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Pentagon Manipulating TV Analysts
gollum123 notes an extensive article from the NYTimes on the evidence that the military, since the time of the buildup to the Iraq war, has been manipulating the military analysts that are ubiquitous on TV and radio news programs, in a protracted campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's war efforts. "Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity of military analysts on the major networks, is a Pentagon information apparatus... The effort... 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. Several dozen of the military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members, or consultants. Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. ...[M]embers of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access."
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For that reason, the news companies keep their reporters in check and fire those that do any true investigation. Look what happened to Peter Arnett.
I went to that Wikipedia link expecting to be reminded that Arnett had been fired for criticizing the current Iraq War, and yup, no big surprise, he said something mildly critical on Iraq TV and he got fired for it.
Then I read on, to the section where his daughter "Elsa married conservative law professor John Yoo."
Holy crap. Getting fired for criticizing Bush's War, that's one thing... but having Mr. Torture Memos marry your daughter? The Godfather was a freaking amateur; as punishments/threats go, this blows "severed horse's head in your bed" out of the water!
We are winning in Iraq, and if all these mythical soldiers who are saying this really exist, why is it they only ever talk to extremist liberal/terrorist-supporter blogs?
It may then suit a government to actually prolong a war to stay in power. It turns out that waging war is one thing that democracies actually don't cope very well with.
Yeah. Haven't you ever played Civ 2?
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
and the Air Force too, just because you can't see them doesn't mean you can stiff them on Slashdot.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
What year is this again? In other news, I think I just saw a lady with a 20lb sledgehammer sprint past in black and white.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
New York Times
Wall Street Journal
Fox News
CNN
If that's what you consider "full spectrum," you must think visible light stops somewhere around, say, yellow.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.