[Peace-discuss] Tame Pentagon reporter on WILL

[C. G. Estabrook]

WILL, which seems to have such trouble with sourcing anti-war comments
written by an AWARE member (viz. Randall), featured a Washington Post
"reporter" on Focus 580 this morning, who's a notable apologist for the US
military.  In fact, Dana Priest is one of the better reporters in the
for-profit press -- alas, because she's not very good.  That she's one of
the best, shows how wretched the standard is.  But we heard some terrible
apologies for American crimes from her today.

Here's a specific example, from <www.tompaine.com/blog.cfm/ID/10059>:

***

Priest Hears Confessions, Forgives 

So what's up with Dana Priest at The Washington Post? Her unbelievable
whitewash of Dougie Feith's intelligence shop at the Pentagon still has me
reeling.
    
It seems that Dana was given access to Feith, Bill Luti -- the former aide
to Newt Gingrich who runs Feith's Near East and South Asia office -- and
the rest of the neocon gang who ran the Office of Special Plans, along
with strategic leaks from congressional staffers, and she swallowed their
story whole. (The story was headlined: "Feith's Analysts Given a Clean
Bill.") Listen to this:

	"Congressional Democrats contend that two Pentagon shops -- the
Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group
-- were established by Rumsfeld, Feith and other defense hawks expressly
to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies. They argue that the
offices supplied the administration with information, most of it
discredited by the regular intelligence community, that President Bush,
Cheney and others used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

	"But interviews with senior defense officials, White House and CIA
officials, congressional sources and others yield a different portrait of
the work done by the two Pentagon offices.

	"Neither the House nor Senate intelligence committees, for
example, which have been investigating prewar intelligence for eight
months, have found support for allegations that Pentagon analysts went out
and collected their own intelligence, congressional officials from both
parties say. Nor have investigators found that the Pentagon analysis about
Iraq significantly shaped the case the administration made for going to
war."

So, even though the committees are still taking testimony from members of
the cabal, the pro-Feith leakers Priest talked to say (1) that Feith's
crew didn't collect any intelligence; and (2) even if they did, it didn't
matter, since nothing they did "shaped the case. . . for war."

  March 15, 2004 | 11:39AM