given that Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks -- the commander at the time -- tended not to say much, or even to obfuscate in the name of deceiving the enemy, the generals were invaluable. When they made the effort, they could go places and to sources that the rest of us couldn't. That the Pentagon was "using" them to convey a line is worrisome for the public interest but not particularly surprising.

On the war itself -- on the actions of the U.S. military in March and April of 2003 -- there was an official line that was being pushed by the Pentagon and the White House. I'm not convinced that the generals (at least those who were serving at NBC) were trumpeting an official line that was being fed to them, but neither am I convinced that their "experience" or professional expertise enabled them to analyze the war any better than non-generals or the correspondents in Washington or out in the field.

McCaffrey, to his credit, publicly lambasted the war plan -- during a time of war! In the grand scheme of things, though, I'm not sure that McCaffrey was right -- and I'm not sure that having more troops then, given our assumptions about what would happen in postwar Iraq and our ignorance of the country and its dynamics, would have made much of a difference.

In other words, we still could have won the battle and lost the war.

Once the "major" fighting was over in 2003, once the Iraq quagmire destroyed the American consensus on the war against terror, once Guantanamo and other issues of American tactics became issues between the Bush administration and the body politic, the value of the American generals as news commentators diminished significantly. They were no longer helping us to understand battles. They were becoming enmeshed in bigger political and public policy and partisan battles, and as "experts" on the military, they should have known better not to step too far outside their lane. The networks should also have known this, and indeed they did learn eventually, as there are certainly far fewer generals on the payroll today than there were at the height of the "fighting."

It's now clear that in the run-up to the war, during the war in 2003 and in its aftermath, we would have all benefited from hearing more from experts on Iraq and the Middle East, from historians, from anti-war advocates. Retired generals play a role, an important one. But for the networks, they played too big of a role -- just as the "military" solutions in Iraq play too big of a role, just as the military solutions in the war against terrorism swamp every other approach.

The Bush administration, in reaching out to sympathetic news commentators to shape public opinion, isn't doing anything different than the Clinton administration. I am not sure the Bush administration's efforts in the Iraq campaign were any more treacherous. It's just that the stakes were higher.

Unresolved in all this is the role of the retired military and the larger question of civil-military relations in our society. Also unresolved is our love affair with the uniform. Ever since 9/11, we have deferred to the military and the national security community, hardly recognizing that we do so at our peril.

By William M. Arkin | April 22, 2008; 9:15 AM ET Iraq
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The idea that an Information Operations campaign was/is going on is (what do you think)? The shaping of opinions occurs when the conditions have been set to receive the information without due considerations. The bottom line is that information deception has become normalized because it was on the news. I call it the Walter Cronkite effect (trusting news without questions) that makes us believe Newscasters. Oh by the way this is what Rev. Jeremiah Wright: "And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America!

This is not what Televisions or Radio is playing. Again what do you thnk?

Posted by: Marshall | May 1, 2008 12:02 PM

These retired Officers who were doing covert psy-op propaganda work for the corrupted Pentagon and posing as objective analysts are traitors to their unifom and the American Republic.

They were bought and paid for by the very same fools and idealogues who lied and cheated to get us into the "Hundred Year War in Iraq."

The blood of our thousands of killed and maimed soldiers and the blood of the hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqi's is dripping from their filthy hands.

Boys, I hope your blood money was worth it.

Posted by: jubb | April 29, 2008 9:49 PM

Mr Arkin,

It seems you missed the entire point of the article. There are several tracks working in the piece.

A) Many of the Generals parroted Rumsfeld's talking points in order to enrich themselves and those they worked for. For staying on message, these generals got the inside track for lucrative contracts in the very wars they were supposed to be "objectively" critiquing. Serious conflict of interest issues here.

