We lost the Iraq war because of liberal media

[Strangelet]

So this is old, and I imagined that it would have caused a shit storm in the media, but I guess the media's been too busy with the Rev. Wright story Morning Joe going so far as to say people who complain about the media's handling of Obama are stupid.

So this bears posting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/wa...on&oref=slogin

It is a smoking gun for collusion between the media, the Bush administration, and the military industrial complex. And it devastates any argument that the iraq war was lost because of media treachery. And goes a long way in measuring how fascist the U.S. has become.

I understand the need for propaganda in wartime, old news reels and movies from the 40's can attest to their conventional existence. But this is something more sinister. This is a partnership between what should be an independent journalist body, a pillar of democracy, and multinational wartime profiteering.

These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.
Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”
Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.
“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”
Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”

anyway, back to rev. wright's cawaaazy comments.