Pentagon's Media Manipulation on War Extended to Newspapers

Pentgon's politic is not the politic of
those persons i had mentioned.( MLK, MAHATMA ...........)
.
The poor persons who munch a BigMc and dance according to the criminal law makers are unfit to torture the global innocents.

Media Generals: Editors Respond to 'NYT' Revelations
Media Generals: Editors Respond to 'NYT' Revelations
By Joe Strupp - E & P
Published: April 21, 2008

The New York Times' revelations that the Pentagon has been secretly guiding retired military officers -- many with links to defense contractors -- in their media assessments of the Iraq War has raised concerns about the use of those former military officials in newspaper commentaries, or quoting them in news stories. Andy Alexander, Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers, said the report "raises a red flag."

The Times and The Washington Post have each printed Op-Ed pieces by some of the same generals cited in the Times' story as receiving talking points, and in some cases free trips, from Pentagon officials related to the war. Editorial page editors at both papers said the new revelations raise concerns about future use.

"It makes you suspicious, absolutely," said Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the Times, which published at least nine Op-Ed's by generals who had the ties to the Pentagon. "When generals write for you now, you have to look at that. But you have to do that anyway. Anybody who participated in that program has to be scrutinized more closely."

Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Post, which ran at least one Op-Ed by former Gen. Barry McCaffrey, mentioned in David Barstow's Times article, in 2006, said: "Retired generals are entitled to speak out like anyone else, but I would have the same expectation of them to disclose anything that might be relevant." He declined to speak specifically on the McCaffrey column.

Rosenthal, however, defended the Times' publication of the nine former military officials who had written for the paper's Op-Ed pages. He said that none of the Op-Ed's dealt specifically with assessments of the war or any specific business entities with which the author had ties.

"We have gone over what they wrote for us. About half of them didn't write about Iraq at all, so there is no conflict there," he said. "They are either critical of the administration, not writing about Iraq, or writing about specific issues like using a laptop computer in warfare. In no case is there someone offering an assessment."

The Times story about the issue named only one of the retired generals who had written for the Times, James Marks. "His was a piece about if he was invading Falluja, this is how he would do it," Rosenthal said. "There was no assessment of how the war was going. No briefing information. He talked about how to invade a city, the vulnerability of it."

Rosenthal declined to reveal the names of the other eight former generals who had written for the Op-Ed page, but he said the news department informed his department last week about the forthcoming story, prompting a review of those columns. "None of the articles fell into the category of assessing the war," Rosenthal said. "There is one about gays in the military."

Still, none of the Op-Ed's disclosed that the author had close ties to the Pentagon publicity machine . Rosenthal acknowledged that, adding that the newspaper did not know about the arrangement. But he said it was not a conflict because the issues written about were not related.

"The story was about giving people access to the Pentagon to get them to say things about Iraq that were not true," Rosenthal said. "If one of those people is writing about some other subject, that is irrelevant. There is no instance in which a general who attended a briefing at the Pentagon repeated it on our Op-Ed pages."

Rosenthal said the paper requires any outside contributor to fill out a questionnaire about their potential conflicts, including business ties. He said none of these contributors had conflicting relationships, at least none that they revealed. "What do you disclose and when?" he said. "Do you have to disclose that you attended a briefing? When you deal with retired military officers, you have to assume their view is shaped by their background."

Rosenthal said the paper would not likely change its background reviews and disclosure rules for Op-Ed writers. "We have a pretty rigorous approach right now," he said. "And it is based on what we are asking people to write about."

Other Washington editors said the Times story also raises concerns about use of former generals in news stories. Cox's Alexander said, "The Times story obviously raised questions about due diligence for selecting them and quoting them. He said his reporters had used former generals, but not often: "If we were to seek comment from them, we would probably ask them about whether they had connections that would make them less than neutral."

John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, agreed. "The reader is entitled to know where this or that commentator is coming from on an issue," he said. "It doesn't necessarily disqualify them from commentating, it must be transparent."

Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of the Post, said he could not recall if any of the former generals cited in the Times story had been used as news sources. But he said, "when we know people are lobbyists, former military people, we write about that."

Decency is there to enjoy.
Hope for the best.
throw your flag
Uphold civil courage and risk your future.

Rummy spun (dished to) military analysts
Rummy spun (dished to) military analysts
Posted May 7, 2008 6:55 PM
by Aamer Madhani

In some of the meetings former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had with retired military generals turned television news analysts, he offered sharp tongued assessments of Iraqi and American officials, according to transcripts and audio files released by the Pentagon.

As you may recall, the New York Times published an article last month that unveiled that the Pentagon was running a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the Bush administration's wartime performance by offering some retired officers special access to top Pentagon officials as well as arranging for VIP trips to Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

The retired generals who worked for all the major network and cable news stations met with officials such as Rumsfeld, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chief of the Army.

