"Daddy" wants an obedient press
'Leaky' Pete Hegseth spent the morning attacking the media after confirming their reporting was true
How dare you report the truth!
I didn’t watch the Pete Hegseth hangover press conference this morning. I knew before he ever stepped to the podium that he would attack the press, say the troops were heroes, and lie about the success of the Iran nuclear facility strikes.
I caught the clips aferwards though.
I was right.
He spent the better part of the entire “press conference” raging at the media. The fool even attacked his former colleague Jennifer Griffin after she asked if they were sure the nuclear material was all destryed saying she wasn’t cheering the pilots enough or reporting about the challenges of the mission. To her credit, she rebuked him and said she had done just that.
The fact is that Jen Griffin is one of the most respected Pentagon Press Corps members and has been for over two decades. She works for Fox but she is a straight news reporter. Even the anchors know not to try and drag her into their chickenshit.
When she appears it’s straight facts and she can see through bullshit like few others left from the Global War on Terror in that building. She is the real deal and would never even think of doing anything that doesn’t give proper credit to our service members or call strikes and balls.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be
I was an Army spokesman for the latter part of my 22-year career. I came into public affairs very late in my career. I had been an aviator and operations officer for 17 years when then Major General Petraeus selected me to become the spokesman for the 101st Airborne upon our return from the first phase of Iraqi Freedom and attend the PAO qualification course. I was literally promoted to Lt. Colonel while I was at the school house.
I returned to Fort Campbell and he had already headed to Iraq to command the Multi-National Security Transition Command. I would eventually join him there in the spring of 2005 on my second tour of Iraq and third combat rotation. I was still pretty fresh from the school house where we were taught everything from how to report military information professionally, accurately, and quickly to strictly ethics rules.
Another aspect of it was an understanding that the media is our means to communicate with the American people. A mom in Philadelphia can’t show up at the Pentagon and ask the Chief of Staff of the Army about her son’s barracks at Fort Carson, but a journalist from Army Times can.
I saw that as my duty.
Literally the mission of Public Affairs was to inform the American people of the activities of their military. Period.
It’s not to make the President look good for his polls. It’s not to lie so that the current Administration doesn’t look embarrassed. Give them the information. Sometimes that information was bad news like the death of a soldier, maybe it was embarrassing like when we were missing weapons given to our allies, or maybe it was good news about a mission.
They taught us at the school to rate a news story as ‘positive, negative, or neutral’ reporting. I always found it strange. A good New York Times story will be all of those things over the course of 20 paragraphs. As soon as I arrived at Camp Phoenix in Baghdad, then Lt. General Petraeus told me he didnt want to hear that. He wanted to know if a news story was ‘accurate, inaccurate, or false.’
What mattered to him, and me, was that the media was getting the story right more than positive or negative. His view was if a story is accurate and ‘negative’ (missing weapons) well then they did their job and held us accountable. If it was inaccurate we should reach out with the facts and work with them to get it right. If it was false we would call for a retraction or issue a press release with the facts.
That last one only happened twice in my entire time as a military spokesman. Over and over I found the military and Pentagon press corps would work tirelessly to get a story right. Good or bad.
Good news isn’t always good
I push for accuracy over cheerleading for a reason. A “good news” story isn’t always good news for the military in the long run. For example, let’s say our friends at Fox News triumphantly report how we raided a village and killed “50 terrorists who were plotting attacks on U.S. forces.” That would be a huge headline at home. The commander of the unit would be a hero.
Medals for everyone.
Then we find out a week later those “terrorists” were actually a tribal council trying to work out a deal for farming in the area and we had acted on a tip from a jealous rival sheik. He told the eager new commander of the region who wanted to prove he was all business just a week after taking over.
He jumped. He announced it. He had a medal ceremony.
Then the intel folks go in and find out the truth. We have pissed off an entire region of our sector. They are going to arm themselves and fight back.
But, hey, it was a good news story that wasn’t accurate. Will Fox News pay the price for that false story…or the Army?
So, where Pete Hegseth is saying that leak of the initial DIA intel report that accurately said we may have only set back the Iranian nuclear program a rew months is an attack on the troops is ridiculous.
Sidenote, I used to be a combat helicopter pilot and know literally a metric ton of pilots of fighters, bombers, and more. Accurate Battle Damage Assessment does not “hurt their feelings.” They aren’t weak little snowflakes like Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump.
The truth is more important because it will come out eventually.
Just now European allies are reporting that the program was not “obliterated” at all. This isn’t an attack on the pilots. They did their jobs. (hint…see the fucking holes?) It is actually bad for Trump because he is the idiot that told them over and over we were coming.
“Everyone should leave Tehran!”
I am glad that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Caine tried to stick to the apolitical script and report the issues and updates. Pete Hegseth showed how completely over his head, malevolent, and just incompetent he truly is.
Tell the truth. That’s what our service members deserve and need. “Obliterated” isn’t a military measurement term. They all know that. They did their jobs.
Do yours, you giant asshole.
It would seem to me that military pilots could do their jobs perfectly and exactly as planned and, due to poor planning from senior officers, or insufficient intelligence about the targets, the result might not be as spectacular as hoped. It's not a criticism of the skill or bravery of the crews to say that the end result was a partial, rather than total, victory.
The Iranians allowed them to do their jobs. Big difference.
Iran can now pursue a policy of nuclear "ambiguity", a la Israel, with enough fissile material for thirty weapons due to Netanhayu and Trump's bungling.