Rent-A-General Story Moves By: Mark W Adams

Slowly.

But Deep

The military analyst story is far more about the corruption of our establishment media outlets than it is about Pentagon improprieties (though both are implicated). That's why protests and demands for information of the kind sent by Rep. Rosa DeLauro are being directed to network executives. As Rep. DeLauro pointed out, these networks served as an outlet for "a domestic propaganda program." It is hard to imagine an accusation against their integrity and core function more serious than that.

Glenn Greenwald's take on this will most likely be the conventional wisdom decades from now, taught in history and journalism classrooms through the ages.

At least it should be if we are to learn anything from this miserable epoch.

Mind you it is not this one story about the Pentagon briefing hired guns to warp public opinion, but part of a grand conspiracy (yes, I said it) of which we undoubtedly only know a bit. The infamous Judy Miller's breathlessly brazen stenography of Administration talking points from scamming the public about WMD's to outing CIA operatives, redrawing the map of the Middle East in secret closed-door meetings along lines suggested by the chiefs of the energy cartels, and the price of gas skyrocketing -- none of which could have happened without the complicity of pliant corporate media.

This will be what our grandchildren learn of this era, IF we learn and don't just sweep this down the memory hole.

[The Nation's Ari Melber] also notes that "The Chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services Committee [Carl Levin and Ike Skelton] have also called for internal investigations by the Defense Department." Given that there are likely violations of federal law prohibiting domestic propaganda campaigns by the military, it is really Congress that ought to investigate, not "internal" investigators at the Pentagon. After all, as Melber notes, the Pentagon actively resisted disclosure of this story in the first place. The idea that they can be entrusted to investigate themselves -- the definition these days of "oversight" -- is absurd.

Alas, the memory hole looks precisely where officials on both sides of the aisle want this to go -- as long as the War Chiefs promise never, ever to do it again. Scout's Honor.

Feh.