B) While this is not overtly expressed in the article, the intent of this highly organized and scripted group was to propagandize the American public. The word "psy-op" is used several times by the generals themselves in the documents the Times obtained. This is a clear violation of the Smith Mundt act and The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1972 which prohibits the dissemination of propaganda domestically. In addition, military analysts are not used by networks for "on the one hand on the other hand" style pontificating. These aren't guests who are subjected to hard questioning by anchors and reporters. The Military analyst is there to present and interpret the action on the ground as they see it. After a TV general "blesses" the world with his/her insights derived from years of battlefield experience; an anchor is not heard to retort "yes, but such and such a set of facts or such and such a person says X." If a general says it - that's what's coming down.

C) The networks were complicit - either knew these generals were in symphony with the pentagon - or - completely incompetent and inept. They didn't do background checks? CNN, for instance, allowed James "Spider" Marks to lie to the American public for over three years before they discovered that Marks' employment at McNeil might create a conflict of interest. For at least a year, he appeared weekly as a guest on "This Week at War." Sorry I just don't buy it - the networks knew.

I could go on at length but I encourage you to reread the article and think about the points I've made.

On at least one point we see eye to eye; these generals were overused. We needed - but didn't get - anti-war voices in the run up to the war. The few anti-war dissenters the American public heard were marginalized and generally (pun intended) dismissed by the mainstream media. Even today, only the opinions of vets, military brass, ex-American intelligence, pols, or family members of those killed in the war carry any wieght as far as corporate news is concerned. Just take yourself for example; when was the last time anyone listened to you?

Posted by: Mahler 3 | April 24, 2008 7:01 PM

Dear Dimitry:

You fight like a girl...

Posted by: Plainfacto | April 23, 2008 10:24 PM

==My point was lost on you.==

Could be. It is also possible that you didn't really have a coherent point, but babbled on about some "threat" and "bad guys".

==My adivice to you is to quit your job with Titan/Locheed/Gen Dyn - or whomever you work for. People in this industry know why it is important - as I do - to build these items. If I have to explain it to you, then maybe you really should be making sandwiches or pizza in some inner city slum. Or maybe you can be a door-to-door frozen piroshki salesman - perhaps?==

Superb advice! How 'bout some actual thinkin'? We already have more than enough weapons to deter any aggression and contrary to your stupid fearmongering of enemies foreign and domestic just lining up to invade our strip malls and clam shacks, no country out there is eager to tick us off. So our policy of relentless aggression isn't based on any rational defense need - but rather on a self-fulfilling doctrine of dominance and hegemony.

==Howabout Berlin and the Eastern Bloc countries in late 50's/early 60's? Do you remember how the cold war raged and the world leaders threatened each other back and forth? The US/Soviet Union were always pulling off some hot covert actions against each other it seemed. Always at each others throats. Reminds me of the back-and-forth between the US and Hezballah.==

You are drinking on the job again, comrade. Soviet Union is not and never was anything like a "Hizbolah". The latter has maybe 10 thousand lightly armed infantrymen and some WWII-era unguided Katyusha rockets. Soviet Union had thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could incinerate every American city in 1/2 hour, tens of thousands of tanks in the European theater and millions of men under arms. And, hello, the cold war ended a while ago - you and other warmongers apparently did not get the memo.

==Howabout Cuba with covertly based nukes that spawned the Cuban Missile Crisis? It has been so convenient for you to forget - hasn't it?==

Are you simple or just pretending? I am talking TODAY, as in NOW, not 50 years ago.

==Maybe you don't remember; or did you choose to forget? Probably the latter. I guess that you chose to forget these circumstances that nearly set off nuclear disasters - both known and unknown to the general public...==

There was also WWI and WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, etc. But last time I checked, we are the world's ONLY hyperpower, we outspend the rest of the world combined in military outlays and have the world's only planet-wide military command structure, together with over a thousand foreign military bases. "Common" man would be horrified to find out how many bases our soldiers are world over and how much he is spending on this imperial guard. Yet he is always told by unscrupulous warmongers about all the enemies that are lining up to bomb his nearest McDonalds and how, in order to eat his Big Mac in peace, he must be willing to pay for more and more relentless aggression.

