TV-Analysts and the Selling the Iraq War

By Brigitte L. Nacos
There is nothing new about the television networks’ practice to secure and actually hire retired generals as expert commentators and analysts before and during military conflicts. After all, these guys are considered experts in the field. One would furthermore expect that these analysts have easy access to active military leaders and may be inclined to favor their former colleagues’ views. But what an investigative report by the New York Times revealed last weekend was far more troubling than a friendly relationship between former and current military leaders and came down to “a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.” 

I doubt that TV-audiences mistake these analysts for journalists, but I bet that they are widely perceived as more or less independent military experts. Instead, after suing the Pentagon for and gaining access to thousands of e-mails, transcripts, and other documents, the Times established the opposite: While many, not all, of these former military leaders collected between $500 and $1,000 pro appearance, they were according to Pentagon records considered “message force multipliers” and “surrogates” who propagated the positions of the Department of Defense disguised as their own opinions and judgments. Some of the analysts, who were not paid by one of the TV-networks, had other sources of income that was enhanced by their selling of Pentagon propaganda: they were lobbyists for companies competing for defense contracts.

Here is a telling excerpt from the Times article that speaks to these “TV-analysts” efforts in selling the Iraq War before the actual invasion:

“In the fall and winter leading up to the invasion, the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would be a relatively quick and inexpensive “war of liberation.”

At the Pentagon, members of Ms. Clarke’s staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.

“You could see that they were messaging,” Mr. Krueger said. “You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over.” Some days, he added, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’ ”

Obviously, the retired officers were important parts of the scheme to enlist the American public’s support for the Iraq War. According to the Times, the White House was involved in this as well and early on “took a keen interest in which analysts had been identified by the Pentagon….”

By hiring dozens of retired generals as analysts and often giving them far more air time than their own reporters without concerning themselves with the collective biases of these experts, the TV networks were instrumental in the Pentagon’s propaganda scheme. As Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro (“The Rational Public”) found, experts in the news are particularly potent in influencing the public’s foreign policy preferences, obviously, because “members of the public give great weight to expertise.”

In this case, it was not the retired generals expert expertise that informed their TV-analyses but the message issued by White House and Pentagon. News consumers were deceived.

Comments

[lord rev dyjuan d barnes YAHWEH]

we need to stop this war now for us to find peace then we must be peace keepers and not the attempted peace makers for which we are failing . how dare we say that north korea and iran cannot have nuclear bombs but yet we have them ourselves we must realize that you must give and it shall be given and do onto others as you would have them to do to you but we dont so we can be sure that our sins do find us out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! all praise to YAHWEH........ YAHWEH please save america for we are the dumbest smart people on the planet and we need your wisdom knowledge and understanding to make it to the promise land.

[Eric Chen]

The case for war in Iraq was really established by 1998 with Operation Desert Fox, which was a declaration of war policy-wise, but without a full ground invasion. While entry into OIF has been portrayed as a neocon conspiracy, in reality, the Bush Administration's case for war is, for the most part, derived from what they inherited from the Clinton Administration. The 12 years of the US in Iraq preceding OIF had a lot more to do with shaping public opinion leading into OIF than anything said by retired military officers in the cacophony of the 24 hour news cycle in the short months before OIF started.

The career military pundits weren't altogether wrong, either. If anything, the conventional major combat phase - insofar as defeat of the Iraqi military and regime change - far exceeded expectations. Obviously, the post-war period has been more difficult, due to the utter failure of international assistance because of the international community's poor tolerance to the deterrence methods favored by terrorists, the collapse of an Iraqi government infrastructure post-Saddam that was in even worse shape than predicted, and the steep learning curve for a US Military pathologically averse to counterinsurgency and "operations other than war" now finding itself thrust into the role of reluctant nation-builder and counterinsurgent. (Contradicting the image of the military in lock-step, many high up in the military vehemently oppose - and opposed - OIF on the grounds they are against peace operations becoming a primary US military mission.)

Of course, it didn't take a retired General to predict what would happen. Anyone who knew American history beginning with the Vietnam War, watched the US in 1991 shy away from regime change in Iraq at a time the US military fielded much more manpower, then the retreat from Somalia, then the casualty averse strategy in the Balkans, then the utter abandonment of Rwanda, could predict that, facing an enemy who shaped his tactics and strategies precisely upon obvious lessons of Western weakness, the US and our Iraqi allies would be forced upon a bloody, steep learning curve in Phase IV.

It has been a bloody, steep learning curve about peace-building, but have we learned? In 2008, as far as Generals are concerned, I'm more interested in what David Petraeus and his fellows have learned through hard-won experience about peace operations as they continue to lead a US Military responsible for, and fully engaged in, shaping our children's future.