I’m heading out of town for a few days, so I’ll hit pause with a link to David Barstow’s phenomenal piece on the Pentagon-run disinformation campaign that has infected nearly all mainstream coverage of the Iraq war.
Of course, the story of these self-serving con men posing as “military analysts” on FOX News, CNN, ABC and even on the Op-Ed page of the NY Times doesn’t come as a complete surprise. As Barstow notes, instances of the Pentagon and/or the White House paying off columnists, providing networks with fake-objective “news” spots and even planting favorable stories in the nascent Iraqi press are well known.
What’s surprising, however, is the level of damning detail in Barstow’s piece, which is the result of the NY Times suing the Dept. of Defense for the relevant documents. The only other thing to add is the outright betrayal of U.S. troops that these “military analysts” have on their conscience. These men knew from direct experience that the troops were facing an impossible battle, and then went on TV and said exactly the opposite, in order to preserve their access and their lucrative ties to military contractors.
Yet somehow the right continues to own the “patriotism” issue, and Barack Obama needs to wear a flag pin to prove his.
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