Glenn,

There are so many good things to say about this post (and yesterday's, and your entire series on the military analysts story) that I barely know where to start. A random offering:

* This story is in some ways a sideline to the entire list of atrocities that have been perpetrated as this group have hijacked one after another of our institutions (public and private) for their own variously defined gains. But it's illustrative of the whole in some glaring ways. Thanks for focusing your attention and powers on it.

* I'm excited to see the way you've done it, i.e. focusing on the actual mechanisms employed by the perps and their enablers, demonstrating the impact, and emphasizing the chain of accountability.

IMHO, one part of what has made 'our' criticisms ineffectual is that 'we' often paint with too broad a brush and rely on high-level narratives and tropes which, although reasonably accurate, leave too much to the imagination and offer too many opportunities for refutation by counter-example. Specificity, precision ... this is what happened in this instance, who-what-when-where-why-how (especially how), using the actual words of the actual participants is much stronger. Wish we had more of this ... dare we call it 'investigative journalism'?

* I've mentioned in the past the work we did overseas for the past several years nurturing independent media in the 'developing world'. I wish we had had an example this clear, and this good, to teach with. If we do any more of that work (exhaustion and dillusionment argue against it), I'll certainly use this and your FISA enterprise as examples.

* You did this in a matter of days with the Pentagon's FOIA-coerced data dump. By contrast, media outlets will make budgetary decisions on investigative reporting (almost always an enterprise piece) based on assumptions about its extended cost and development time. Obviously, it took Barstow a while to put it together, to get the FOIA through, to develop his timeline and his sources ... but look at all the 'secondary' content you've developed from that ... and how much more impact you've had from that. Should be an eye-opener.

I could go on and on ... but I'll stop here out of consideration for length.

Thanks again

In case anyone missed it, here are two links to letters sent by the military analysts (who are not all generals, TBC)in response.

(NYT)

http://tinyurl.com/3ppflf

Some excerpts:

We object to “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand” (front page, April 20) and its assertion that military analysts are tools of a Pentagon propaganda machine.

We have never stated anything about defense or national security that we did not believe to be true. Equally important, we also have served the essential wartime function of helping civilians be better informed about our military, our enemies and how the war is being conducted.

Those of us who had a similar arrangement with the Clinton administration are confident that what you have been reporting is really old news.

We have said and will continue to say what we truly believe after looking at all information and facts available to us through the prism of our extensive professional military experience.

Suggesting that we intentionally misled the American people for partisan political purposes or some quid pro quo personal gain is an unconscionable attack on our honor and long service to this nation.

(snip)

The letter is signed:

Thomas G. McInerney

Paul E. Vallely

Charles T. Nash

William V. Cowan

Wayne Simmons

Clifton, Va., April 25, 2008

The writers are, respectively, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, a retired Army major general, a retired Navy captain, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and a retired United States intelligence officer.

I'd like to compare the data dump, especially emails to/from the signatories, to what they've asserted here. Given his cite in Barstow's story, I would think Vallely is especially vulnerable.

Note also the non-sequitur about how 'it's really just old news', which has been the general (pun intended) response. Done all the time, nothing to see here. As if that made it ethical, or that no damage resulted from it, or that it was somehow less mendacious because 'everybody does it' ... something military officers of flag rank should know goddamned well is not the case.

A second response, from Col. Allard:

http://tinyurl.com/45jzdd

Allard's main complaint is that his book, "WarHeads", wasn't cited in the article. The book is a rather gently critical exploration of the same material, which does contain some useful insights about the mechanics of how this works. His secondary complaint is that it's basically the fault of lazy 'CouchPotatoes', his contempt for which he doesn't do much to hide.

To be fair, there is a legitimate, though somewhat peripheral point here about the yawning information gap between the public, the media and the all-volunteer military which has been exploited by the warmongers. Though many of them have been involved in efforts to address this (I was involved in exploring a similar unrelated effort during Kosovo, sort of an 'owner's manual for the military' for civilians to enable them to avoid being manipulated),these officers seem either willfully or blindly ignorant to how they have been used for political purposes (to say the least).