Then why don't you try this article from Michael Yon:

www.michaelyon-online.com/joseph-l.-galloway-the-times-drags-an-honorable-soldier-through-the-mud.htm

Thought I'm sure you would never want to hear from someone who actually knows something about both Iraq and the General....

Sounds to me like Barstow gets it just about right. Why does Zengerle feel compelled to defend the Quisiling press? No one can make a remotely credible case that McCaffrey has anything like a "conflict of interest" when it comes to the national security interests of the United States. I'm a lot less confident that the same can be said of Zengerle and his ilk.

That's great rob3liss, but Yon's article doesn't actually address the main concern raised in the NYT piece: namely that he did not (apparently) disclose his very real conflicts of interest.

Now it may be that everything that McCaffrey has said and done represents his own beliefs and that his relationship with Defense Solutions played no part in his decision making process.  But here's the thing - it can be a little hard to differentiate between that and a case where a similarly undisclosed monetary relationship does influence someone's actions.

And it does strain credulity that someone with McCaffrey's background would be unaware that by not disclosing his relationship with Defense Solution his actions and statements might be viewed as tainted by a conflict of interest when said relationship was revealed.

Now I obviously don't know the man, and this all might be an honest oversight. However, while I salute McCaffrey's service to the country (which be all reports is more than highly commendable), nothing you, Yon or Peters has said has answered the main charge of the NYT piece.

Ah, yes. Michael "The  Boy Had Been  Baked" Yon. Yes, he knows lots of stuff.

Robert, do you mean to say that Peters has it right? Because you say Barstow has it right - and he does - but the rest of your post says otherwise.

As far as I know, "quisling" is a term taken from modern Norwegian history and describes someone in a high official positon who uses his loyalty to another country or political ideology (in the actual Quisling's case, Nazi Germany) to enable the invasion and defeat of his own country.

So the relevance of the term to the NYT or the press in general escapes me.

You just don't get it, do you ironyroad? The coincidence of General McCaffrey's expert military analysis and financial interests is not news worthy. Pointing it out on the other hand is tawdry and seditious in that it invites the slaughter of innocent American children at the hands of The Terrorists. I mean, the guy is a war hero for heaven's sake and the liberal panty waists at the New York Times are going to impugn <i>his</i> integrity? Don't these homos realize that, outside of Hugo Chavez and Idi Amin and a few hundred other examples that spring to mind immediately, war heroism is a foolproof indicator of moral chastity in every other facet of life for all time?

Boy, when I think of this self-promoting parasitic "journalist" Barstow writing on that rag there in traitorous New York City, well, I think I speak for all Real Americans™, when I say that the appropriate response to him involves a black bag, a one way C-130 to Gitmo and some rope (just another fine reason to cite the excellent service of the C-130s that has nothing to do with McCaffrey making a few tens of thousands of bucks on those contracts).

In the context of a $7,000,000,000+ bailout to the men and women on Wall Street who, with the support of both the Clinton and Bush administrations, traded campaign contributions for deregulation while shuttling job applications were flying fast and furious between the Congress and K Street, what in the world can the expression "conflict of interest" possibly mean relating to anything in today's corrupt world?

george walton

"You just don't get it, do you ironyroad?"

No, I get it.  You need to chill out occasionally, george.

The sarcasm at TNR drips like icicles in April. The only commenters worth reading here are Rhubarbs and williamyard, and the rest of you know it.

If it weren't for Marty's intoxicating blend of sputtering rage and Goreophilia, I'd have stopped coming here long ago.

I remember someone wrote for TNR a while ago about a junket he took to Gitmo.

George W., understood that "everyone" is corrupt.  But some are corrupt in uniquely harmful ways.  The likes of McCaffrey feel compelled to repeat Pentagon spin almost verbatim, strictly to maintain access for their defense contractor clients.  It's a vicious cycle. McCaffrey effectively fools the American public into supporting the neocons' Ninja fantasies by posing as a highly experienced, highly decorated but impartial observer.  All to buy him access on behalf of his defense contractor clients who need to gin up a war to gin up their balance sheets.  We now know the steep costs in terms of lives lost, the savaging of brand America, etc.

Maintaining a democracy demands among other things an informed populace.  When you're lied to, you can't make the right decision about whether to raise a voice in protest.  I'm one of the many who was for the Iraq war before I was against it, thanks in part to Colin Powell's "authoritative" power point presentation, and to the opinions of people like McCaffrey that I assumed had the best interests of the American people at hand.  I was savvy enough to know politicians distort their records and pat themselves on the back for exaggerated accomplishments.  I didn't consider that they would lie about existential nat'l security issues.  Much as individuals try to take precautions to ensure bodily integrity, e. g. looking both ways before crossing the street, fastening one's seat belt, I naively assumed our leaders would not play politics with our country's physical survival

let's cool it with the traitorous new york city stuff, huh?  

Sorry Woody--my bad. I meant PETERS got it right.

The NYT is, along with CBS, the current poster child for the Quisling press. Not because like Vidkun Quisling they identify with a racial rather than national identity while betraying their country, but with an intellectual rather than national identity that requires them to betray their country every bit as much. Leaking intelligence sources and methods that tip off terrorist groups, propagating lies and innuendo that encourages radical lunatics, and suggesting that legitimate patriots like McCaffrey are "conflicted" because what they actually believe to be in the best interest of the national security is reflected in some of their associations, is all part of a new kind of treason that is celebrated on the left.

Robert, I thought I had some feel for satire, but in one blog thread you've sent my world crashing down about me. Treason, Nazism, and the NYT/CBS revolutionary cabal all in a terse angry coulmn inch. Truly, you are an artist.

I think that's nonsense, RP.  The key point about Quisling was that he was a high official of the Norwegian government and betrayed his country because he identified with the Nazis.  The New York Times and other reasonably independent media are performing their given duty as watchdogs on government and exposing it when it oversteps its legal or constitutional boundaries.

The administration and its supporters don't like that, which isn't surprising.  Governments don't like it, but the media are part of the checks and balances too.

Neither does anyone in the American press or TV or radio, as far as I can see, support (as Quisling did) the ideology of the enemy, in our case violent Islamic fundamentalism.  I'd be intrigued to hear of any evidence to the contrary.

Therefore, the term "Quisling" is both strikingly inaccurate and, clearly, deliberately deployed to malign people who are doing jobs that need doing.

At least Quisling had convictions. The press has since Watergate seemed to be determined to bring down the government, any government, as a matter of prime importance out of narcissism and self-interest.

It was disgraceful to pump up the Republican witch hunt against Clinton, but it is treasonous to betray measures taken to surveil and interdict terrorist funding and operations, and to slander our leaders and forces in time of war. None of this is by any stretch of the imagination anyone's "given duty", much less a "job that needs doing" unless they are actively in league with terrorists. I don't think the journalists and publications are per se, but they clearly feel a higher duty to spreading scandal and panic than to supporting the war effort.

Bottom line, I don't doubt that leftists really believe that it's in the best interest of the nation to pursue redistribution of wealth and expanded government programs; nor do I doubt that conservatives really believe it's better to limit government and, as in McCaffrey's case, support what they see as strengthening our national defense.  The beginning of wisdom in my view is accepting that people of good will may have dramatically different perspectives on what's best for the country without needing to explain disagreements in terms of corruption or conflict of interest.

Or in terms of "treason" and similar melodramatic and groundless accusations.

Point taken. I remain outraged, and consequently subject to rhetorical excess, by the real-world damage done to our national security by journalists who see it as their duty to ALWAYS ascribe the worst possible motives to anyone in authority.