It's a brief and simple explanation of the fact that, even if certain asshats don't have any problem w/ being propogandized, it is in fact, patently ILLEGAL.

ROFLMAO. Perhaps you should consider that this bit....

According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

...renders ANYONE getting federal money off limits from commenting on anything! But that still doesn't negate the idiocy of anyone considering Generals to be anything but Generals.

Glenn, the breakdown in communication here is that what you think of as TV news is not what they think of as TV news.

You think of TV news as having a moral and ethincal responsibility to the public good to function oppositionally to the government in a search for truth.

They, and by they I mean actors like Brian Williams, see TV "news" as a show. It's entertainment. It's ratings. It's Mary Tyler Moore meets reality TV. It's WKRP meets TMZ.

Of course I agree with you. I think news has an obligation to the public trust.

I'm just saying that when you say "news" and they say "news," you're talking about fact-based public trust, and they're talking about "Thatttts Entertainnnnment!!"

Government Generals dressed up as "experts"? It's all part of the show.

To them, it's like complaining the FBI agents on 24 aren't real FBI agents.

Who cares? They look the part.

didn't see your post before I posted mine (on taking the oath). You said it really well: so I could have said: What she said.

No worries. Good for the former military to speak up as well since, apparently, I am merely an uninvolved civilian with nothing of my own truly on the line.

So tell me, do I make you "touchy"? ;-}

The ones who signed that letter are basically the Fox News crowd of analysts. To call them crazy is an understatement; several of them are right out of Dr. Strangelove.

You should see the missives they constantly send to the Pentagon - furious that we're not assassinating Hugo Chavez, demanding to know why the White House isn't talking up reports that WMDs were moved to Syria before the invasion, insisting that Al Qaeda is going imminently to attack Israel and we have weeks before a nuclear conflict can be averted.

They're the ones who think that Bush and Cheney are way too moderated and have been stopped by the liberal media into really waging the wars we need to wage.

By Teri Weaver, Stars and Stripes

Pacific edition, Sunday, May 11, 2008

TOKYO — The U.S. Navy air wing commander for the USS Kitty Hawk’s strike group was relieved of duty Friday after an admiral said he lost confidence in the commander’s ability, according to a Navy spokeswoman.

Capt. Michael P. McNellis was relieved as commander of Carrier Air Wing 5 by Rear Adm. Richard B. Wren, commander of Commander Task Force 70, the Navy said in a news release.

The admiral’s mast, a nonjudicial punishment proceeding below the level of court-martial, was held Friday at sea aboard the Kitty Hawk, according to Cmdr. Jensin W. Sommer, CTF-70 strike group spokeswoman.

Sommer declined Friday evening to give any details about the circumstances leading to McNellis’ nonjudicial proceeding.

Sommer described Wren’s findings as a removal from command “due to a loss of confidence, not a punishment.”

McNellis left the Kitty Hawk on Friday, Sommer said. McNellis, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1982 and trained as an EA-6B Prowler pilot, was preparing for retirement, she said.

Capt. Michael S. White, the former air wing deputy commander, assumed command, Sommer said.

McNellis took command of Carrier Air Wing 5 in September 2006 from Capt. Garry Mace, who commended McNellis at the time for his experience.

“Since I started working with [McNellis], he’s always been a moral compass for me, keeping me pointed in the right direction,” Mace said in 2006. “I’m sure as a leader, he’ll do great things for this air wing.”

The air wing is based at Naval Air Facility Atsugi and includes seven aircraft squadrons and two smaller aircraft detachments, consisting of about 70 aircraft and 2,000 people. It is part of the Kitty Hawk’s strike group, the largest in the Navy.

The USS Kitty Hawk Carrier Strike Group is conducting training and operations in the Philippine Sea, Sommer wrote in the news release.

He took that post in late 06 and was lauded as one of the best. Could he have been apposed to the planed destruction of Iran? We may never know, or we may know after it is too late.

Then again, perhaps it is nothing but a pilot who beat his boss too often at cards.

Regarding the oath to the Constitution, "cabdriver" makes the ultimate observation that the military is commanded by the political and that insubordination to the CIC is considered near treason. This is but another instance where the real trumps the ideal.

The only effective protest is resignation, which you as a principled individual did... yes? I have a lot of respect for that.

if the world doesn’t realize the value of banding together to prevent human banishment from history in 200 years due to global warming, what history teaches won’t matter. If we do learn to do that, we may enter into a real age of enlightenment.

I never said that lessons aren't learned from history, I'm saying that they are forgotten as soon as they become even slightly inconvenient. That was my point regarding the Powell Doctrine, the lesson was learned but discarded like so much used bumph as soon as it got in the way of the desires of the political class.

You have to actually enjoy learning and have an interest in serious things to make use of the educational opportunities becoming available via teh intertoohbz.. Most people, and this is particularly true in America, hate learning and do it as little as possible except within extremely narrow parameters.

During early childhood, and we've discussed this before, children are constantly asking "why".. At some point though the great majority of people stop asking "why".

I want to know why this is, why some relatively few people never stop wanting answers and the rest don't care?

In the answer to that question, I suspect, is the solution to many problems.