Duped: The 'independent' analysts of American television news.

 

 

Le Devoir, Canada

Experts, Crooks and the American Media

 

"The old adage that 'the first casualty of war is truth' is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency."

 

By Serge Truffaut

 

Translated By Ebtehaj Kalantar

 

April 22, 2008

 

Canada - Le Devoir - Original Article (French)

The old adage that "the first casualty of war is truth" is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency. Thanks to the Benedictine work a journalist from The New York Times - and there is no better word to describe it- we now know that the U.S. executive has applied itself to building a propaganda machine so powerful, that it highlights the disdain that Bush and company feed on with respect to democracy.

 

[The "Benedictine" New York Times reporter in question is David Barstow. The headline on the over-7,500 word report is Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand ].

 

Well before the tragedy of September 11, Torie Clarke, then boss of public relations at the Pentagon, had decided to set up a group of retirees within the military, capable of properly posing as television analysts. Obviously, she had taken particular care to ensure that these men shared the neoconservative views of the administration.

 

Quite simply, the group's purpose was to subvert the work of traditional journalists who occupy the media space with experts in the pay of the Pentagon. The operation was successful beyond expectations and those of Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, and Dick Cheney, the Vice President. Thus these 80 generals and colonels who have regularly paraded on television screens have in fact proven to be the true chroniclers of the war in Iraq. And this, from the moment the White House had decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In other words, this slew of men of rank simply relayed and then covered up the lies about weapons of mass destruction.

 

Even worse, the major networks; CBS to CNN, not to be outdone by FOX, NBC and ABC, have repeatedly resorted to these soldiers without verifying whether they were part of the conflict of interest, as they do with journalists. However, according to the survey by The New York Times, these retired military men were and remain vice presidents, advisors or lobbyists for a combination of 150 companies providing the Pentagon with weapons, miscellaneous goods and services. The more they reinforced messages concocted by Rumsfeld and his associates, the more the military budgets increased and the more their businesses rake in.

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

 

Quite naturally, this conflict of interest had the perverse effect that the objective of these so-called experts was to erase certain aspects of the Iraqi conflict. As one of them explained, when they knew that the strategy of Rumsfeld and his staff had misfired, they didn't mention it for fear that on the spot, they would lose this or that contract.

 

Cheney and Rumsfeld: Restoring executive power lost after Nixon has been their driving ambition.

Every aspect, element and factor of this story depends on a … state of mind! … That of Rumsfeld and Cheney. It has been repeated often enough that these veterans of the Nixon and Ford Administrations have never digested the obligation they were given when Ford was in the White House: to manage the diminishment of Executive power that resulted from Watergate and the Vietnam War. When they returned, their inclination for an Imperial America had combined with a relish for revenge and recovering the lost mandates of the 1970s. And with the resulting great damage we all now know of.

 

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[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US April 24, 6:12pm]