Montana Maven's
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Thanks to the two-year investigation by the New York Times, we today know that Victoria Clarke, then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, launched the Pentagon military analyst program in early 2002. These supposedly independent military analysts were in fact a coordinated team of pro-war propagandists, personally recruited by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and acting under Clarke's tutelage and development.

the Iraq War as sock puppets of the Pentagon who consciously peddle the Bush administration's talking points on Iraq while hiding their own vested economic interest in selling the public on the Bush administration's happy talk about the war.http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/83011/

Of course, the shrinking state of working people's paychecks is not the only issue the networks and their cable affiliates have ignored during the debating season. As Media Matters' Jamison Foser has observed, "Through 17 debates this year, roughly 1,500 questions have been asked of the two parties' presidential candidates. But only a small handful of questions have touched on the candidates' views on executive power, the Constitution, torture, wiretapping, or other civil liberties concerns…. Only one question about wiretapping. Not a single question about FISA…. Not one question about renditions. The words 'habeas corpus' have not once been spoken by a debate moderator. Candidates have not been asked about telecom liability…. No moderator has asked a single question of a single candidate about whether the president should be able to order the indefinite detention of an American citizen, without charging the prisoner with any crime." (And remember, Disney/ABC used as its backdrop Philadelphia's National Constitution Center.)http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/84153/