{"id":1536,"date":"2008-04-22T23:51:43","date_gmt":"2008-04-22T23:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/22\/selling-the-pen\/"},"modified":"2008-04-22T23:51:43","modified_gmt":"2008-04-22T23:51:43","slug":"selling-the-pen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/22\/selling-the-pen\/","title":{"rendered":"SELLING THE PENTAGON, SELLING THE WAR IN IRAQ, SELLING THEIR HONOR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Selling_of_the_pentagon\"<\/a>In 1971, when I worked at CBS News in Washington, the network
\naired a documentary called The Selling of the Pentagon<\/a>.  <\/em>The Museum of <\/em>Broadcasting  website says:  "The
\naim of this film, produced by Peter Davis, was to examine the increasing
\nutilization and cost to the taxpayers of public relations activities by the
\nmilitary-industrial complex in order to shape public opinion in favor of the
\nmilitary."  <\/em>The Congress tried to cite CBS for contempt – it was
\na real drama.  In his book The Place to Be<\/a><\/em>, my mentor
\nRoger Mudd tells the whole story better than I ever could – he was the
\ncorrespondent on the award-winning program.  Despite all that happened,
\nthere was real satisfaction in knowing that the film had made a difference –
\nthat our defense dollars would go to protect and support our soldiers, not a
\nmilitary PR campaign.<\/p>\n

Ah, but like all good news, it was short-lived.  Maybe not too short – we
\nmade it to 2008 — but the whole thing is back – and because it’s about Iraq
\nand Guantanamo this time, not just some recruiting and appropriations
\nmanipulation, it’s far more malignant.<\/p>\n

Sunday, the New York Times<\/a><\/em> <\/a>reported on the courtship of
\nthose military "experts" who show up on the TODAY SHOW and NIGHTLINE
\nand CNN to tell us the facts behind our country’s military initiatives. <\/span><\/o:p><\/p>\n

To the public, these men are members of a familiar
\nfraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as
\n\u201cmilitary analysts\u201d whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative
\nand unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11
\nworld. <\/span><\/em><\/o:p><\/p>\n

Hidden behind that appearance of
\nobjectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those
\nanalysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the
\nadministration\u2019s wartime performance<\/span><\/em><\/strong>, an examination by The New York Times has
\nfound.<\/span><\/em><\/o:p><\/p>\n

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq<\/a> war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit
\nideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic:
\nMost of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war
\npolicies they are asked to assess on air. <\/span><\/em><\/o:p><\/p>\n

Those business relationships are hardly ever
\ndisclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But
\ncollectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts
\nrepresent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives,
\nboard members or consultants.<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/o:p><\/p>\n

Of course, this one is a little different – these
\nguys are consultants to the media, and while the Pentagon enables their
\n"expertise" and offers the heft of the tours of Guantanamo and classified briefings, their money comes from their lucrative  consultancies with military vendors, not from the Pentagon directly.  But think about it.  If we really
\nwere manipulated; if the arguments for the Iraq war were as flawed as we now believe, then these consultants — follow the bread crumbs — are at least partly responsible for the attitudes that permitted the war to take place and discouraged many of those who might have stopped it
I don’t know about you, but when I hear stories
\nabout Abu Ghraib<\/a> and the things that
\nwere done in our names, and think of how little I’ve done to instigate change,
\nresting instead on the actions of my youth. I think about all the Germans who
\nsaid the "didn’t know" what was going on.  I don’t mean that a
\nfew soldiers, none of whose leaders has been prosecuted and who are taking the
\nrap for things that went way beyond them — are the equivalent of Nazi
\nGermany.  That would be stupid and facile.  What I am saying is that
\nthe horrible things that emerged from this war are on all our heads – and that
\nthese guys whose testimony to us via countless talking head interviews
\nlegitimized what was going on, enabled it all.<\/span><\/o:p><\/p>\n

The reason I started with The Selling of the
\nPentagon<\/em> is that it’s such a lesson.  Whatever change we help to
\nimplement won’t last – Abolitionist Wendell Phillips<\/a> was
\nright when he said that "eternal vigilance is the price of
\nliberty."   In 1971 the documentary outraged Americans who
\ndemanded change.  Today we still recall the events at Abu Ghraib the same
\nway – with a deep and painful sense of outrage.  Once again, on our watch
\nthis time, bad things have been done in our names<\/a>.
\nOnce again, dissemblers reign.  The consequences of their betrayal,
\nwhether the story is true or not, are tragically visible.  Once again —
\nour hearts are broken.  Once again – we must share the blame for what
\nhappened there.<\/span><\/o:p><\/p>\n

Once again, whatever is left of our better angels
\nlooks warily about, frightened, silenced, sad and ashamed.<\/span><\/o:p><\/p>\n

 <\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1971, when I worked at CBS News in Washington, the network aired a documentary called The Selling of the Pentagon.  The Museum of Broadcasting  website says:  "The aim of this film, produced by Peter Davis, was to examine the increasing utilization and cost to the taxpayers of public relations activities by the military-industrial complex in … Continue reading SELLING THE PENTAGON, SELLING THE WAR IN IRAQ, SELLING THEIR HONOR<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4,27,7,9,97],"tags":[79,384,1292,1342,1592,1591,1590,359],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-baby-boom","category-current-affairs","category-life","category-politics","category-television","tag-abu-ghraib","tag-anti-war","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-iraq","tag-protest","tag-roger-mudd","tag-selling-of-the-pentagon","tag-vietnam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-oM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}