beware the US "military-industrial complex".

[steevolution]

this is from a NYT/IHT article:

The administration's communications experts responded swiftly.

Early one morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President **** Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantanamo. To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as "military analysts" whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about pressing issues.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.

The companies include defense heavyweights but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in business generated by the administration's war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse - an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, and Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Several analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

the entire article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/20/america/analyst.php

and THE TAXPAYERS' ASSHOLES BLEED.

[eagle]

People are becoming more and more aware of the MIC

The good news is Preparation H is cheaper then ever :shock:

[Hobbes]

Ooopps...I just posted a journal about that NYT article. Ah, well... :twisted: