Without a Pastor of His Own, Obama Turns to Five

NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Laurie Goodstein - March 14, 2009 President Obama has been without a pastor or a home church ever since he cut his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in the heat of the presidential campaign. But he has quietly cultivated a handful of evangelical pastors for private prayer sessions on the telephone and for discussions on the role of religion in politics. All are men, two of them white and three black - including the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a graying lion of the civil rights movement. Two, the entrepreneurial dynamos Bishop T. D. Jakes and the Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, also served as occasional spiritual advisers to President George W. Bush. Another, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leans left on some issues, like military intervention and poverty programs, but opposes abortion. None of these pastors are affiliated with the religious right, though several are quite conservative theologically. One of them, the Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the pastor of a conservative megachurch in Florida, was branded a turncoat by some leaders of the Christian right when he began to speak out on the need to stop global warming. But as a group they can hardly be characterized as part of the religious left either. Most, like Mr. Wallis, do not take traditionally liberal positions on abortion or homosexuality. What most say they share with the president is the conviction that faith is the foundation in the fight against economic inequality and social injustice. “These are all centrist, social justice guys,” said the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, a politically active pastor of Azusa Community Church in Boston, who knows all of them but is not part of the president’s prayer caucus. “Obama genuinely comes out of the social justice wing of the church. That’s real. The community organizing stuff is real.” The pastors say Mr. Obama appears to rely on his faith for intellectual and spiritual succor. “While he may not put ‘Honk if You Love Jesus’ bumper stickers on the back of his car, he is the kind of guy who practices what he preaches,” said Mr. Caldwell, the senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston. “He has a desire to keep in touch with folk outside the Beltway, and to stay in touch with God. He seems to see those as necessary conditions for maintaining his internal compass.” Bishop Jakes said he had been tapped for several prayer phone calls - the most recent being when Mr. Obama’s grandmother died in November, two days before the election. “You take turns praying,” said Bishop Jakes, who like the other ministers did not want to divulge details of the calls. “It’s really more about contacting God than each other.” Mr. Hunter said of the phone calls: “The times I have prayed with him, he’s always initiated it.” The Obama administration has reached out to hundreds of religious leaders across the country to mobilize support and to seek advice on policy. These five pastors, however, have been brought into a more intimate inner circle. Their names were gleaned from interviews with people who know the president and religious leaders who work in Washington. Their role could change if Mr. Obama joins a church in Washington, but that could take some time because of the logistical challenges in finding a church that can accommodate the kind of crowd the Obamas would attract. The White House refused to comment for this article. The pastor in the circle who has known Mr. Obama the longest is Mr. Wallis, president and chief executive of Sojourners, a liberal magazine and movement based in Washington. In contrast to the other four, his contact with the president has been focused more on policy than prayer. Mr. Wallis has recently joined conservatives in pressing the president’s office of faith-based initiatives to continue to allow government financing for religious social service groups that hire only employees of their own faith. Mr. Wallis said he got to know Mr. Obama in the late 1990s when they participated in a traveling seminar that took bus trips to community programs across the country. Mr. Wallis said they “hit it off” because they were both Christians serious about their faith, fathers of young children the same age and believers in “transcending left and right” to find solutions to social problems. “He and I were what we called back then ‘progressive Christians,’ as opposed to the dominant religious-right era we were in then,” Mr. Wallis said. “We didn’t think Jesus’ top priorities would be capital gains tax cuts and supporting the next war.” ... Read Full Report http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/us/politics/15pastor.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

More trouble for fiery 'Antichrist' preacher

The South Florida preacher who gained fame after declaring himself to be Jesus Christ has fared poorly in divorce court. MIAMI HERALD [McClatchy] - By Casey Woods - January 10, 2009 The Christmas season was not kind to the self-proclaimed Antichrist. Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, who gained international notoriety by declaring himself first to be Jesus Christ, then the Antichrist, roundly lost his divorce court bid to protect his church from financial claims by his most recent ex-wife. Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Roberto Pineiro essentially ruled that de Jesus' Growing in Grace church was his personal business, rather than a religious nonprofit organization, and awarded Josefina de Jesus Torres the more than $2.2 million she sought in the divorce -- the amount her lawyer deemed was half the assets of her ex-husband and his church. ... ON HARD TIMES The ruling marks a downturn in the fortunes of the colorful preacher, one that affects not just him but others in his life. His daughter, JoAnn de Jesus, is fighting contempt charges related to the case. His father and first wife face possible eviction from properties held in his and the church's names that the judgment awarded to Torres if he doesn't pay up this month. De Jesus disappeared in August, when the judge declared him in contempt of court and ordered him to surrender to authorities for not paying Torres $15,000 a month in alimony. The divorce trial went ahead without him that month. ... De Jesus exploded into popularity -- and controversy -- in the past few years after he declared himself to be Christ. He later claimed that his teachings replaced those of Jesus and so he should be called the Antichrist. He and his followers then began tattooing themselves with ''666,'' a practice that generated protests and headlines. Growing in Grace has since expanded to more than 300 churches in 30 countries, with de Jesus' sermons broadcast by satellite to thousands of households worldwide. During the trial, de Jesus' representatives argued that neither he nor the church were as rich as Torres' team claimed, especially since the value of many of the properties have fallen in the past two years. They also said that donations have dropped since the start of divorce proceedings, with the revelation of de Jesus' tangled finances, including disclosures that he paid his first wife's alimony with church funds. Many of his followers believe that de Jesus' divorce court difficulties are further proof that he is Jesus' Second Coming, quoting biblical prophecies of persecution such as Luke 17:25, which says ``first, He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.'' ''These life events are further proof that Jose Luis de Jesus is the reincarnation of the same spirit that dwelled in Jesus of Nazareth,'' said church member and spokesperson Axel Poessy. ``We are privileged to be witnessing the days of the Son of Man, the last manifestation of God on Earth, who is here to reign over all nations.'' ... Read Full Report http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/v-fullstory/story/847487.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Survey Describes the Spiritual Gifts That Christians Say They Have

THE BARNA RESEARCH GROUP - THE BARNA UPDATE - February 9, 2009 Ventura, California - The Bible teaches that all followers of Christ are given supernatural abilities by God to serve Him better, known as spiritual gifts. Two-thirds of Americans (68%) who say they are Christian noted they have heard of spiritual gifts, according to a national survey by The Barna Group. That represents a small decline from past surveys, which found 72% awareness in 2000, and 71% in 1995. Awareness of spiritual gifts was most common among self-described Christians who live in the South (75%) and West (71%), and least common among those living in the Midwest (63%) and Northeast (58%). Such awareness also varied within the various segments of the self-described Christian population. For instance, 99% of evangelicals have heard of spiritual gifts, far more than the 74% among non-evangelical born again Christians and 58% among notional Christians. Similarly, there was a large gap between Protestants (75%) and Catholics (54%) in awareness. Even within the Protestant community there was a noteworthy gap between those who attend a mainline church (68% awareness) and those who attend a Protestant congregation not associated with a mainline denomination (78%). Which Gifts People Claim The survey asked people who said they were Christian and who claimed to have heard of spiritual gifts to identify which gifts they believe God has granted to them. The most commonly claimed gifts were teaching (9%), service (8%) and faith (7%). Those were followed by encouragement (4%), healing (4%), knowledge (4%), and tongues (3%). The gift of leadership was mentioned by just 2%. There were significant differences in the answers provided by evangelicals, non-evangelical born agains and notional Christians. Evangelicals were more likely than people from the other faith segments to say that they had gifts of teaching (28%), service (12%), encouragement (10%), and administration (7%). The non-evangelical born again segment was the group most likely to claim the gifts of faith (10%) and hospitality (3%). Notional Christians were most notable for having the largest percentage who said they had no gift at all (37%, compared to 16% of evangelicals and 24% of non-evangelical born agains). Examining the data for all born again Christians (i.e., evangelical and non-evangelical combined) over the past 13 years shows several change patterns: The percentage that claims to have the gift of encouragement has grown steadily from 2% in 1995 to 6% today. Since 1995, the proportion of born again adults claiming the gift of evangelism dropped from 4% to 1%. Those who do not know what their gift is rose from 8% in 2000 to 13% today. False Gifts The survey also found that many people who say they have heard of spiritual gifts were not necessarily describing the same gifts outlined in the Bible. Among the gifts claimed that are not among those deemed to be spiritual gifts in the passages of scripture that teach about gifts (Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4:7-13, 1 Peter 4:10-11) were a sense of humor, singing, health, life, happiness, patience, a job, a house, compromise, premonition, creativity, and clairvoyance. In total, one-fifth of all the gifts cited by respondents (21%) were attributes that do not fit the biblical lists of gifts given by God. Thoughts on the Meaning of the Results The survey data point out several interesting conditions. Between those who do not know their gift (15%), those who say they don’t have one (28%) and those who claimed gifts that are not biblical (20%), nearly two-thirds of the self-identified Christian population who claim to have heard about spiritual gifts have not been able to accurately apply whatever they have heard or what the Bible teaches on the subject to their lives. A specific set of gifts, commonly described as the charismatic gifts, are widely possessed by Christians. Overall, 13% of Christian adults claimed to have one of more of those gifts (e.g., healing, interpretation, knowledge, miracles, prophecy, tongues). The people most likely to say they have a charismatic gift are woman (twice as likely as men); people without any college education; born again Christians; and people 45 or older. Intriguingly, although 13% say they have one or more charismatic gifts, the survey revealed that nearly twice as many (23%) described themselves as charismatics. One of the reasons the evangelical community may seem to be so verbal about its faith and faith-driven convictions relates to the fact that more than one-quarter of them (28%) claim the gift of teaching. Possessing that gift might also raise people’s expectations regarding the quality of sermons and other teaching received at their church, triggering the often-cited high turnover within evangelical congregations. By the same token, the fact that evangelicals were far more likely to claim the gifts of administration and service also reflects the widely-cited tendency of the group to be well-organized and to be generous in donating its time and energy to causes it deems worthy. A much higher percentage of born again Christians claims to be a leader than cites having been given the spiritual gift of leadership. This suggests that perhaps many Christian leaders are torn between relying upon their natural talent and training rather than depending upon God’s gifting to empower their leadership. This issue may be even broader than the struggle of leaders. Spiritual gifts are provided as “special abilities” that enable believers to serve each other (as indicated in 1 Peter 4:10 and Romans 12:7). The struggle of the aggregate Christian Church in America may be related to the fact that a large share of individual believers who engage in ministry do so on the basis of personal preference and natural talent rather than supernatural capacities, resulting in ineffective ministry. The stagnation of evangelism relates to many factors, but one of those is probably the fact that just 1% of Christian adults (self-described or born again) claims the gift of evangelism. While the Bible never suggests that one must possess this gift in order to share the gospel, the depressed proportion of believers who identify with that gift reflects the stalled growth of the Christian body in America. Read Full Report http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=326 FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Debate Over Devil's Existence

