Saboteurs In Waiting

by digby

I’m sure most of you have already read about the Republican retired officers who pose as unbiased military “analysts” on television. I guess I should be shocked, but it always seemed obvious to me that they were in the tank (no pun intended) and that they got their talking points directly from the Pentagon brass. Looks like it’s even worse than I thought. What I assumed to be a more or less sincere application of Pentagon propaganda, looks like it might have been done as much for financial gain as anything else:

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.

It’s another example of media corruption as well. These networks have an obligation to present these people honestly. If they are corrupt, then the networks that employed them are equally corrupt.

It’s a very good thing that this story came out now because as bad as it is that these ex-Generals were touting the Bush administration line, when a Democrat is president something much more insidious is likely to happen. The top military brass are notoriously conservative — and Republican. During the last Democratic administration they worked very hard against their Commander in Chief whenever they disagreed with him. At times they, particularly Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, came perilously close to defying the civilian rule of the military.

I see little reason to believe that won’t happen again if a new Democratic president decides to chart a course the mostly Republican military brass disagree with. Having all these proxy “analysts” available to go on television and tell the American people that the president doesn’t know what he’s doing is a recipe for political disaster right out of the box.

Any military analysts who took part in the propaganda operation should be fired immediately. At the very least, if they stay in their jobs after this they must be identified as Republican operatives. That’s what they are.

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