Thank you Glenn, once again really great work.

Not to be one of those tin-foil hat dudes, but in Milton Mayer's "They Thought They Were Free", he sites two maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ I have linked to more excerpts to my name below (via the University of Chicago Press).

Mayer notes that, "one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings." Hitler did not sieze power and immediately start gassing Jews and invading nations, it was a steady drip, drip, drip of incremental steps toward facism. More Mayer:

If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

The military analysts/MSM scandal is just another drip. Torturing detainees (drip), secret prisons (drip), illegal spying (drip), telcom immunity (drip) all justified by our version of the reichstag fire (911 - although I am suspicious of the official 911 story line, I believe it was another example of the Administration's incompetence, ala Katrina). But the parallels to the early 30s are hard to ignore.

I think we are still early enough, more towards the "German Firm" side of the continuum. Thanks to you and others, I hope we can consider the end and repair that leaky faucet.

The issue highlights the fact that liberals cry that the press is an arm of the Republican Party, while conservatives cry that the press is "liberal" and favors the Democrats. The press favors who is perceived to be the power at the moment. Let the Democrats take the next election in a landslide and control congress and the whitehouse and we will see that "liberal" press reappear --- well, perhaps only in the minds of the Republicans.

The problem is that the military should not be the most powerful branch of government --- don't think they are? Well, they get the most money out of the budget. The founders saw that a standing army would lead to this perversion of our system.

It's true that there are plenty of people who understand the core government-amplifying function of the establishment media, but there are also plenty of people -- likely far more -- who don't.

I want to explore the ugly double-standard that you seem to have exposed. Even if, according to Collins, it is generally assumed that "military analysists" are biased in favor of the Pentagon, it is at least as true, as you say, that, "The public has long been inculcated with the notion that we have a "liberal media" that opposes and undermines whatever Republicans do, etc. etc."

However, note that when press behavior emerges that supposedly confirms the "liberal media" theme, that instance of behavior itself becomes enormous news, sometimes even consuming a week's worth of news cycles. This was the case when the NYT wrote its unflattering article about McCain and the female lobbyist, if you recall, when almost the entire establishment media closed ranks around McCain to condemn the Times' "bias."

Yet, at the same time, when a story comes out exposing - in lurid, undeniable detail - the converse "military favorability" theme, the story is entirely written off as something everyone already knew.

You can play this game with countless examples, where each and every example of "liberal media bias" is relentlessly spotlighted and commented upon, while examples of military/hawk favoritism go ignored - even though both themes are supposedly common knowledge.

You people are still doing this? Has being too stupid to associate Generals with the Pentagon now become a resume enhancement?

Moreover, it was the NETWORKS asking the Pentagon for people to comment. The Pentagon did a good job of providing attractive media people. That's illegal? Just because Greenwaldistas aren't that savvy, doesn't make something illegal.

Perhaps you folks should consider the real lesson here. One gets one's message out in better fashion when positive and attractive to an audience, as opposed to appearing rude, negative, and condescending. But hey, like that could ever happen. Heh.

son of a West Point grad, officer, lifer, some-time Pentagon denizen, etc...and my perspective is somewhat different, in regard to the motivations of the military.

I honestly don't think that the impetus of all of this is ideological. I do think that the Pentagon personnel in question would have done the same thing for any president determined to ramp up a war.

A couple of points to bear in mind:

1) as an institution, the US Army still carries a chip on its shoulder about the way that the press- especially the US press- covered the war in Vietnam. They feel as if the journalists of that era were mostly made up of people with hostile biases, out to make them wrong despite their best efforts in the field. Their impression is that the narrative slipped out of their control- not so much because of its objective deficiencies, but because of active undermining by the press.

Reviewing the merits of that position is a debate for a different thread. For now, I'll simply note that the US military side of the argument isn't wholly devoid of evidence to support it. And that evidence has in turn been passed on to comprise somewhat of an article of faith in today's military- that the US press can't be automatically counted on for loyalty, discretion, or basic competence when covering a war fought by its own nation's people. As military professionals, they're determined to not allow a repeat of the Vietnam experience in terms of their relationship to the American media.

2) The US military is inculcated with the idea that duty to the directives of the President is their primary Constitutional duty, especially in wartime. They're also trained to be absolutely one-pointed, focused, mission-driven. So they'll walk right up to whatever line they determine is proper in order to ensure the success of the mission. They aren't going to spend a lot of time consulting with lawyers in advance about what constitutes an overstepping of guidelines in terms of doing public advocacy to the media in regard to what they consider their duly ordered mission. If they're challenged by another institution of the Federal government, they'll put on their best loyal defense of their actions. But if they're admonished, they'll back off.

It's both the strength and the weakness of the American civilian-controlled military that they tend to studiously avoid whys and wherefores. Basically, as long as there are institutions like elections and legislative and judicial review, they consider their orders from the commander-in-chief of a civilian-controlled government to be lawful, and their mission worthy and compelling. After that, "there is no 'try'".

For me, the amazing thing about this war is not the rallying of the military hierarchy to the directives of the Commander-In-Chief- that's to be expected. The amazing thing is the level of dissent that has been expressed by military personnel, both prior to the Iraq invasion and continuing afterward- whether taking the form of open criticism (both publically and behind the scenes), or through more tacit moves like early retirements.