The TSA outing was nothing compared to what the DOD did

Michelle Malkin has a post about an ABC news article which reveals the existence of a TSA operations center. She makes the point that it is probably not a good idea to be putting this stuff out to the public. I concur. I called attention to this problem some months ago in a similar situation.

Ap reporter Charles Hanley was given inside access to a special Air Force operations center:

Iraq war is replicated at secret center

By Charles J. Hanley
AP Special Correspondent
Houston Chronicle
June 1, 2007

A U.S. AIR BASE, Southwest Asia — "We have a downed helo." The words, in bright type, riveted Ken Edwards to one of his five computer screens.

From his raised platform — a "crow's nest" at the heart of a cavernous operations room known as the "Kay-Ock" — the Air Force lieutenant colonel glanced up at an electronic wall display. The towering map was alive with ghostly blue figures flitting through its skies, splotches of "friendly" troops spread blue among its towns, and now an urgent yellow rectangle, tagged "TIC," troops in contact.

The ever-changing picture was the war in Iraq — digitized. The TIC marked the site of a U.S. helicopter crash north of Baghdad on Monday. The nervous blue figures were aircraft rushing to the spot.

It's the American way of war, 21st-century style: A life-or-death drama playing out among the palms and heat of the Iraqi countryside was being mirrored in the air-conditioned calm of this secretive military nerve center 800 miles away. By day's end — Memorial Day 2007, when President Bush loomed large on another giant screen here eulogizing America's war dead — 10 more would join what he called a "new generation of heroes."

Inside the CAOC — the Combined Air and Space Operations Center — they weren't listening to Bush's address. The dozens of Air Force officers were too busy at their keyboards orchestrating hundreds of flights over Iraq and Afghanistan — by strike aircraft, transports and tankers, surveillance planes and now a rescue mission.

So here's what happens next, Hanley takes the information he got from the secret ops center and pumps out this piece of crap:

U.S. air power dropping bombs on Iraq at twice last year's rate

By: CHARLES J. HANLEY - Associated Press

BAGHDAD -- Four years into the war that opened with "shock and awe," U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago.
snip/

At the same time, the number of civilian Iraqi casualties from U.S. airstrikes appears to have risen sharply, according to Iraq Body Count, a London-based, anti-war research group that maintains a database compiling news media reports on Iraqi war deaths.

The rate of such reported civilian deaths appeared to climb steadily through 2006, the group reports, averaging just a few a month in early 2006, hitting some 40 a month by year's end, and averaging more than 50 a month so far this year.

Those are maximum tolls based on news reports, and they count those killed by Army helicopter fire as well as by warplanes, Iraq Body Count's John Sloboda said. The count is regarded as conservative, since it doesn't include deaths missed by the international media.

The U.S. military itself says it doesn't track civilian casualties.

"The reality of civilian deaths is a year-on-year increase," said Sloboda, a psychology professor at Britain's Keele University. "This particular part of it -- airstrikes -- have rocketed up more than any other."

SO what did DOD get for giving Hanley this access to its secret center? A face full of anti-war propaganda. The website Hanley quotes from, as he says is anti-war. If you visit the website, it has for a background the image of US planes carpet bombing. I really place no faith in an organization that is so sensationalist in its anti- Americanism. However, Hanley with his special access found out air support was increasing, thus he reckons, civilian casualties increased and with the help of leftest junk websites, presto bango - a story is born.

And that's how the driveby media operates.

But how could the DOD know this was going to happen?

Because he got a Pulitzer for reporting that American military officers ordered our forces to fire indiscriminately on civilians during the Korean War. A subsequent joint governmental investigation, and a private researcher who reinterviewed the supposed witnesses all discredited this after Hanley got his honor.

The DOD should have known that this reporter who made his name writing false reports about US forces  indiscriminately killing civilians would take his backstage pass and do it again.

Some civilian and military leaders in our government need to stop showing off their toys and get it straight that any close relationship to the media is just going to blow up in their faces.

Comments

[Mark Eichenlaub]

Ray,
I don't know if I've told you or not but Hanley is the guy I've talked to repeatedly about Iraq issues on the phone and by email.

He not only is quite open that he "knows" Bush lied but is under the impression that everyone "knows" it and there is nothing partisan or controversial about reporting it. He also "knows" there were "no WMD" in Iraq despite me showing him examples of old WMD being found in Iraq and asking him to explain what happened to all of the WMD the UN documented in the 90's that hasn't been accounted for. He was quite open with his hatred for Bush and the Iraq war and is probably to the left of the Democrats. Of course his superiors at the AP expressed no qualms with his reporting when I contacted them.