May 12, 2008: Editorial Decries Pentagon’s ‘Spin Operation,’ Labels TV News Providers ‘Enablers’

An editorial from the St. Petersburg Times rails against the recently revealed Pentagon propaganda operation that uses retired military officers to promote the administration’s policies in Iraq (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond). “We were duped,” the editorial begins, and calls the Pentagon program a “spin operation.” The retired military officers serving as network analysts “are not as independent or as objective as they are portrayed,” the editorial continues. “They are feeding the public the Bush administration line just as they have been encouraged to do. The shilling then bought them plum access to the Pentagon that could be traded on later, giving them a leg up in securing large military contracts for their companies and clients.” The editorial calls the networks and cable news outlets that hired and televised these analysts “enablers in this propaganda campaign,” and lambasts them for not bothering to investigate their analysts’ connections to either the Defense Department or to defense contractors with vested interests in Iraq: “These former military officers were unlikely to give a fair reading of the war in Iraq when their corporate clients were paying huge sums for friendly Pentagon access so they could win business off the war.” [St. Petersburg Times, 5/12/2008]