Sounds like a new form of warfare!

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.

And if that message is neither accurate nor beneficial to the public? At what point does the DoD cease to have a moral duty to serve the public interest rather than the partisan goals of the current Administration?

Don't worry about answering. We all know you can't.

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.

If ever there were a better example of someone's needing to heed his own advice...

When I read this, I am immediately struck by Capt. Merritt's observation that "no one in the media has current military background."

This, once again, is the unfortunate unintended consequence of the media's insistence on staffing largely with journalism and communication majors.

As we have learned from blogs, many people who do not have "professional credentials" can report with clear prose and keen eye. Surely some of these have military experience. While they hiring, they should consider those in other fields who might prove useful as reporters (knowledge of statistics, for example).

Perhaps reporters with broader experience would not be so quick to let the wool be pulled over their eyes.

Coincidentally I just had this conversation last night with two people who served in Iraq- one of whom was part of the original invasion force. Although neither had paid much attention to this story, neither was surprised, and neither was particularly outraged or interested.

Now, if somehow Miley Cyrus, Brittany Spears, or Barack's former pastor were involved, that would get national attention and hours of putrid punditry.

. . . for wanting to get their side of the story out there. That's only natural. The problem is that CNN failed to live up to its responsibility as a provider of objective, fact-based news, and allowed itself to be easily (WAY too easily!) transformed into a conduit of Pentagon propaganda.

you are, of course, correct. journalism's strength in this country used to be its openness to people from all walks of life. these days, with the credentialism fetish that j schools have stoked, not so much.

there are still exceptions of course. here's background on chris chivers, one of the truly indispensible foreign correspondents of the nytimes. among other high points in his coverage, he was in a unique position to report from ground zero, and then afghanistan.

http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a4766.asp

by the way, we see this need for diverse backgrounds in other areas of public service. sheldon whitehouse, the senator from rhode island, was such a breath of fresh air in that millionaire club's precisely because he had been a u.s. attorney and thus could rip away the curtain of lies and denials at the gonzales doj.

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.

So, if the media reports the truth about what they are seeing in war, and the truth is ugly (as it always is in war), then they are disloyal, indiscrete and incompetent?

The US military is inculcated with the idea that duty to the directives of the President is their primary Constitutional duty, especially in wartime.

Really? Then what is this?

I, [name], do solemnly swear, (or affirm,) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. (So help me God.)

I don't see anything about the President there. I do see that small bit about "enemies, foreign and domestic".

I believe the military, when contemplating walking up to any line, needs to remember what the actual oath they took was. Success of the mission be damned, especially if that mission is in service to those who would shred the Constitution in pursuit of personal power and aggrandizement. They shouldn't have to be admonished in order to remember this.

they consider their orders from the commander-in-chief of a civilian-controlled government to be lawful, and their mission worthy and compelling.

If this is true, then why do they feel the need to teach so many ethics courses in the military academies, including those that educate as to the proper course of action when given an unlawful order?

I've not read all of Glenn's posts on this issue yet, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that these Generals would acknowledge that they were attending Pentagon briefings, repeating Pentagon analysis, and that their views, although purportedly independent, generally conformed to the Pentagon's views.

Was the degree of the Pentagon's coordination of this program concealed from the media? Although irrelevant to the issue of whether this was propaganda, which it plainly was, it is likely relevant to whether the program constituted "covert propaganda" under pertinent statutes.

The vast majority of Americans can read Glenn's articles and will not care. Fist of all, anything more than a sound bite is ignored and second, a combination of scepticism and curiosity must be present.

In my opinion most Americans are numb to the changes that are taking away their freedoms. The most important brick in the foundation of a free society is unfettered access to objective information - a free press.

Apparently we're losing that access by having information managed by the same people affected by public exposure of their activities. This is in direct opposition to our rights as Americans.

We can be thankful, at least, that this idiot of a president has made such an obvious attempt at deception and subversion to the extent that enough noise can be made in an attempt to wake up a sleeping public.

Unfortunately, the information in Glenn's reporting may cause an awakening public to believe that they have entered a waking nightmare, and will prefer to go back to sleep.

If ever we were in need of strong leadership, it is now. By electing another Republican we will commit to four more years of unchanged neocon policies.