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What’s wrong with this scenario? The Guardian reports the Senate wants Pentagon to investigate courting of TV analysts. “The US Senate armed services committee today asked the Pentagon to investigate its practice of courting military analysts on popular TV programmes in order to push positive spin on the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policy.”
Carl Levin, the Democratic senator who chairs the armed services committee, asked for an internal probe of the Pentagon’s relationship with TV networks in a terse letter to defence secretary Robert Gates.
Levin chastised the defence department for “giving both special treatment and valuable access” to military analysts who agreed with its decisions “while cutting off access to others who didn’t deliver as expected”.
“While the media clearly have their own shortfalls for paying people to provide ‘independent’ analysis when they have such real and apparent conflicts, that doesn’t excuse the department’s behaviour,” Levin wrote to Gates.
Bzzt. Levin cannot honestly expect the Pentagon to investigate itself. Levin needs to hold hearings and put network and Pentagon officials before the kleig lights answering questions. This go and investigate yourself nonsense is bunk. The Pentagon’s motive to lie and hide the evidence is too great. Put it this way Carl, what you propose is like trusting the Iranians to monitor their own nuclear program.
Four at Four continues below the fold with Iran’s alleged nuclear program, the march to war with Syria, an Israeli spy in the U.S., the “war on terror” backfiring, and the struggles of Iraqi women with dead or missing husbands since Bush brought his war to Iraq.