THE Generals HEART Rumsfeld: AUDIO

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/12/audio-military-analyst-to-rumsfeld-you-are-our-leader-had-oreilly-eating-out-of-his-hand/

Kurtz: The networks continue to ignore that New York Times story about TV’s military analysts getting briefings and talking points from the Pentagon as they defended the Iraq war effort.

We reported twice on this program a huge batch of documents and e-mails show how cozy that relationship was. But now comes an audiotape of it, 2006 meeting between more than a dozen analysts and Don Rumsfeld, in which some of the retired military officers are giving the secretary advice on selling the war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We would love for you to take the offensive and just go out there and just crush these people. You are the leader. You’re our guy. You go on O’Reilly, and you’ve got him eating out of your hand because you’re smart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Eating out of your hand. And these men were presenting themselves to television viewers as objective military analysts.