ONE NEWS NOW [American Family News Network] - Blog by Tasha Easterling - March 28, 2009 Last week four people with very differing views gathered to debate the existence of Satan in Seattle, Washington. That debate aired last night on Nightline, the third installment of a series called "Face-Off" in which opposing sides debate hot topics such as pornography and the existence of God. This debate featured Pastor Mark Driscoll of the Mars Hill Church, and Annie Lobert, founder of the Christian ministry "Hookers for Jesus" debating against Bishop Carlton Pearson and Deepak Chopra. A crowd of more than a thousand people gathered at the church to listen to the debate, which didn't take long to get heated because all four participants presented uncompromising positions on their beliefs about whether Satan exists. Read Full Report and See video http://www.onenewsnow.com/Blog/Default.aspx?id=467904 FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Deceived by a counterfeit "Jesus"

The twisted "truths" of The Shack & A Course in Miracles KJOS MINISTRIES - By Berit Kjos - February 14, 2008 Two books (one new, one old) have suddenly grabbed public attention and captured the hearts of multitudes. One is long and instructional -- a dictation from a channeled spirit guide. The other is a fictional testimony full of tear-jerking dialogue. A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is obviously occult, while the more subtle message of The Shack by William P. Young has been widely accepted in postmodern churches. The two books share a common message. I saw a stark preview of it back in 1992. Skimming through a magazine called Well-Being Journal, I noticed this New Age "insight" from the author's "inner guide:"

"Many people believe in evil, sin, and dark forces. It is your purpose to teach the opposite which is the Truth: there is no devil, no hell, no sin, no guilt except in the creative mind of humankind."

I heard similar deceptions at Gorbachev's 1997 State of the World Forum. At the time, keynote speaker Marianne Williamson was touting the Kabbalah, not A Course in Miracles (ACIM). While those New Age "insights" would fit both, they are best expressed through ACIM, which Williamson is now popularizing through Oprah Winfrey's weekly radio program. The Shack calls for a similar denial of reality. Yet countless pastors and church leaders are delighting in its message. By ignoring (or redefining) sin and guilt, they embrace an inclusive but counterfeit "Christianity" that draws crowds but distorts the Bible. Discounting Satan as well, they weaken God's warnings about deception. No wonder His armor for today's spiritual war became an early victim of this spreading assault on Truth. ... * Emphasis Original Read Full Report http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/shack.htm Also: THE SHACK & Its New Age Leaven God IN Everything? By Warren Smith http://herescope.blogspot.com/2008/06/shack-its-new-age-leaven.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Wicca Experts Encourage Christians to Engage America's 'Fastest-Growing' Religion

THE CHRISTIAN POST - By Josh Kimball - September 21, 2008 While many Christians today are closely monitoring the growth and activity of Islam, especially after 9/11, another religious movement has been steadily growing “under the radar” and could become among the largest religions in the United States in less than five years. “Wicca is the fastest-growing religion in America, set to be the third largest religion by 2012,” claims Marla Alupoaicei, who co-wrote the recently released book “Generation Hex” with fellow Christian author Dillon Burroughs. “The numbers of adherents are doubling every 30 months,” she says. Furthermore, every major city in the United States has networks of Wiccans, adds Burroughs. “Certain parts of the country, such as the Pacific Northwest, the mountain states (New Mexico and Colorado) and areas near Salem, Mass., are the strongest in the U.S.,” he says. “However, I live in Tennessee and have found pockets of Wiccans in Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia to interview. I didn't have to travel far or even outside of the so-called Bible belt to find Wiccans.” On Wednesday, Alupoaicei and Burroughs were the special guests at Abunga.com’s weekly “Authors at Abunga” chat, which connects avid book readers with their favorite authors. During the hour-long chat, the authors fielded questions submitted to them regarding their new book, Generation Hex, which informs and equips Christians - especially parents - about Wiccan and New Age teachings. To write the book, the authors interviewed neopagan conference practitioners, travelers to Salem, Mass., and current and former Wicca followers. “We … talked to over 20 Wiccans in the process of Generation Hex to be as authentic as possible about the movement,” Burroughs noted during the chat. “The catchy title, Generation Hex, reveals that this current generation is the first to grow up with witchcraft as an accepted part of the culture,” added Alupoaicei, who was inspired to write a book about Wicca after not feeling equipped to engage in a spiritual conversation with a Wiccan girl she encountered. While “Harry Potter” and other media like “Charmed,” “Buffy,” “Sabrina,” and “The Craft” have skyrocketed witchcraft into the public eye, the authors both agreed that among the biggest draws to the Wiccan culture is how community-oriented it is. “Many involved in Wicca come from lonely backgrounds or difficult relationships and find new friends in the Wiccan community who embrace them (sometimes better than Christians do),” explained Burroughs, who served as a youth pastor for about a decade and said he was asked by students about Wicca and witchcraft more than any other religious movement. “As our culture becomes more and more isolated and busy (and as real relationships are replaced by texting, IM, etc.), young people are starving for real relationships and true community, as well as for a powerful experience of faith,” Alupoaicei added. “People want a supernatural experience,” she said. And while the Christian life is an abundant, supernatural life in which the power of God can be experienced, Alupoaicei said Christians are not communicating that very well to the world. Furthermore ignorance and misunderstanding within the Christian community has prevented people from drawing near to Christ and leaves them looking for something else. “And, ironically, a desire to uphold Scripture,” Alupoaicei added. “The Bible does say that Christians should not be involved in witchcraft, but that doesn't mean that we should not reach out to those involved in this practice. “God loves every Wiccan and every pagan just as much as He loves every Christian. He does not want ANYONE to perish, but ALL to come to repentance,” she added, referring to 2 Peter 3:9. She recalled how one person that she interviewed said she was thrown to a sidewalk as a teen and told she would burn in hell. “This is inexcusable,” she said. “Second, many Christians simply avoid Wiccans,” Alupoaicei continued. “People tend to avoid stuff they don't understand.” The authors urged for more engagement from the Christian community, and more long-term engagement at that. Burroughs said the number one complaint they received from Wiccans about Christians was that they would befriend them but later desert them if they did not convert in a short period time. “To change this perspective, we must decide to love Wiccans whether they ever become Christians or not,” Burroughs stated. “Only this long-term approach will work with many Wiccans.” Alupoaicei also advised Christians to simply take the time to listen to Wiccans instead of starting out using terms that might alienate the person or keep him or her from sharing his or her story. “Many Wiccans/pagans had a specific triggering experience that caused them to turn toward Wicca or paganism. You could ask, ‘What led you to embrace Wicca? What do you like about it?’ and use that as a steppingstone to talk about your own faith. “Most people love to talk about themselves,” she added. “Why not ask them to share a bit about themselves with you?” As for parents who think that their child may be getting involved with witchcraft, Burroughs also encourages them to first hear their child’s story. “They may be exploring their spirituality and see Wicca as a real option,” he said. “If you listen first, then they are more likely to listen to your concerns as well.” Burroughs further encouraged parents to build a Christian worldview into their kids from the earliest time possible. “I can't catch every idea my son or daughter will hear, but I can help them know God's Word so they can spot ideas that are not consistent with it,” he explained. Other topics discussed during the one-hour chat on Wednesday included Wicca’s foundational creed and belief, the practicing of chants and spells, and the Wiccan belief in reincarnation and The Summerland - the Wiccan equivalent of heaven. Published as media reports have claimed the existence of more than 700,000 Internet sites for teenage witches, “Generation Hex” has been described by its promoters as “perfect for personal study or as a gift for anyone interested or involved in Wicca” and a book that “identifies with the spiritual hunger of a generation seeking truth, authenticity, and hope in a fragmented world.” Burroughs says part of the goal with Generation Hex is awareness. “People tend to avoid stuff they don't understand,” he said during the chat. “If you know what Wicca is, maybe you won't be so scared to strike up a conversation with someone wearing a pentacle or pentagram.” Generation Hex was published early last month by Harvest House Publishers and includes a foreword written by Dr. Ron Rhodes, one of the world's best-renowned scholars in the field of apologetics as well as the author of over 40 books, many of them bestsellers. http://christianpost.com/article/20080921/wicca-experts-encourage-christians-to-engage-america-s-fastest-growing-religion.htm FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Column One: Soldiers of Peace

THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By Caroline Glick - March 6, 2009 Compare and contrast the following three events: At the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors meeting on Wednesday, George Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA, pointed an accusatory finger at Syria. Damascus, Schulte said, has not come clean on its nuclear program. That program, of course, was exposed in September 2007 when Israel reportedly destroyed Syria's North Korean-built, Iranian-financed al-Kibar nuclear reactor. In its report to its Board of Governors, the IAEA stated that in analyzing soil samples from the bombed installation, its inspectors discovered traces of uranium. The nuclear watchdog agency also noted that the Syrians have blocked UN nuclear inspectors from the site and from three other suspected nuclear sites. Reacting to the IAEA report, Schulte said that it "contributes to the growing evidence of clandestine nuclear activities in Syria." He added, "We must understand why such [uranium] material - material not previously declared to the IAEA - existed in Syria, and this can only happen if Syria provides the cooperation requested." On Tuesday, at a press conference in Jerusalem with outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the Obama administration is sending two senior envoys to Damascus. Their job, as she put it, is to begin "preliminary conversations" on how to jumpstart US-Syrian bilateral ties. Clinton's statement made good headlines, but she was light on details. On Wednesday, hours after Schulte accused Syria of covering up its illicit nuclear program, US Sen. John Kerry helpfully filled in the blanks about the nature of the Obama administration's overtures to nuclear-proliferating Damascus. In an address before the left-leaning Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who just returned from a visit to Syria, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, said that the purpose of US overtures to Damascus is to appease Syrian President Bashar Assad. If in the past, both American and Israeli policy-makers interested in engaging Damascus have made ending Syria's alliance with Iran a central goal of their proposed engagement, Kerry dismissed such an aim as unrealistic. In his words, "We should have no illusions that Syria will immediately end its ties with Iran." Indeed, as far as Kerry is concerned, Syria's role in these talks is not to actually give the US anything of value. Rather, Syria's role is to take things of value from the US - and of course from Israel. Kerry proposed that in exchange for Syrian acceptance of the US's offer of friendship and Assad's willingness to negotiate an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights, America should consider "loosening certain sanctions" against Syria. Doing so, he claimed, will also be good for the US economy because it will open new opportunities for US businesses. ON THE surface, the disparate statements by Schulte, Clinton and Kerry present us with a puzzle. In Geneva, Schulte noted that Syria is a nuclear proliferating rogue state that has refused to cooperate with UN inspectors. And in Jerusalem and Washington, Clinton and Kerry ignored Syria's dangerous actions, and advocated a policy of appeasement. At the same IAEA Board of Governors meeting this week, the agency reported that Iran has produced more than a thousand kilograms of low enriched uranium - enough to build a bomb after further enrichment. That enrichment can be completed by year's end with Iran's 5,600 centrifuges. Moreover, between the Russian-built, soon-to-be-opened nuclear reactor in Bushehr and the illicit heavy water reactor in Arak, Iran will have the capacity to build plutonium-based bombs within two years. Commenting on the IAEA's report on Iran, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that Iran has enough uranium for a bomb. Seemingly contradicting Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed that there is no reason to worry about all that uranium because Iran won't have a bomb for some time, given that the uranium it possesses is not sufficiently enriched to make a weapon. For his part, US President Barack Obama is receiving guidance on contending with Iran from former Congressman Lee Hamilton, who co-authored the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report published in December 2006. That report called for the US to coordinate the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq with Iran and Syria - the principal sponsors of both the Shi'ite and Sunni insurgencies in the country. It recommended that the US purchase Syria's good will by pressuring Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Damascus, and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Hamas. It recommended that the US win Iran's trust by accepting it as a nuclear power and pledging not to overthrow the regime. In an interview last month with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Hamilton reiterated those recommendations. He claimed that the starting point for US-Iran discussions is for the US to "state our respect for the Iranian people, renounce regime change as an instrument of US policy, seek opportunities for a range of dialogue across a range of issues, and acknowledge Iran's security concerns and its right to civilian nuclear power." Hamilton assured Ignatius that these recommendations have been adopted by the White House. ALL OF the above show that there is no contradiction between what the Obama administration understands about Iran and Syria and the policy it has adopted toward them. Specifically, as Schulte's and Mullen's statements make clear, the administration is aware of the dangers that both Iran and Syria constitute to global security. And as Clinton, Kerry, Gates and Hamilton all make clear, the administration's policy for dealing with those dangers is to change the subject and hope the American public won't notice or mind. To this end, the administration is now asserting that Iran and Syria - the two most active agents of regional instability - share the US's interest in a stable, democratic Iraq. And owing to their sudden devotion to stability, Obama's surrogates tell us the Syrians and Iranians will support the new anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian Iraqi democracy and even protect it after the US withdraws its forces from the country. Then, too, as both Kerry and Clinton made clear, the administration plans to ignore Syria's support for Iraqi, Palestinian and Lebanese terrorism, its nuclear proliferation activities and its massive ballistic missile arsenal, as well as its strategic alliance with Iran. Rather than confront Syria about its bad behavior, the administration favors a policy based on making believe that in his heart of hearts, Assad is a liberal democrat who aspires to peace, and hope, and change. But the core of the administration's campaign to ignore Iran's nuclear program - as well as Syria's - is its unrelenting quest for the big payoff: Palestinian statehood. This week Iran staged yet another "Destroy Israel" conference in Teheran, replete with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's trademark Holocaust denial, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's ritual castigation of the Jewish state as a "cancerous tumor," and the US as a treacherous enemy, and Ali Larijani's threat to attack Israel's suspected nuclear sites. The conference enjoyed a newfound sense of international legitimacy, taking place as it did just after burka-clad Annette Bening's goodwill Hollywood celebrity visit to the mullocracy. THE GENOCIDAL pageantry in Teheran elicited no significant response from Clinton and Kerry. They had bigger fish to fry. While the administration and its supporters seem to believe that the US has no right to make demands on Iran and Syria, which, they assert, are both just advancing their national interests, for them Israel is a completely different story. As Clinton and Kerry demonstrated this week, the administration and its supporters will not stop making demands on Israel. Kerry justified Syria's continued alliance with Iran by saying that Syria should be expected to "play both sides of the fence [with the US and Iran] as other nations do when they believe it is in their interests." But Israel has no right to similarly take what action it deems necessary to secure its interests. In Kerry's view, the time has come for the US to show that it is serious about Palestinian statehood, and the way to do that is to force Israel to block all Jewish building in Judea and Samaria. In his words, "On the Israeli side, nothing will do more to make clear our seriousness about turning the page than demonstrating - with actions rather than words - that we are serious about Israel freezing settlement activity in the West Bank." He also called for the US to compel Israel to open its borders with Gaza. And he said that from his perspective, it is unacceptable for the incoming Netanyahu government not to embrace establishing a Palestinian state as its most urgent goal. Clinton joined Kerry in his efforts to compel the Jewish state to ignore its national interests in the cause of the higher goal of Palestinian statehood. Like him, she attacked Israel for not handing control over its borders with Gaza to Hamas. And like Kerry, she stated repeatedly that her greatest goal is to establish a Palestinian state. Clinton's unique contribution to that great "pro-peace" endeavor this week was her outspoken criticism on Wednesday of the Jerusalem Municipality's decision to enforce the city's building and planning ordinances equally toward both Jews and Arabs. That policy was made clear this week when city inspectors destroyed illegal buildings in both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods. Since as far as Clinton is concerned, Israel will one day be required to throw all the Jews out of East, South and North Jerusalem to make room for what she believes is the "inevitable" Palestinian state, Israel has no right to treat Arabs and Jews equally in its soon-to-be-inevitably divided capital city. Arabs should be allowed to break the law at will. When Israel insists on enforcing its laws without prejudice, Clinton condemns it for being anti-peace. Kerry argues that by forcing Israel to give its land to the Palestinians, the US will be promoting regional stability by doing the bidding of anti-Iranian Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But even if putting the screws to Israel makes Cairo and Riyadh happy, their happiness will have no impact whatsoever on Iran's nuclear weapons programs or on Syria's proliferation activities. That is, Israeli land giveaways will have no impact on regional stability. And that's precisely the point. The Obama administration has no intention of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power or Syria from maintaining its alliance with the mullahs. The White House seeks far more modest ends. Through its policies toward Israel on the one hand and Iran and Syria on the other, the Obama administration demonstrates that it has already accepted a nuclear Iran. Its chief concern today is to avoid being blamed when the mushroom clouds appear in the sky. And it may well achieve that aim. After all, how could the administration be blamed for a nuclear Iran when it has wholly devoted its efforts to advancing the righteous cause of peace? caroline@carolineglick.com Original Report http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1236269357164&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

What if Christianity’s critics got serious?

THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER [Keener Communications Group] - By Phil Cooke - February 2009 I’m not one to jump on the “Christianity is under attack” bandwagon. However, there’s no question that Christianity is the target of far more legal action in this country that any other religion and people are far more sensitive to mentioning “Jesus” than Buddha, Mohammed, or other religious figures. (Which is a significant reason in my thinking that there’s actually something to this Christianity business). But in looking through the media recently and noticing that the voices against Christianity seem to be growing - and getting more hostile - I spent part of the holidays wondering what would happen if the pendulum swung just enough to shift the majority’s thinking? What if the majority decided that Christians are the problem in this country and we need to do something about it? And it’s not just my wild imagination. A poll by the Anti-Defamation League at the end of last year indicates 64 percent of Americans say religion in America is under attack. "This has become more than a seasonal witch hunt by the ACLU," said World Net Daily Editor and founder Joseph Farah. "The attacks on Christianity in America are alarming. We are witnessing more than religious bigotry now. We are entering the early stages of what could become persecution and outright criminalization of Christianity if it is not exposed and fought vigorously by all freedom-loving people." Farah’s word “criminalization” is interesting. I spoke at a conference a few years back and met the leader of one of the country’s largest Christian ministries to the gay community. He mentioned even then his organization was already preparing for a time in the near future when offering a gay or transgender person an alternative to that lifestyle will actually be illegal. Just offering it - will be illegal. Far fetched? In Madison, Wisconsin, David Ott, a former homosexual, was arrested for a "hate crime" for sharing his testimony with a gay man at a gas station. He faced a $10,000 fine and one year behind bars. Seven thousand dollars in legal fees later, [he] was ordered to attend re-education classes at the University of Wisconsin. Regardless of what you believe about homosexuality, it appears that even discussion about it may be illegal soon. The thought police are indeed out there. While to a person of faith, many of the critics seem - well, insane - I have to admit, their rants do get picked up by the mainstream media. And to the uneducated, or those with no religious experience or knowledge of religion in America, the comments seem to make sense. Here’ a few choice quotes. From blowhard scientist Richard Dawkins: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. Jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic-cleanser; a misogynistic homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal…. Columnist Maureen Dowd: “Oh my God, we really are in a theocracy.” Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials): "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake." Comedian Bill Maher: ”Christians and others who are religious suffer from a neurological disorder that "stops people from thinking." Bestselling author Sam Harris: “A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.” It’s not just the criticism, but the attitude that it’s becoming more and more “OK” to trash Christians, and to offer more offensive and sometimes violent options for dealing with these perceived “Christian extremists.” From a more direct perspective, Tom DeLay had this to say: "We are, after all, a society that abides abortion on demand, has killed millions of innocent children, degrades the institution of marriage and often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition. Seen from this perspective of course there is a war on Christianity." By the way - I particularly love those who are terrified by the vague but impending “theocracy” that seems to be taking over the country. But the truth is, if you’ve ever tried to organize anyone at church you know just how nuts the idea is that Christians are taking over America. Couple that with the incredible erosion of religious morals and values in this country and it does seem far-fetched. And yet bookstores are filled with recent books on the terrifying future of the theocracy that’s somehow taking over America. The bottom line is that hostile statements are becoming far more regular and they’re coming from the mouths of people who are respected. Worse, because of the typical journalist’s ignorance of Christianity, these fringe and extreme statements are not being challenged by the press. When a popular writer like Sam Harris calls atheism “a moral and intellectual necessity,” someone needs to challenge that incredibly shallow idea. ... Read Full Report http://www.christianexaminer.com/Articles/Articles%20Feb09/Art_Feb09_oped1.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Homosexuality & the laws of moral physics

ONE NEWS NOW [American Family News Network] - By Matt Barber - February 4, 2009 It makes front page news when conservative elected officials are accused of selling-out to monolithic corporate lobbies like "Big Oil" or "Big Tobacco." Yet the media rarely take notice when liberal politicians toe the line for extreme ideological special interests. Case in point: Within minutes after swearing in, President Obama had the White House website updated to declare his unconditional support for every demand of the politically powerful and very well-funded homosexual lobby (a.k.a., "Big Homo"). By announcing to the world his pro-"gay" agenda, Obama has thrown gasoline on smoldering culture war embers, generating a firestorm of controversy. But amid the heated national debate over both religious liberty versus newfangled "gay rights" and the sanctity of natural marriage versus so-called "same-sex marriage," something occurred to me. Either homosexual behavior is sexual immorality or there is simply no such thing as sexual immorality -- period. I know -- pretty black and white, right? Evangelical Christians are habitually accused by the left of being too "black or white" on most of the highly polarizing moral issues which affect public policy and shape our larger culture. And so, in an effort to marginalize the so-called "religious right" and diminish its influence in society, evangelicals are pejoratively stamped "fundamentalist" by those who fancy themselves among the enlightened and view the world, instead, through delightfully murky and accountability-free shades of gray. But despite the best efforts of "gay" activists, secular humanists, and religious leftists to muddy the moral waters, absolute truth -- like a nautical buoy pulled below with rotting rope -- has a way of heaving to the surface with a profound splash once the tenuous line snaps. It's a matter of moral physics. Of course, "fundamental" simply means "basic" or "important." Hardly negative features from where I stand. In fact, it really is fundamental, isn't it? I mean, either the Bible is the inerrant, inspired Word of God, as maintained throughout both the Old and New Testaments, or it's just a nifty old text full of creative tales and loose philosophies no more relevant to our daily lives than a Tony Robbins self-help book. If it's the latter, then today's liberal elites have it right. The Bible should be taken with a grain of salt, enjoyed simply for its literary and historical value, or ignored altogether. However, if it's the former -- if the Bible really is the inerrant, inspired Word of God as it purports to be -- then wouldn't it be in the best interest of every man, woman and child to pay close attention to what it has to say? Shouldn't we make every effort to live life according to its express principles for our own sake and for the sake of others? So, what does the Bible have to say about human sexuality? Specifically, what does Scripture say about homosexuality? Again, it's fundamental. Homosexual behavior, like adultery, fornication, incest and bestiality is, under no uncertain terms, classified as sexual immorality in both the Old and New Testaments. The historical and biblical records are unequivocal. In order to reach a contrary conclusion, people like President Obama, who rationalize that the Bible somehow affirms homosexual behavior -- or at least remains neutral on the subject -- are forced to cast aside any pretense of intellectual honesty and engage in gold-medal mental gymnastics. So, for the sake of national unity, let's clear up any confusion about marriage and sexual immorality once and for all, shall we? And afterward, I expect all you leftists who've been badmouthing us "fundamentalists" to apologize, 'kay? First of all it was God, not Jerry Falwell, who both created and defined the institution of marriage. Conversely, it's pro-homosexual extremists who wish to radically redefine it. In fact, Christ, in His own words, reaffirmed the true definition of marriage, saying, "Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6 NIV). Evidently, Christ failed to clear His marriage definition with Barack Obama and Big Homo. Notice that -- rather conspicuously -- He did not say: "At the beginning the Creator made them gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT). For this reason a male, female or shemale will leave his, her or whatchahoozie's father and mother, father and father or mother and mother and be united to his or her wife -- and/or husband -- and the two or more will become one flesh. Not that there's anything wrong with that." Despite fairly successful attempts by self-described "gay" activists to equate behaviorally driven "gayness" to immutable and neutrally defined qualities such as race and gender, the reality is that being "gay" has absolutely nothing to do with what someone is, and has everything to do with what someone does. It's all about feelings and behaviors. Behaviors that every major world religion, thousands of years of history, and uncompromising human biology have universally rejected as both immoral and destructive. Just a few examples: Leviticus 18:22 commands us, rather unambiguously, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." Romans 1:26-27 warns, "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." Christ's Apostle Paul rhetorically asked in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." Fortunately, as untold thousands of ex-"gays" can attest, God's Word also offers hope and freedom from the homosexual lifestyle. 1 Corinthians 6:11, says, "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." To the delight of truth seekers -- and to the consternation of "gay" activists everywhere -- the mere existence of ex-"gays" brings the biologically incongruous and politically motivated "born that way" house of cards crashing down. It further undermines Big Homo's already frail justification for demanding special rights based on aberrant sexual behaviors. That's why ex-"gays" are so hated by the left and so viciously maligned by homosexual activists. So, again, President Obama, as a self-professed Christian, needs to be reminded that either homosexual behavior is sexual immorality or there is simply no such thing as sexual immorality. If the homosexual lifestyle is just another "sexual orientation," then what possible justification can there be for opposing other biblically condemned "sexual orientations" like fornication, adultery, polygamy, incest, pedophilia or bestiality? If one is moral, all are moral. Then again, if one is immoral, all are immoral. This means that "gay affirming" churches, which engage in what I call "a la carte Christianity" (take what you like, leave what you don't) are really just "sin affirming" churches. And "gay friendly" politicians, like Barack Obama, who push an anti-Christian homosexual agenda, are really just "immorality friendly" politicians. It really is that black and white -- that fundamental. We're either with God on sexual morality, or against Him. We just can't have it both ways. http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=408758 FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM FACTS

