- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
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).