Some Congressional critics were aghast at the revelation that the Pentagon was trying use the retired officers, who the network news programs billed as military analysts, to carry the department's water. The Pentagon has suspended the program, but Sen. John Kerry has called for the Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation.

The Pentagon has dumped thousands of pages of documents, transcripts and audio files on its web site related to the military analysts program.


In a quick scan of some the transcripts and audio files, it's easy to see that the generals are deferential to Rumsfeld--at times they border on obsequious.

"I think you really set a tone and a presence with the media in terms of communicating in general and specific messages and so forth," one of the unidentified officers told the former defense secretary during a question-and-answer session that was held after President Bush announced he was replacing Rumsfeld but before Robert Gates had taken over at the Pentagon. "So as a citizen, I just want to say thanks."

But some of the most interesting nuggets in the transcripts are Rumsfeld dishing on some Iraqi and U.S. officials.

During the hour-long talk Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had with military officers in late 2006, Rumsfeld called the ineffectual interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari a "windsock," and anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr "a 30-year-old thug" who wants "to create a Hezbollah" in Iraq.

He also said that the U.S. envoy, to Afghanistan at the time, was better suited to be the assistant to the person running a museum.

When asked by one officer what he would do if Sadr was no longer on the scene, Rumsfeld responded, "I'd buy you a glass of champagne."

Rumsfeld added, that Sadr is "not a real cleric and not well respected. Sistani has, of course, all the respect and the (unintelligible) senior religious figure in the country, the Shia, and he doesn't like him. Sistani doesn't like him. He opposes what he does, but he at the present time has (a) survived (b) does not have perfect control over the Sadr elements."

In that same meeting, Rumsfeld had high praise for Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who at the time was the top U.S. envoy to Iraq and had previously served as the chief diplomat to Afghanistan, as a man who has "got guts."

But in the next breath, Rumsfeld ripped into Khalilzad's successor in Afghanistan, Ambassador Ronald Neuman.

"The guy who replaced him is just terrible--Neuman," Rumsfeld said. "I mean he's a career foreign service officer. He ought to be running a museum somewhere. That's also off the record. No, he ought to be assistant to the guy...I wouldn't hire the guy to push a wheelbarrow."

Another interesting exchange was about Army Gen. Eric Shinseki's comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee less than month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq that he thought it would take hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to keep the peace in post-war Iraq.

Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, would deride Shinseki as being wildly off-the-mark to speculate it would take more troops to occupy Iraq than to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.

The general, who was due to end his term as the chief of the army four months later, quietly retired after contradicting Rumsfeld's plan to operate with a lighter force.

According to the transcript, Rumsfeld suggested that more troops could have been sent to Iraq early in the war, but commanders on the ground didn't want them.

Here is the exchange:

Q: Hey, also your favorite subject: looking back. What's become conventional wisdom, simply Shinseki was right. If we simply had 400,000 troops or 200 or 300? What's your thought as you looked at it?

PACE: I'm sorry, sir. I didn't take the (unintelligible). I apologize.

RUMSFELD: First of all, I don't think Shinseki ever said that. I think he was pressed in a congressional hearing hard and hard and hard and over again, well, how many? And his answer was roughly the same as it would take to do the job--to defeat the regime. It would be about the right amount for post-major combat operation stabilization. And they said, "Well, how much is that?" And I think he may have said then, "Well maybe 200,000 or 300,000."

PACE: I think he said several.

Q: Several, yes, several hundred thousand.

RUMSFELD: Now it turned out he was right. The commanders--you guys ended up wanting roughly the same as you had for the major combat operation, and that's what we have. There is no damned guidebook that says what the number ought to be. We were queued up to go up to what, 400-plus thousand.

Q: Yes, they were already in queue.

RUMSFELD: They were in the queue. We would have gone right on if they'd wanted them, but they didn't, so life goes on.

Military Analysts Named by Times On Air 4,500-Plus Times
MM: Military Analysts Named by 'Times' Got On the Air 4,500-Plus Times
By E&P Staff
Published: May 13, 2008 3:02 PM ET

Military analysts named in a New York Times investigative story appeared or were quoted more than 4,500 times on TV and radio since the start of 2002, MediaMatters.org reported today.

David Barstow's April 20 Times article described how the Pentagon used military analysts as a "media Trojan horse" to spread the Bush administration's perspective on the Iraq War and generate favorable news coverage.

Many of the analysts had or have financial ties to defense-industry contractors doing business with the U.S. military.

MediaMatters.org, a liberal watchdog site, noted that the analysts appeared or were quoted on "ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR in segments covering the Iraq War both before and after the invasion, as well as numerous other national-security or government-policy issues."

A chart of the appearances can be seen here.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200805130001?f=h_top#