This does not look good

Stumbled across this via Fuzz Martin...

On Sunday, the NY Times published an article titled, Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand:

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.

I'm probably going to touch on this a little more later, but, after reading the article, this doesn't look good. Long article short, the Pentagon, in conjunction with Donald Rumsfeld, hired analysts with military backgrounds by giving preferential treatment to their employers to give pro-Pentagon/Rumsfeld information to news outlets. This information was used to, among other things, provide political cover to the deteriorating situation in Iraq through 2005, provide the talking points that were used to justify the war in Iraq, and minimize the fallout of Guantanamo.

From my perspective, the bad news is pretty obvious. I don't mind our government providing information and talking through news agencies, but it's important that we know where the information is coming from and how we're paying for it. After all, the government is a side in the story, and usually a rather important one; categorically ignoring what they have to say just because they're The Government^TM is generally not wise. That said, we should be able to count on our government to be upfront about its intentions, or, at the very least, being upfront that it is, in fact, the entity that's doing the talking.

Now, for some good news: The article focuses almost exclusively on the role that Donald Rumsfeld and his supported played in this fiasco. This is good for two important reasons:

1. Donald Rumsfeld and his supporters, for the most part, don't work for the government anymore.
2. #1 kind of implies that their efforts didn't work.

The nice part of #2 is that, since their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, at least in the long term (we found out about Guantanamo, we found out Iraq was deteriorating, we found out we needed more troops on the ground if we wanted to win this thing, etc.), it may have taught everyone a very important lesson - it's good to get your side of the story out, but no amount of polish will make a turd anything other than a turd. Unfortunately, this article probably means that Rumsfeld & Co. lasted far longer than they really should have.

Like I said, I'm probably going to dig into this a little more later. For now... this will have to do.