Posted by: Dimitry | April 23, 2008 9:08 PM

//Covert actions do not a hot war make\\ -Dimitry

My point was lost on you. My adivice to you is to quit your job with Titan/Locheed/Gen Dyn - or whomever you work for. People in this industry know why it is important - as I do - to build these items. If I have to explain it to you, then maybe you really should be making sandwiches or pizza in some inner city slum. Or maybe you can be a door-to-door frozen piroshki salesman - perhaps?

Howabout Berlin and the Eastern Bloc countries in late 50's/early 60's? Do you remember how the cold war raged and the world leaders threatened each other back and forth? The US/Soviet Union were always pulling off some hot covert actions against each other it seemed. Always at each others throats. Reminds me of the back-and-forth between the US and Hezballah. Howabout Cuba with covertly based nukes that spawned the Cuban Missile Crisis? It has been so convenient for you to forget - hasn't it?

Maybe you don't remember; or did you choose to forget? Probably the latter. I guess that you chose to forget these circumstances that nearly set off nuclear disasters - both known and unknown to the general public...

Posted by: Plainfacto | April 23, 2008 7:41 PM

==Got to be one of the dumbest thing you have ever said. Or most confused.==

Ok, lets read on.

==And that is how we remain that way, with so many wanting what we have. Russia and China are nothing to sneeze at; it is what keeps us in this race. Competition - if you will. Do you think adversarial countries have really stop trying to challenge us covertly?==

Russia and China have combined military budgets that are a very small fraction of ours. China has no Navy and essentially no modern air force. Russia's army is essentially incapable of operating outside its borders. Russian Navy has ONE "Rocket Carrying Cruiser" and only a few operating nuclear subs. Both of those countries, and certainly a much smaller and less powerful nation, like Iran would be crazy suicidal to WANT to get into a shooting war with us. As usual, through willful strawman building, you have changed the argument to the one you are interested in having. Covert actions do not a hot war make. And our budget for covert actions is MUCH greater than the rest of the world's combined. So again, our "potential adversaries" find themselves outclassed in every field of competition. Yet we are told to keep spending more and being more aggressive to "deter" thouse multitudes of enemies at our gates.

==Q:What gives Arkin a rush?
A:New Air power.
It's competition and production - baby!==

What?

==You seem never to want to accept this point. I find that very ironic - especially if one works for the military industrial complex as you claim you do==

What is the "Point"?

==BTW, I have friends in this biz. Why don't you ask your employer why you need to make weapons - apparently you never understood the need. Or maybe you should seriously consider quitting your job. You seem to be made of conflicts, enigmas, and dilemmas...==

I still haven't realy read any "points"? Ary trying to make one? If so, what is it?

Posted by: Dimitry | April 23, 2008 3:31 PM

I agree with al75.
Using the Military against the US population should be impeachable, no?

"A military "psychological warefare" operation against the US civilian population and political process raises serious constitutional questions.

This operation was part of a very broad -- and largely successful -- campaign to suppress awareness of the failures of the armed forces in the war.

As a result, tens of millions of Americans believed these coddled pundits rather than the "liberal biased" media, who were reporting more factually-based material. Failures in equipment, training, and medical care were likewise downplayed.

By willfully misleading American voters, I believe this program represents a subversion of the democratic process.

I hope you will respond."

Posted by: thebob.bob | April 23, 2008 1:09 PM

I believe this article completely missed the mark. One, the Iraqi invasion should not have happened. Two, once it did this had been previously war gamed. It required a large initial troop deployment (approx 450k to 480k) not for wartime operations, but instead to provide security for immediate rebuilding of infrastructure. Understanding what the generals wanted is very important in the discussion about the call for a large initial troop deployment. The rebuilding that never happened in Afghanistan and Iraq is the biggest reason we are not enjoying the grass roots support of those same people. They expected to see us do what we did for Germany and Japan after WW-II, instead they saw a deterioration of basic services. Enough said.