1. Israel became a state in 1312 B.C., two millennia before Islam; 2. Arab refugees from Israel began calling themselves "Palestinians" in 1967, two decades after (modern) Israeli statehood in 1948; 3. After conquering the land in 1272 B.C., Jews ruled it for a thousand years and maintained a continuous presence there for 3,300 years; 4. The only Arab rule following conquest in 633 B.C. lasted just 22 years; 5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem was the Jewish capital. It was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even under Jordanian rule, (East) Jerusalem was not made the capital, and no Arab leader came to visit it; 6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the bible, but not once is it mentioned in the Qur'an; 7. King David founded Jerusalem ; Mohammed never set foot in it; 8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem ; Muslims face Mecca . If they are between the two cities, Muslims pray facing Mecca , with their backs to Jerusalem ; 9. In 1948, Arab leaders urged their people to leave, promising to cleanse the land of Jewish presence. 68% of them fled without ever setting eyes on an Israeli soldier; 10. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Muslim countries had to flee as the result of violence and pogroms; 11. Some 630,000 Arabs left Israel in 1948, while close to a million Jews were forced to leave the Muslim countries; 12. In spite of the vast territories at their disposal, Arab refugees were deliberately prevented from assimilating into their host countries. Of 100 million refugees following World War 2, they are the only group to have never integrated with their co-religionists. Most of the Jewish refugees from Europe and Arab lands were settled in Israel , a country no larger than New Jersey , USA ; 13. There are 22 Muslim countries, not counting Palestine . There is only one Jewish state. Arabs started all five wars against Israel , and lost every one of them; 14. Fatah and Hamas constitutions still call for the destruction of Israel . Israel ceded most of the west bank and all of Gaza to the Palestinian authority, and even provided it with arms; 15. During the Jordanian occupation, Jewish holy sites were vandalized and were off limits to Jews. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian holy sites are accessible to all faiths; 16. Out of 175 United Nations Security Council resolutions up to 1990, 97 were against Israel ; out of 690 general assembly resolutions, 429 were against Israel ; 17. The U.N. was silent when the Jordanians destroyed 58 synagogues in the old city of Jerusalem . It remained silent while Jordan systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the mount of olives, and it remained silent when Jordan enforced apartheid laws preventing Jews from accessing the temple mount and western wall. FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Major revelation: U.S. media deceitfully disseminates government propaganda

Prince of the power of the air[waves] SALON.com [Salon Media Group] - By Glenn Greenwald - April 20, 2008 This morning's "blockbuster" New York Times article by David Barstow, documenting the Pentagon and U.S. media's joint use of pre-programmed "military analysts" who posed as objective experts while touting the Government line and having extensive business interests in promoting those views, is very well-documented and well-reported. And credit to the NYT for having sued to compel disclosure of the documents on which the article is based. There are significant elements of the story that exemplify excellent investigative journalism. At the same time, though, in light of questions on this very topic raised even by the NYT back in 2003, it is difficult to take the article's underlying points seriously as though they are some kind of new revelation. And ultimately, to the extent there are new revelations here, they are a far greater indictment of our leading news organizations than the government officials on whom it focuses. In 2002 and 2003, when Americans were relentlessly subjected to their commentary, news organizations were hardly unaware that these retired generals were mindlessly reciting the administration line on the war and related matters. To the contrary, that's precisely why our news organizations -- which themselves were devoted to selling the war both before and after the invasion by relentlessly featuring pro-war sources and all but excluding anti-war ones -- turned to them in the first place. To its credit, the article acknowledges that "at least nine" of the Pentagon's trained military analysts wrote Op-Eds for the NYT itself, but many of those same sources were also repeatedly quoted -- and still are routinely quoted -- in all sorts of NYT news articles on Iraq and other "War on Terrorism" issues, something the article fails to note. What the article also does not disclose, but should have, is that the NYT itself already published, back on March 25, 2003, right after the invasion of Iraq, an article by John Cushman raising the thorny questions posed by the media's extensive reliance on retired generals as "military analysts": Old soldiers, it turns out, don't just fade away not when a war is being carried live on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and the broadcast networks. Instead, a whole constellation of retired one-, two-, three- and four-star generals -- including many who led the recent wars in Afghanistan, Kosovo and the Persian Gulf -- can be seen night and day across the television firmament, navigation aids for viewers lost in a narrative that can be foggier than war itself. . . . But the generals' performances raise some questions, including how much they really know and whether they are disclosing more than they should. Some receive occasional briefings from the Pentagon, but like most reporters, they stay current by checking with their friends in the military and studying all the public information they can gather. On the other hand, their evident sympathies with the current commanders, not to mention their respect for the military and immersion in its doctrines,sometimes seem to immunize them to the self-imposed skepticism of the news organizations that now employ them. Rarely, unless pressed, do the generals bluntly criticize the conduct of the war, a detailed review of their recent remarks discloses. Instead, they tend gravely to point out the timeless risks of combat. That 2003 article, at the very beginning, highlighted the obvious conflicts raised by this morning's article, as it quoted Gen. Greg Newbold on ABC News as praising the invasion as follows: "If things haven't gone exactly according to script, they've gone according to plan," even though Newbold himself "until late last year [] was helping to draw up those plans as the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff." In fact, that 2003 article noted that while Wesley Clark had said on CNN that he wished there were more troops used for the invasion, retired Generals were reliably praising the war and the administration's strategies. That article even quoted one of the retired Generals cited in this morning's article as one of those on the Pentagon's list of puppets -- Wayne Downing -- to illustrate the type of pro-government commentary typically spouted by these "military analysts": More typical was a description by Gen. Wayne A. Downing, a former Army leader of the Special Operations Command and a gulf war commander in 1991, of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the Iraq war's overall regional commander. "Tommy started off as an enlisted helicopter door gunner in Vietnam," General Downing said, rattling off the story of his old comrade's career as if by rote. "He's not going to go down there and mess with his people. Not only is Tommy comfortable and well liked by his superiors, which a lot of people are, but Tommy hasn't made his money by looking up. He's made his money by looking down." That 2003 article didn't seem to give any of these news outlets -- including the NYT itself -- the slightest pause about continuing to use these sources as "objective" analysts. It's true that the 2003 article did not raise the added conflict that many military analysts were simultaneously working for corporations in the defense industry which stood to profit from the war policies they were praising, but is that really news to anyone? It's long been clear and obvious that these retired generals were used by the U.S. media to provide an authoritative and artificially objective stamp of approval to the Bush administration's positions. In his book Lapdogs, Eric Boehlert cited numerous examples of that, including: And for viewers that night who didn't get a strong enough sense of just how obediently in-step the press corps was with the White House, there was the televised post-press conference analysis. On MSNBC, for instance, "Hardball's" Chris Matthews hosted a full hour of discussion. In order to get a wide array of opinion, he invited a pro-war Republican senator (Saxby Chambliss, from Georgia), a pro-war former Secretary of State (Lawrence Eagleburger), a pro-war retired Army general (Montgomery Meigs), pro-war retired Air Force general (Buster Glosson), a pro-war Republican pollster (Frank Luntz), as well as, for the sake of balance, somebody who, twenty-five years earlier, once worked in Jimmy Carter's White House (Pat Caddell). Meigs was one of the retired Generals on whom the NYT article this morning focused (and as a frequent and highly respected guest on MSNBC, here's the type of propagandizing commentary he routinely spewed, consistent with what the Sainted David Petraeus was doing at the same time). Doing whatever they could to promote the Government line on the "War on Terrorism" was a central function of our propagandizing press corps; the use of allegedly objective retired generals was a critical instrument in their arsenal; and the NYT article this morning, while commendably disclosing new evidence to prove that, does not reveal anything not previously known. The most incredible aspect of the NYT story is that most of the news organizations which deceived their readers and viewers by using these "objective" analysts -- CBS, NBC, Fox -- simply refused to comment on what they knew about any of this or what their procedures are for safeguarding against it. Just ponder what that says about these organizations -- there is a major expose in the NYT documenting that these news outlets misleadingly shoveled government propaganda down the throats of their viewers on matters of war and terrorism and they don't feel the least bit obliged to answer for what they did or knew about any of it. (And it doesn't appear that Barstow even asked the NYT itself to comment about what they knew or what their procedures were when using these sources). CNN did answer by claiming they were unaware of these relationships and rely on their sources to disclose them. The single most significant factor in American political culture is the incestuous, extensive overlap between our media institutions and government officials. The former is a dependent appendage of the latter far more than they are anything else. This article discloses some new details and proof of how that toxic process functions, but the fact that our major news organizations -- with some exceptions -- largely serve as government propaganda outlets is not news. It's the central fact of American political life, and the NYT itself -- along with every other news organization -- more than five years ago was obviously aware of this specific problem but not particularly concerned about it. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/20/nyt/index.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

Prince of the power of the air[waves] NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By DAVID BARSTOW - April 20, 2008 Corrections Appended The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo. To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: 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. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized. Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse - an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley. In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access. A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis. “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said. Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said. As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed. “Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.” The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war. “The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said. It was, Mr. Whitman added, “a bit incredible” to think retired military officers could be “wound up” and turned into “puppets of the Defense Department.” Many analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war. Several, like Jeffrey D. McCausland, a CBS military analyst and defense industry lobbyist, said they kept their networks informed of their outside work and recused themselves from coverage that touched on business interests. “I’m not here representing the administration,” Dr. McCausland said. Some network officials, meanwhile, acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts’ interactions with the administration. They said that while they were sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding outside financial interests. The onus is on their analysts to disclose conflicts, they said. And whatever the contributions of military analysts, they also noted the many network journalists who have covered the war for years in all its complexity. Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation. These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated. Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.” Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many - although certainly not all - faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics. “Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.” Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts - properly armed - can push back in that arena.” The documents released by the Pentagon do not show any quid pro quo between commentary and contracts. But some analysts said they had used the special access as a marketing and networking opportunity or as a window into future business possibilities. John C. Garrett is a retired Marine colonel and unpaid analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including in Iraq. In promotional materials, he states that as a military analyst he “is privy to weekly access and briefings with the secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high level policy makers in the administration.” One client told investors that Mr. Garrett’s special access and decades of experience helped him “to know in advance - and in detail - how best to meet the needs” of the Defense Department and other agencies. In interviews Mr. Garrett said there was an inevitable overlap between his dual roles. He said he had gotten “information you just otherwise would not get,” from the briefings and three Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq. He also acknowledged using this access and information to identify opportunities for clients. “You can’t help but look for that,” he said, adding, “If you know a capability that would fill a niche or need, you try to fill it. “That’s good for everybody.” At the same time, in e-mail messages to the Pentagon, Mr. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. “Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay,” he wrote in January 2007, before President Bush went on TV to describe the surge strategy in Iraq. Conversely, the administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, many analysts said. “You’ll lose all access,” Dr. McCausland said. With a majority of Americans calling the war a mistake despite all administration attempts to sway public opinion, the Pentagon has focused in the last couple of years on cultivating in particular military analysts frequently seen and heard in conservative news outlets, records and interviews show. Some of these analysts were on the mission to Cuba on June 24, 2005 - the first of six such Guantánamo trips - which was designed to mobilize analysts against the growing perception of Guantánamo as an international symbol of inhumane treatment. On the flight to Cuba, for much of the day at Guantánamo and on the flight home that night, Pentagon officials briefed the 10 or so analysts on their key messages - how much had been spent improving the facility, the abuse endured by guards, the extensive rights afforded detainees. The results came quickly. The analysts went on TV and radio, decrying Amnesty International, criticizing calls to close the facility and asserting that all detainees were treated humanely. “The impressions that you’re getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by people who have not been here in my opinion are totally false,” Donald W. Shepperd, a retired Air Force general, reported live on CNN by phone from Guantánamo that same afternoon. The next morning, Montgomery Meigs, a retired Army general and NBC analyst, appeared on “Today.” “There’s been over $100 million of new construction,” he reported. “The place is very professionally run.” Within days, transcripts of the analysts’ appearances were circulated to senior White House and Pentagon officials, cited as evidence of progress in the battle for hearts and minds at home. Charting the Campaign By early 2002, detailed planning for a possible Iraq invasion was under way, yet an obstacle loomed. Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance. Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent. And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” - movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities. In the months after Sept. 11, as every network rushed to retain its own all-star squad of retired military officers, Ms. Clarke and her staff sensed a new opportunity. To Ms. Clarke’s team, the military analysts were the ultimate “key influential” - authoritative, most of them decorated war heroes, all reaching mass audiences. The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war. Even analysts with no defense industry ties, and no fondness for the administration, were reluctant to be critical of military leaders, many of whom were friends. “It is very hard for me to criticize the United States Army,” said William L. Nash, a retired Army general and ABC analyst. “It is my life.” Other administrations had made sporadic, small-scale attempts to build relationships with the occasional military analyst. But these were trifling compared with what Ms. Clarke’s team had in mind. Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war. Journalists were secondary. “We didn’t want to rely on them to be our primary vehicle to get information out,” Mr. Meyer said. The Pentagon’s regular press office would be kept separate from the military analysts. The analysts would instead be catered to by a small group of political appointees, with the point person being Brent T. Krueger, another senior aide to Ms. Clarke. The decision recalled other administration tactics that subverted traditional journalism. Federal agencies, for example, have paid columnists to write favorably about the administration. They have distributed to local TV stations hundreds of fake news segments with fawning accounts of administration accomplishments. The Pentagon itself has made covert payments to Iraqi newspapers to publish coalition propaganda. Rather than complain about the “media filter,” each of these techniques simply converted the filter into an amplifier. This time, Mr. Krueger said, the military analysts would in effect be “writing the op-ed” for the war. Assembling the Team From the start, interviews show, the White House took a keen interest in which analysts had been identified by the Pentagon, requesting lists of potential recruits, and suggesting names. Ms. Clarke’s team wrote summaries describing their backgrounds, business affiliations and where they stood on the war. “Rumsfeld ultimately cleared off on all invitees,” said Mr. Krueger, who left the Pentagon in 2004. (Through a spokesman, Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment for this article.) Over time, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired officers, although some participated only briefly or sporadically. The largest contingent was affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the other networks with 24-hour cable outlets. But analysts from CBS and ABC were included, too. Some recruits, though not on any network payroll, were influential in other ways - either because they were sought out by radio hosts, or because they often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, Web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for The Times.

