Pentagon: 'We Totally Promise To Look Into Our Propaganda Racket'

Last week, I blogged about a NY Times investigation revealing "a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those [military] analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance" and further reporting that "Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves."

The media that allowed itself to be used by this "trojan horse" of course decided not to bother investigating this further, except for one lone PBS report and probably a rant by Keith Olbermann.

Yet the story garnered enough outrage on its own for the military to start sweeping this back under the rug-

The Pentagon has suspended a public affairs program that has come under fire for using retired military "media analysts" as surrogates to get out its messages on the Iraq war, a spokesman confirmed Monday.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the program was undergoing an internal review following criticism that the retired officers offered Pentagon talking points as their own during the run-up to the Iraq invasion and thereafter.

"It's temporarily suspended so we can take at look at some of the concerns," said Whitman.

Yes, the Pentagon was shocked, shocked to find that anything inappropriate was going on.