Old soldiers shill the Pentagon line

National Catholic Reporter, May 16, 2008 by Coleman McCarthy

"Old soldiers never die," said Gen. Douglas MacArthur on retiring in 1951, "they just fade away." No more. Now they hustle from battlegrounds to the high grounds of TV news shows, there to supply NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC and others with hawkish support of the U.S. war machine.

In a 5,000-word expose on April 20, The New York Times detailed the Pentagon-media buddy system. More than 70 retired generals, colonels and majors reincarnated themselves as "military analysts" in the past five years of the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. They were briefed by the Rumsfeld Pentagon and, loyalists, many went on the air to spread the military line that they knew was often false or inflated.

The mouthpieces included retired generals Barry McCaffrey (NBC), Don Sheppard (CNN), Bob Scales (Fox), Montgomery Megs (MSNBC) and Col. Jeff McCausland (CBS).

By hosting the ex-brass, the networks assaulted whatever minor claim they might have had to be champions of independent, balanced and impartial reporting. With no dissenting voices--perhaps an occasional peace analyst to counter the hordes of military analysts?--perspective vanished. In 2002 the Pentagon embedded TV journalists to report from Iraq. To reciprocate, home-front news shows embedded militarists in network studios.

The corporate media provided one more revolving door for the medal-chested warriors to stride through. Viewers were not told that while this or that general was promoting the Bush-Cheney version of the war--we are liberating Iraq, democracy is around the corner--he was also on the payroll: of military contractors feasting on war profits. A general could go from being a double-dipper, earning money from his military pension and a network check, to being a triple-dipper raking it in from a pension, the network and a contractor. An articulate general could become a quadruple dipper pension, network check, contractor check and speaking fees at military trade association dinners.

As the Times' reporters dug deeper into the collusion between the corporate media and the generals, they found that only "a few expressed regret for participation in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis."

Little of this would matter beyond what might be discussed at a think-tank conference on journalistic ethics except that the duping has helped keep Iraq a land of death and misery. As damning as the Times story was, it shouldn't be hailed as groundbreaking. Others have been on the case for years. In the early 1990s, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a New York nonprofit, examined media coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Of more than 700 experts offering commentaries before, during and after the war only one was from a major peace organization. Seven hundred to one equals balance.

In 2005 Norman Solomon, a reporter much in the tradition of fiercely independent journalists like I.F. Stone, Morton Mintz and George Seldes, wrote War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. It documents Oval Office deceit from Vietnam to Iraq and how rarely the corporate media dissented. It was one presidential con job after another. Lyndon Johnson: "We still seek no wider war." Ronald Reagan: "The United States does not start fights." George H.W. Bush: "America does not seek conflict." Bill Clinton: "I don't like to use military force." George W. Bush: "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly."

War Made Easy has become a documentary, an 84-minute film that brings to life the connections between war policies in Washington and the death and chaos that result in distant lands. Those connections were not on display recently in the capital when, first, the Radio and Television Correspondents held their annual black tie dinner and raised their glasses to toast Dick Cheney and, second, when members of the White House Correspondents Association convened to toast George W. Bush. It was fun and fellowship for all, with presidential joke writers ghosting one-liners for the president and vice president.

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War is indeed made easy when politicians sail their ships of state and the media are like galley slaves down below pulling their masters' oars.

[Colman McCarthy teaches peace studies in the Washington area.]