Posted by: Retired Service Member | April 23, 2008 1:01 PM

It is a sad state of affairs when the government in Washington D.C. dictates to teh soldiers, sailors and airmen on the ground, HOW TO FIGHT A WAR. What needs to happen is all the Generals, Congressman and others who think they KNOW how to fight this war, should get out of their comfy beds, leave the home, the wives, the family and get on the front lines with the rest of us who did, have and will continue to. We go where adn do what we do becuase of our love of this country. Not because some IDIOTS, yes I said IDIOTS are running it. For those of you who don't remember, GAS prices have sky-rocketed since 2001, not gone the other way. But of course Bush, Chaney and the rest of the (BRA IN-RUST),are tied to OIL companies and Halliburton. so they are getting their retirements off of the young men and women who sacrifice and yes give their lives for our country. SHAME ON ALL OF YOU. I am a die-hard DEMOCRAT, but at this time in our nation, where oh where the hell is Ronnie Reagan. Wake up Ronnie, If ever this country needed you, NOW is the time.

With all respect to President Ronald Reagan

Posted by: sfdoc1 | April 23, 2008 12:41 PM

o'really

thank you,

for sitting on your butt and criticizing soldiers who take an oath to defend America.

and for helping to elect the people who decided and agreed to send them overseas.

go to Iraq and then come back and post that they are unarmed.

I'm glad you feel safe and think that the people in the Middle East are not a threat.

I wonder why you feel that way. Have you been to the Middle East or any third world country?

Posted by: gregb | April 23, 2008 12:30 PM

The Generals originally took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution Upon mustering out it certainly appears that their new oaths are to mammon and greed. Love of Country seems to take a back seat to love of Board Room and Multinationals. The world's peril, in some small part, has been contributed to by their actions. Using their status and their positions of trust to mislead and to chant, like a chorus, administration glibness, they do themselves and our people a great disservice

Posted by: jdhughes | April 23, 2008 11:37 AM

yes thanks you "soldier" for protecting us from an UNARMED THIRD WORLD COUNTRY like Iraq
oh and at a cost of a TRILLION DOLLARS, money well spent NOT!

Posted by: o'really | April 23, 2008 11:34 AM

//We are the world's only hyperpower, and our military expenditures are GREATER than the REST OF THE WORLD combined. Our military doctrine is FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE. Why would any country be insane enough to WANT to get into a shooting war with us?\\ -Dimitry

Got to be one of the dumbest thing you have ever said. Or most confused.

And that is how we remain that way, with so many wanting what we have. Russia and China are nothing to sneeze at; it is what keeps us in this race. Competition - if you will. Do you think adversarial countries have really stop trying to challenge us covertly?

Q:What gives Arkin a rush?
A:New Air power.
It's competition and production - baby!

You seem never to want to accept this point. I find that very ironic - especially if one works for the military industrial complex as you claim you do. BTW, I have friends in this biz. Why don't you ask your employer why you need to make weapons - apparently you never understood the need. Or maybe you should seriously consider quitting your job. You seem to be made of conflicts, enigmas, and dilemmas...

Posted by: Plainfacto | April 23, 2008 11:33 AM

==The next time a major world power threatens the security of the U.S.==

Do you mean, like Iraq "did?"

Or like Iran is "doing?"

We are the world's only hyperpower, and our military expenditures are GREATER than the REST OF THE WORLD combined. Our military doctrine is FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE. Why would any country be insane enough to WANT to get into a shooting war with us?

Posted by: Dimitry | April 23, 2008 11:09 AM

Good and sometimes bad,

Generals and other military leaders have always had a special place in the hearts of the American people - they are often considered heroes. President George Washington, not a person of very sound character in my opinion, became America's first President.

McCain's military history, particularly his having been a prison of war is his edge, otherwise, the American public wouldn't consider him for a second to be President of the USA!

The military teaches discipline and its officers be logical and analytical - to be strategic thinkers.

Perhaps that is what is wrong with Bush and Cheney, given that General Colin Powell and others in the field appeared to be the only ones who knew what they were talking about with respect to Iraq!

Posted by: The Rev | April 23, 2008 11:03 AM

The next time a major world power threatens the security of the U.S., it will be the Generals you are bashing which save the day. It will be my fellow soldiers that keep you safe; that take the bullets and kill the enemy that wants you dead. And despite your baby-killers attitude towards us, we will just smile at you and say "I'm just doing my duty sit/ma'am." Once order is restored, you will return to your hateful comments, forgetting so quickly it was the American soldier that gave you your freedom.

Posted by: Soldier | April 23, 2008 9:36 AM

We fell in love with the General during the first Gulf War even while they were controlling the flow of information.
The media wanted more, we got embeds. Reporters embedded with the troops and Generals embedded with the media.
And we loved it! All this planning to fool the American people and no plan to win in Baghdad.
That's the shame!

Posted by: SamEllison | April 23, 2008 1:05 AM

The Democratic Primary:

The good news, and it relates to this article is given the success of Hilary Clinton's win tonight - the end to insufferable white male domination that began officially 232 years ago, may soon be over.

America, out families (sons and daughters) and the world has a need for the female principle to be officially instituted - the fellas have been making a big mess not only in America, but in the world!

Posted by: The Rev | April 22, 2008 10:33 PM

This article will likely get Mr. Arkin taken to the woodshed again on the O'Reilly Non-factor!

The article portrays another American crisis. We are paying individuals in Washington DC a whole lot of money, and we aren't getting anything in return except war, recession, homelessness... and more problems that we can shake a wardrum at!

Posted by: The Rev | April 22, 2008 8:18 PM

This article will likely get Mr. Arkin taken to the woodshed again on the O'Reilly Non-factor!

Posted by: The Rev | April 22, 2008 8:12 PM

This YouTube about sums it up:

In Honor of the Lying Military Analysts for Cable TV, from Crooks and Liars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRKU6l6xyto

...and if someone here hasn't read it, or seen the movie based on it:

War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death by Norman Solomon

...shows how exactly the same agit-prop tactics have been done in exactly the same way over and over again, dragging the American public into wars they neither desire OR need. (Unless you need one buck gasoline for your Hummer/Bummer or you just happen to like watching B-1s carpet-bomb populated areas of 2nd and 3rd world countries.)

The criminal running these ops have gone unscathed for far too long.

People like Doug Feith... Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld... Lying traitors all.

Here's the plan for the current main criminal in the picture...

When GW finally retires/exiles himself to the new family ranch in Paraguay, which has no extradition treaty with the US, we send Special Forces S.O. groups down to extraordinarily 'rendit' him.

Stuff him in that ol' Gulfstream V and bring him 'home'.

Yeah, it'll be sloppy, what with BlackwaterParaguay putting up stiff resistance, but it WILL be worth the sacrifice to see GW dragged to the gallows (Surely he won't go calmly like Saddam Hussein).

...and as he snorts his last line of Coke, says his last stupid thing... we all start chanting.

...no, not "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada"...

"Kucinich, Paul, Wellstone Kucinich, Paul, Wellstone Kucinich, Paul, Wellstone"

Don't forget to bring your cellphone cam for the BIG drop when the trapdoor opens.. That way you can keep a memento of true global justice for your very own.

Posted by: Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves | April 22, 2008 5:28 PM

Mr. Arkin, I appreciate your discussing this report - very few other media outlets have.

In my view, you sidestep the central point of the NYT piece: these generals were wined, dined, and provided with financially valuable (through consulting/lobbying gigs many were also engaged in) as part of a deliberate "psychological warfare" operation run out of the Pentagon.

This operation was carefully and systematically maintained, via a $20 million consultant who monitored the participants reports on the air.

Several generals are quoted in the piece boasting to their Pentagon handlers about their success placing the desired message. Several other instances are noted of generals apparently willfully supressing bad news.

A military "psychological warefare" operation against the US civilian population and political process raises serious constitutional questions.

This operation was part of a very broad -- and largely successful -- campaign to suppress awareness of the failures of the armed forces in the war.

By willfully misleading American voters, I believe this program represents a subversion of the democratic process.

I hope you will respond.

Posted by: al75 | April 22, 2008 3:23 PM

It's interesting how you set up the double standard on this one. You hold yourself forth as an apparent expert on everything and write to your heart's content. Satisfied, that the great unwashed American public should accept your views on any and everything simply because they came from you. You applaud your compatriots in the media and quote them and reference them liberally. However, you readily dismiss some very intelligent individuals who worked themselves to the very top of the military structure as being "too persuasive". Huh??? I think you have missed a salient point about your own role. You are supposed to report without fear or favor and without any vested interest. Now, in my experience with the media, that just don't happen. You guys set yourselves up as messengers as well as interpreteurs and at the same time as "spin-meisters" to serve your masters. You condemn the retired Generals for not biting the hands that fed them but then you guys do the same thing? Is it possible, that a lifetime of training for these generals has made them very cautious when speaking in public? The media loves it when some General says what he thinks because they can then have a field day representing him as a disloyal loose cannon. When he stays the course and sticks to his military judgements and leaves the politics to someone else then you say they have too much influence. You remind me a lot of the media types that took part in the 5 O'clock follies in Saigon on the roof of the Caravelle Hotel. They never got within hearing distance of a shot fired in anger but they would take press releases, rumors and scotch and come up with their own version of the war. I remember then some of them cussing the generals because the media wasn't treated "respectfully" enough to suit them. I'm not sure what role a free and open press actually is supposed to play. The one we have now is as biased as a North Korean Army recruiter and has just about as much common sense. Don't confuse the political lunacy of the Bush Whitehouse or all those other mutts on capital hill with professional soldiers.
Or better yet, next time the country gets attacked, call a politiciian. See what his recommendations are. General officers, in all branches, are a rare breed worthy of respect. They are the same guys who make $50 million a year if they were in the private sector. However, they followed a different path. If not for these guys, I would most likely be writing this in German or Japanese.

Posted by: Skip Meadows | April 22, 2008 2:32 PM

While I cannot claim to be an expert on anything, I have been around the block a few times. From 1955 to 1965 I was in the Air Force and Army respectively. In the Air Force, I worked in munitions, and have some general knowledge about how various types of munition are supposed to work. I worked in communications in the Army. While I had a couple of job descriptions, I was exposed to signal type operations from the company through Army level. My time in Europe covered the period from the Hungarian uprising through the rise of the Berlin wall, but the only time I got concerned was during the Cuban Missile crisis back in the states.
Based on my low level knowledge of the military and the Cold War, the Media's coverage of the Middle East and the Iraq war, in particular, has been crap. I was not impressed by McCaffrey. According to him, every general or person was wonderful, and, according to the Neoconservatives pundits from the American Enterprise Institute , the Iraq War was necessary and bound to succeed. It was infantile propaganda and not news reporting. You have some good reporters at the Post, but they tend to be kicked up stairs or disappear. They did point me in the right direction for further information. The wire services do a good job. BBC news and Your World Today from CNN International are good. I like Al-Jazeera and Haaretz from the Middle East.

Posted by: P. J. Casey | April 22, 2008 2:06 PM

What a brilliant analytical discourse?

You are likely correct that the public over-relied on what military leaders had to say; however, who else, associated with Washington could we trust?

We could not trust the Republican led Congress or Senate (and where are most of them now)? And we certainly could not trust anything that came from the President and 99% of the members of his cabinet (Despite the UN speech, Paul was the only trustworthy Cabinet Member).

Everyone knew that Bush and company were untrustworthy as we watched the whole Iraqi fiasco develop and unravel.

Late President Ronald Reagan said one thing that I agreed with: He said, Government is not a solution to the problem, government is the problem.

