Who owns the facts?

What's wrong with this paragraph from Power Line?

The Washington Post contrasts the U.S. Army's effort to get the facts about the Fallujah campaign into the public domain with an anonymous left-wing blogger's effort to undermine the Iraq war effort by posting gruesome photos which allegedly were taken in Fallujah. Guess who wins?

If you said, "Power Line's mistake is that they trust the military to give them actual, unbiased facts," then you're a winner! While I could get into another discussion about the Five O'Clock Follies, I'll instead opt for quoting some passages from a book I've been reading on and off lately, The Warfare State by Fred J. Cook, published in 1962. (All bolding is my doing.)

This sudden outburst of extremism that swept the nation and fastened with the virulence of the plague on the great munitions state of California had been made possible by one of the top-secret, virtually unknown decisions of the Eisenhower era. By the end of his eight years in office, Eisenhower had become genuinely disturbed with about "the military-industrial complex"; but, with the inconsistancy and confusion that marked so many of his official deeds, he seemed utterly to fail to realize what he himself has done to augment its power. In this category, no single act was ever more questionable than the secret directive Eisenhower's top-level National Security Council issued in 1958 authorizing the Military to propagandize the public. [...]

The results became swiftly evident in the next three years. Military officiers from the ranks of Lieutenant and Captain to General and Admiral, both active and retired, took to the public platform hand-in-hand with fanatic propagandists of the Radical Right and delivered themselves of rabble-rousing call to arms, of denunciations of the methods of diplomacy and peace, of tirades in which they called into doubt both the intelligence and the patriotism of their own civilian superiors in government.

Here are some of the typical utterances: [...]

Rear Admiral Chester Ward (USN, retired), former judge advocate general of the Navy, speaking at "Project Alert" in Los Angeles' Cocoanut Grove, topped Admiral Stump by accusing White House advisers of shifting national policy "from a priority on freedom to a priority on peace." Admiral Ward emphatically opposed this "priority on peace." He indicated that he did not favor preventive war, but if it were called a "pre-emptive strike," though the megatonnage would be the same, that would be all right with him. "I believe," he said, "that the side will win which uses the most effective weapons and uses them first."

So it went. At one Los Angeles "Project Alert" in 1961 Colonel Mitchell Paige, a retired Marine Medal of Honor winner, got so carried away that he told his audience Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren ought not to be just impeached; he should be hanged. This was too extreme even for the sponsers of the rally. Colonel Paige was cut off hastily, and the director of this particular anti-communism endeavor apologized for him. Later the Colonel was brought back and told his audience apologetically that the feeling about hanging sometimes "just comes over me."

It had better not "just come over" America.

Cook documented some fine examples of why the military should never be trusted to disseminate information. Given the mindset and inherent biases of the military, we shouldn't rely on them for any facts at all. Period. The fact that Power Line, who I consider to be a reflection of the right at large, relies on the military to provide them with the facts concerning a battle that they staged bothers me. The fact that Power Line lambastes the Washington Post with the implication that the are liberally biased just because they search for balance in their reporting goes further to irritate me, because this is an example of the right's mindset. How can we ever get through to people who uncritically accept whatever propaganda the government feeds them while dismissing all dissention as ridiculous?

[Crossposted to the PBA HQ.]