Random Thoughts

The New York Times details further fallout from the now defunct Pentagon public relations program that enlisted retired flag officers serving as analysts for major network as “message force multipliers”:

In a highly unusual reversal, the Defense Department’s inspector general’s office has withdrawn a report it issued in January exonerating a Pentagon public relations program that made extensive use of retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks.

…

The inspector general’s office began investigating the public relations program last year, in response to articles in The New York Times that exposed an extensive and largely hidden Pentagon campaign to transform network military analysts into “surrogates” and “message force multipliers” for the Bush administration. The articles also showed how military analysts with ties to defense contractors sometimes used their special access to seek advantage in the competition for contracts related to Iraq and Afghanistan.

…

The review found that the former senior Pentagon officials who devised and managed the program refused to speak with the inspector general’s investigators.

At the end of the day, who better to explain military culture, doctrine, and strategy to the public than a retired flag officer?  A journalist with a couple weeks in the field as an embed?  A “military strategist” from some college whose experience is drawn from the books he’s read?  And yet, here is another formerly non-partisan part of government politicised and tarnished by the Bush administration.  We’ll forever be suspicious of any retired flag on the major networks, and as a price for that suspicion we’ll know less about what’s going on.

Of course, in all of this, I do think the flag corps bears some blame.  When you put stars on your uniform, you have to be cognizant of the fact that especially in today’s highly political climate everyone wants you as their puppet or prop.