He was right then, even about the government that he presided over, and about the government that is currently misleading America - IT IS THE PROBLEM!

The overthrow of the American government in Congress in 2006 in the Congressional election Part I, needs to be followed by the overthrow of the Executive by voting in the General Election 2008, Part II!

Even though I don't agree with General Petraeus whose surge(s) simply took violence in Iraq back to 2005 levels (still unacceptable but appears to be an improvement); I still trust the General, Colin Poweell, McCaffrey and others - more than I trust anyone else who has been in the White House and associated with it (including Rumsfool) in the past 7-years.

If I lived in say a 3rd world nation, this cleric would be calling for a military junta to take the country back from its current oligarchy, until Elections could be held!

Posted by: The Rev | April 22, 2008 1:54 PM

Here is what the "innocent reaching out" really looked like:

-------------------------------------------
...
In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment -- the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld's private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.

"Oh, you have no idea," Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. "You're back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV." It was, he said, "psyops on steroids" -- a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. "It's not like it's, 'We'll pay you $500 to get our story out,' " he said. "It's more subtle."

The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.

In the fall and winter leading up to the invasion, the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would be a relatively quick and inexpensive "war of liberation."

At the Pentagon, members of Ms. Clarke's staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.

"You could see that they were messaging," Mr. Krueger said. "You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over." Some days, he added, "We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You'd look at them and say, 'This is working.' "

On April 12, 2003, with major combat almost over, Mr. Rumsfeld drafted a memorandum to Ms. Clarke. "Let's think about having some of the folks who did such a good job as talking heads in after this thing is over," he wrote.
...
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?pagewanted=5&hp
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Posted by: Dimitry | April 22, 2008 12:54 PM

==The Bush administration, in reaching out to sympathetic news commentators to shape public opinion, isn't doing anything different than the Clinton administration. I am not sure the Bush administration's efforts in the Iraq campaign were any more treacherous. It's just that the stakes were higher.==

The generals themselves mostly disagree with that view. One of them made a strong distinction on NPR today, between the Clinton's amateur "reaching out" to the ex-generals, and Bush's sophisticated psyops program witn its own office staffed with psyops specialsts handling the generals. He called it "psyops on steroids." Isn't it illegal for the US government to engage in military psyops on US population?

Posted by: Dimitry | April 22, 2008 12:49 PM

For uncensored news please bookmark:

www.wsws.org
www.onlinejournal.com
www.globalresearch.ca
www.takingaimradio.com

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8738

Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel

The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001
terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

Netanyahu reportedly made the comments during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cast doubt over the veracity of the September 11 attacks Thursday, calling it a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names," Ahmadinejad told Iranians in the holy city of Qom.

"Under this pretext, they [the U.S.] attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then, a million people have been killed only in Iraq."

Speaking Wednesday at a news conference on the Iran threat, Netanyahu compared Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler and likened Tehran's nuclear program to the threat the Nazis posed to Europe in the late 1930s.

Netanyahu said Iran differed from the Nazis in one vital respect, explaining that "where that [Nazi] regime embarked on a global conflict before it developed nuclear weapons," he said. "This regime [Iran] is developing nuclear weapons before it embarks on a global conflict."

Posted by: che | April 22, 2008 11:15 AM

"...Barry McCaffrey -- stood out for consistently criticizing the Pentagon on the air, and to this day he is among the most visible of the paid military analysts on television. Part of it is McCaffrey's personality and decisive voice. And while he was one of the earliest and most forceful figures arguing that more troops were needed..."

See, that's the problem, AND THEY KNEW THERE WERE NO WMDs, or regional threat, OR ANY REASON TO INVADE A SOVEREIGN NATION!

NO SOLDIERS WERE NEEDED!

But we got these folks who NO MATTER WHAT, talked WAR FOOTING.

Sorry Arkin, these folks are absolutely part of the problem too!

Posted by: Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves | April 22, 2008 9:40 AM

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