The group was heavily represented by men involved in the business of helping companies win military contracts. Several held senior positions with contractors that gave them direct responsibility for winning new Pentagon business. James Marks, a retired Army general and analyst for CNN from 2004 to 2007, pursued military and intelligence contracts as a senior executive with McNeil Technologies. Still others held board positions with military firms that gave them responsibility for government business. General McInerney, the Fox analyst, for example, sits on the boards of several military contractors, including Nortel Government Solutions, a supplier of communication networks. Several were defense industry lobbyists, such as Dr. McCausland, who works at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, a major lobbying firm where he is director of a national security team that represents several military contractors. “We offer clients access to key decision makers,” Dr. McCausland’s team promised on the firm’s Web site. Dr. McCausland was not the only analyst making this pledge. Another was Joseph W. Ralston, a retired Air Force general. Soon after signing on with CBS, General Ralston was named vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm headed by a former defense secretary, William Cohen, himself now a “world affairs” analyst for CNN. “The Cohen Group knows that getting to ‘yes’ in the aerospace and defense market - whether in the United States or abroad - requires that companies have a thorough, up-to-date understanding of the thinking of government decision makers,” the company tells prospective clients on its Web site. There were also ideological ties. Two of NBC’s most prominent analysts, Barry R. McCaffrey and the late Wayne A. Downing, were on the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an advocacy group created with White House encouragement in 2002 to help make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein. Both men also had their own consulting firms and sat on the boards of major military contractors. Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war. This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam. “We lost the war - not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars - taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” - using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.” The Selling of the War From their earliest sessions with the military analysts, Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides spoke as if they were all part of the same team. In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment - the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself. “Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” - a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.” The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon. 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.’ ” On April 12, 2003, with major combat almost over, Mr. Rumsfeld drafted a memorandum to Ms. Clarke. “Let’s think about having some of the folks who did such a good job as talking heads in after this thing is over,” he wrote. By summer, though, the first signs of the insurgency had emerged. Reports from journalists based in Baghdad were increasingly suffused with the imagery of mayhem. The Pentagon did not have to search far for a counterweight. It was time, an internal Pentagon strategy memorandum urged, to “re-energize surrogates and message-force multipliers,” starting with the military analysts. The memorandum led to a proposal to take analysts on a tour of Iraq in September 2003, timed to help overcome the sticker shock from Mr. Bush’s request for $87 billion in emergency war financing. The group included four analysts from Fox News, one each from CNN and ABC, and several research-group luminaries whose opinion articles appear regularly in the nation’s op-ed pages. The trip invitation promised a look at “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.” The situation, as described in scores of books, was deteriorating. L. Paul Bremer III, then the American viceroy in Iraq, wrote in his memoir, “My Year in Iraq,” that he had privately warned the White House that the United States had “about half the number of soldiers we needed here.” “We’re up against a growing and sophisticated threat,” Mr. Bremer recalled telling the president during a private White House dinner. That dinner took place on Sept. 24, while the analysts were touring Iraq. Yet these harsh realities were elided, or flatly contradicted, during the official presentations for the analysts, records show. The itinerary, scripted to the minute, featured brief visits to a model school, a few refurbished government buildings, a center for women’s rights, a mass grave and even the gardens of Babylon. Mostly the analysts attended briefings. These sessions, records show, spooled out an alternative narrative, depicting an Iraq bursting with political and economic energy, its security forces blossoming. On the crucial question of troop levels, the briefings echoed the White House line: No reinforcements were needed. The “growing and sophisticated threat” described by Mr. Bremer was instead depicted as degraded, isolated and on the run. “We’re winning,” a briefing document proclaimed. One trip participant, General Nash of ABC, said some briefings were so clearly “artificial” that he joked to another group member that they were on “the George Romney memorial trip to Iraq,” a reference to Mr. Romney’s infamous claim that American officials had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour there in 1965, while he was governor of Michigan. But if the trip pounded the message of progress, it also represented a business opportunity: direct access to the most senior civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait, including many with a say in how the president’s $87 billion would be spent. It also was a chance to gather inside information about the most pressing needs confronting the American mission: the acute shortages of “up-armored” Humvees; the billions to be spent building military bases; the urgent need for interpreters; and the ambitious plans to train Iraq’s security forces. Information and access of this nature had undeniable value for trip participants like William V. Cowan and Carlton A. Sherwood. Mr. Cowan, a Fox analyst and retired Marine colonel, was the chief executive of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group. Mr. Sherwood was its executive vice president. At the time, the company was seeking contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. In addition, wvc3 Group had a written agreement to use its influence and connections to help tribal leaders in Al Anbar Province win reconstruction contracts from the coalition. “Those sheiks wanted access to the C.P.A.,” Mr. Cowan recalled in an interview, referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority. Mr. Cowan said he pleaded their cause during the trip. “I tried to push hard with some of Bremer’s people to engage these people of Al Anbar,” he said. Back in Washington, Pentagon officials kept a nervous eye on how the trip translated on the airwaves. Uncomfortable facts had bubbled up during the trip. One briefer, for example, mentioned that the Army was resorting to packing inadequately armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets. Descriptions of the Iraqi security forces were withering. “They can’t shoot, but then again, they don’t,” one officer told them, according to one participant’s notes. “I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times. The Pentagon, though, need not have worried. “You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months. “We could not be more excited, more pleased,” Mr. Cowan told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. There was barely a word about armor shortages or corrupt Iraqi security forces. And on the key strategic question of the moment - whether to send more troops - the analysts were unanimous. “I am so much against adding more troops,” General Shepperd said on CNN.

Access and Influence Inside the Pentagon and at the White House, the trip was viewed as a masterpiece in the management of perceptions, not least because it gave fuel to complaints that “mainstream” journalists were ignoring the good news in Iraq. “We’re hitting a home run on this trip,” a senior Pentagon official wrote in an e-mail message to Richard B. Myers and Peter Pace, then chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Its success only intensified the Pentagon’s campaign. The pace of briefings accelerated. More trips were organized. Eventually the effort involved officials from Washington to Baghdad to Kabul to Guantánamo and back to Tampa, Fla., the headquarters of United States Central Command. The scale reflected strong support from the top. When officials in Iraq were slow to organize another trip for analysts, a Pentagon official fired off an e-mail message warning that the trips “have the highest levels of visibility” at the White House and urging them to get moving before Lawrence Di Rita, one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s closest aides, “picks up the phone and starts calling the 4-stars.” Mr. Di Rita, no longer at the Defense Department, said in an interview that a “conscious decision” was made to rely on the military analysts to counteract “the increasingly negative view of the war” coming from journalists in Iraq. The analysts, he said, generally had “a more supportive view” of the administration and the war, and the combination of their TV platforms and military cachet made them ideal for rebutting critical coverage of issues like troop morale, treatment of detainees, inadequate equipment or poorly trained Iraqi security forces. “On those issues, they were more likely to be seen as credible spokesmen,” he said. For analysts with military industry ties, the attention brought access to a widening circle of influential officials beyond the contacts they had accumulated over the course of their careers. Charles T. Nash, a Fox military analyst and retired Navy captain, is a consultant who helps small companies break into the military market. Suddenly, he had entree to a host of senior military leaders, many of whom he had never met. It was, he said, like being embedded with the Pentagon leadership. “You start to recognize what’s most important to them,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing like seeing stuff firsthand.” Some Pentagon officials said they were well aware that some analysts viewed their special access as a business advantage. “Of course we realized that,” Mr. Krueger said. “We weren’t naïve about that.” They also understood the financial relationship between the networks and their analysts. Many analysts were being paid by the “hit,” the number of times they appeared on TV. The more an analyst could boast of fresh inside information from high-level Pentagon “sources,” the more hits he could expect. The more hits, the greater his potential influence in the military marketplace, where several analysts prominently advertised their network roles. “They have taken lobbying and the search for contracts to a far higher level,” Mr. Krueger said. “This has been highly honed.” Mr. Di Rita, though, said it never occurred to him that analysts might use their access to curry favor. Nor, he said, did the Pentagon try to exploit this dynamic. “That’s not something that ever crossed my mind,” he said. In any event, he argued, the analysts and the networks were the ones responsible for any ethical complications. “We assume they know where the lines are,” he said. The analysts met personally with Mr. Rumsfeld at least 18 times, records show, but that was just the beginning. They had dozens more sessions with the most senior members of his brain trust and access to officials responsible for managing the billions being spent in Iraq. Other groups of “key influentials” had meetings, but not nearly as often as the analysts. An internal memorandum in 2005 helped explain why. The memorandum, written by a Pentagon official who had accompanied analysts to Iraq, said that based on her observations during the trip, the analysts “are having a greater impact” on network coverage of the military. “They have now become the go-to guys not only on breaking stories, but they influence the views on issues,” she wrote. Other branches of the administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts. “We knew we had extraordinary access,” said Timur J. Eads, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and Fox analyst who is vice president of government relations for Blackbird Technologies, a fast-growing military contractor. Like several other analysts, Mr. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that “some four-star could call up and say, ‘Kill that contract.’ ” For example, he believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq’s security forces. “I know a snow job when I see one,” he said. He did not share this on TV. “Human nature,” he explained, though he noted other instances when he was critical. Some analysts said that even before the war started, they privately had questions about the justification for the invasion, but were careful not to express them on air. Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst, was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq’s purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. He recalled asking the briefer whether the United States had “smoking gun” proof. “ ‘We don’t have any hard evidence,’ ” Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. “We are looking at ourselves saying, ‘What are we doing?’ ” Another analyst, Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, attended the same briefing and recalled feeling “very disappointed” after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being “manipulated” to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public. Mr. Bevelacqua and another Fox analyst, Mr. Cowan, had formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military and national security contracts. “There’s no way I was going to go down that road and get completely torn apart,” Mr. Bevelacqua said. “You’re talking about fighting a huge machine.” Some e-mail messages between the Pentagon and the analysts reveal an implicit trade of privileged access for favorable coverage. Robert H. Scales Jr., a retired Army general and analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio whose consulting company advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq, wanted the Pentagon to approve high-level briefings for him inside Iraq in 2006. “Recall the stuff I did after my last visit,” he wrote. “I will do the same this time.” Pentagon Keeps Tabs As it happened, the analysts’ news media appearances were being closely monitored. The Pentagon paid a private contractor, Omnitec Solutions, hundreds of thousands of dollars to scour databases for any trace of the analysts, be it a segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” or an interview with The Daily Inter Lake in Montana, circulation 20,000. Omnitec evaluated their appearances using the same tools as corporate branding experts. One report, assessing the impact of several trips to Iraq in 2005, offered example after example of analysts echoing Pentagon themes on all the networks. “Commentary from all three Iraq trips was extremely positive over all,” the report concluded. In interviews, several analysts reacted with dismay when told they were described as reliable “surrogates” in Pentagon documents. And some asserted that their Pentagon sessions were, as David L. Grange, a retired Army general and CNN analyst put it, “just upfront information,” while others pointed out, accurately, that they did not always agree with the administration or each other. “None of us drink the Kool-Aid,” General Scales said. Likewise, several also denied using their special access for business gain. “Not related at all,” General Shepperd said, pointing out that many in the Pentagon held CNN “in the lowest esteem.” Still, even the mildest of criticism could draw a challenge. Several analysts told of fielding telephone calls from displeased defense officials only minutes after being on the air. On Aug. 3, 2005, 14 marines died in Iraq. That day, Mr. Cowan, who said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the “twisted version of reality” being pushed on analysts in briefings, called the Pentagon to give “a heads-up” that some of his comments on Fox “may not all be friendly,” Pentagon records show. Mr. Rumsfeld’s senior aides quickly arranged a private briefing for him, yet when he told Bill O’Reilly that the United States was “not on a good glide path right now” in Iraq, the repercussions were swift. Mr. Cowan said he was “precipitously fired from the analysts group” for this appearance. The Pentagon, he wrote in an e-mail message, “simply didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t carrying their water.” The next day James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, presided over another conference call with analysts. He urged them, a transcript shows, not to let the marines’ deaths further erode support for the war. “The strategic target remains our population,” General Conway said. “We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.” “General, I just made that point on the air,” an analyst replied. “Let’s work it together, guys,” General Conway urged. The Generals’ Revolt The full dimensions of this mutual embrace were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several of Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals - none of them network military analysts - went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some called for his resignation. On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the “Generals’ Revolt” dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show. When an aide urged a short delay to “give our big guys on the West Coast a little more time to buy a ticket and get here,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office insisted that “the boss” wanted the meeting fast “for impact on the current story.” That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld. “Starting to write it now,” General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. “Any input for the article,” he added a little later, “will be much appreciated.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office quickly forwarded talking points and statistics to rebut the notion of a spreading revolt. “Vallely is going to use the numbers,” a Pentagon official reported that afternoon. The standard secrecy notwithstanding, plans for this session leaked, producing a front-page story in The Times that Sunday. In damage-control mode, Pentagon officials scrambled to present the meeting as routine and directed that communications with analysts be kept “very formal,” records show. “This is very, very sensitive now,” a Pentagon official warned subordinates. On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. A transcript of that session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize war critics and revive public support for the war. “I’m an old intel guy,” said one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) “And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear that and they think, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.’ ” “What are you, some kind of a nut?” Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. “You don’t believe in the Constitution?” There was little discussion about the actual criticism pouring forth from Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals. Analysts argued that opposition to the war was rooted in perceptions fed by the news media, not reality. The administration’s overall war strategy, they counseled, was “brilliant” and “very successful.” “Frankly,” one participant said, “from a military point of view, the penalty, 2,400 brave Americans whom we lost, 3,000 in an hour and 15 minutes, is relative.” An analyst said at another point: “This is a wider war. And whether we have democracy in Iraq or not, it doesn’t mean a tinker’s damn if we end up with the result we want, which is a regime over there that’s not a threat to us.” “Yeah,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, taking notes. But winning or not, they bluntly warned, the administration was in grave political danger so long as most Americans viewed Iraq as a lost cause. “America hates a loser,” one analyst said. Much of the session was devoted to ways that Mr. Rumsfeld could reverse the “political tide.” One analyst urged Mr. Rumsfeld to “just crush these people,” and assured him that “most of the gentlemen at the table” would enthusiastically support him if he did. “You are the leader,” the analyst told Mr. Rumsfeld. “You are our guy.” At another point, an analyst made a suggestion: “In one of your speeches you ought to say, ‘Everybody stop for a minute and imagine an Iraq ruled by Zarqawi.’ And then you just go down the list and say, ‘All right, we’ve got oil, money, sovereignty, access to the geographic center of gravity of the Middle East, blah, blah, blah.’ If you can just paint a mental picture for Joe America to say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t imagine a world like that.’ ” Even as they assured Mr. Rumsfeld that they stood ready to help in this public relations offensive, the analysts sought guidance on what they should cite as the next “milestone” that would, as one analyst put it, “keep the American people focused on the idea that we’re moving forward to a positive end.” They placed particular emphasis on the growing confrontation with Iran. “When you said ‘long war,’ you changed the psyche of the American people to expect this to be a generational event,” an analyst said. “And again, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job...” “Get in line,” Mr. Rumsfeld interjected. The meeting ended and Mr. Rumsfeld, appearing pleased and relaxed, took the entire group into a small study and showed off treasured keepsakes from his life, several analysts recalled. Soon after, analysts hit the airwaves. The Omnitec monitoring reports, circulated to more than 80 officials, confirmed that analysts repeated many of the Pentagon’s talking points: that Mr. Rumsfeld consulted “frequently and sufficiently” with his generals; that he was not “overly concerned” with the criticisms; that the meeting focused “on more important topics at hand,” including the next milestone in Iraq, the formation of a new government. Days later, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum distilling their collective guidance into bullet points. Two were underlined: “Focus on the Global War on Terror - not simply Iraq. The wider war - the long war.” “Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.” But if Mr. Rumsfeld found the session instructive, at least one participant, General Nash, the ABC analyst, was repulsed. “I walked away from that session having total disrespect for my fellow commentators, with perhaps one or two exceptions,” he said. View From the Networks Two weeks ago General Petraeus took time out from testifying before Congress about Iraq for a conference call with military analysts. Mr. Garrett, the Fox analyst and Patton Boggs lobbyist, said he told General Petraeus during the call to “keep up the great work.” “Hey,” Mr. Garrett said in an interview, “anything we can do to help.” For the moment, though, because of heavy election coverage and general war fatigue, military analysts are not getting nearly as much TV time, and the networks have trimmed their rosters of analysts. The conference call with General Petraeus, for example, produced little in the way of immediate coverage. Still, almost weekly the Pentagon continues to conduct briefings with selected military analysts. Many analysts said network officials were only dimly aware of these interactions. The networks, they said, have little grasp of how often they meet with senior officials, or what is discussed. “I don’t think NBC was even aware we were participating,” said Rick Francona, a longtime military analyst for the network. Some networks publish biographies on their Web sites that describe their analysts’ military backgrounds and, in some cases, give at least limited information about their business ties. But many analysts also said the networks asked few questions about their outside business interests, the nature of their work or the potential for that work to create conflicts of interest. “None of that ever happened,” said Mr. Allard, an NBC analyst until 2006. “The worst conflict of interest was no interest.” Mr. Allard and other analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq - a clear ethical violation for most news organizations. CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts. NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The network issued a short statement: “We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.” Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were expected to keep the network informed about any outside business entanglements. “We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely apprised,” he said. A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives “refused to participate” in this article. CNN requires its military analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest. Yet even where controls exist, they have sometimes proven porous. CNN, for example, said it was unaware for nearly three years that one of its main military analysts, General Marks, was deeply involved in the business of seeking government contracts, including contracts related to Iraq. General Marks was hired by CNN in 2004, about the time he took a management position at McNeil Technologies, where his job was to pursue military and intelligence contracts. As required, General Marks disclosed that he received income from McNeil Technologies. But the disclosure form did not require him to describe what his job entailed, and CNN acknowledges it failed to do additional vetting. “We did not ask Mr. Marks the follow-up questions we should have,” CNN said in a written statement. In an interview, General Marks said it was no secret at CNN that his job at McNeil Technologies was about winning contracts. “I mean, that’s what McNeil does,” he said. CNN, however, said it did not know the nature of McNeil’s military business or what General Marks did for the company. If he was bidding on Pentagon contracts, CNN said, that should have disqualified him from being a military analyst for the network. But in the summer and fall of 2006, even as he was regularly asked to comment on conditions in Iraq, General Marks was working intensively on bidding for a $4.6 billion contract to provide thousands of translators to United States forces in Iraq. In fact, General Marks was made president of the McNeil spin-off that won the huge contract in December 2006. General Marks said his work on the contract did not affect his commentary on CNN. “I’ve got zero challenge separating myself from a business interest,” he said. But CNN said it had no idea about his role in the contract until July 2007, when it reviewed his most recent disclosure form, submitted months earlier, and finally made inquiries about his new job. “We saw the extent of his dealings and determined at that time we should end our relationship with him,” CNN said. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: April 22, 2008 An article on Sunday about the Pentagon’s relationship with news media military analysts misidentified the military affiliation of one analyst, John C. Garrett. He retired as a colonel from the Marines, not the Army. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: April 24, 2008 The continuation of an article on Sunday about a Pentagon effort to use military analysts to generate favorable news coverage carried 10 paragraphs that were partly obscured in some editions by a chart. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?ex=1366689600&en=eefc8e0bdd6ffc91&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

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