This is what happened to our national Press Corps

Glenn Greenwald interview Helen Thomas to find out how she felt about the relationship between the Press and the President. Here is a very revealing part of an excellent interview:

GG: You have covered every President since John Kennedy. I wanted to ask if you could identify how the White House press corps has changed over time, if it has, and what differences are there in terms of how journalists cover presidents?

HT: Well, that's a big order. But I do think that in the good olden days, reporters were really straight reporters. I worked for a wire service, UPI, for 57 years, and I covered the White House for UPI from the 70s onto Bush, and then became a columnist. So I certainly know both sides.

As a wire service reporter, I played it straight, with the facts, which is absolutely required of a wire service reporter. But that doesn't mean I bowed out of the human race. I permitted myself to think, to care, to believe, but it didn't get in my copy.

I did think that tough questions were always very important. With Kennedy, we knew he enjoyed the banter with the press, and he had the first live televised news conferences. And it made a big difference in terms of really capturing the imagination of the public. It was the first time they really saw reporters in action, they saw a witty president that was able to dodge questions as deftly as anyone, and he had great eloquence. That was the first time the American people really became interested in presidential news conferences.

And then Johnson had a love-hate relationship with the press. He couldn't live without us, and yet at the same time, he thought we were hurting him every day. The words "credibility gap" were created in that era.

With Nixon, that is when news management and manipulation really began. Now, every president wants to put his best foot forward, and always be able to manage and manipulate news coverage.

All presidential candidates, especially, vow to run an open administration. But they step foot in the Oval Office and the Iron Curtain slams down. Suddenly, all information that I think belongs in the public domain becomes their private preserve.

The manipulation of the press has become greater and greater. This is the most secretive administration I have ever covered. And they're all secretive.

GG: Has the press corps that covers the White House played a role in why the White House is so manipulative and why they're able to get away with such secrecy?

HT: Very much so. Reporters, after Watergate, realized that we had let so much go by us. They got much tougher when President Ford took over. It wasn't animosity. It was anger that we hadn't asked the right questions. And the press became tougher.

But they really went soft after 9/11. Reporters, I'm assuming, did not want to be called unpatriotic and un-American when we were in a national crisis.

And I don't think the corporate heads exactly wanted anyone to rock the boat at that time.

But I kept asking questions about the validity of going to war against a country that had done nothing to us.

Intimidation works on the Press Corps, too. There are a few exceptions, though. Helen Thomas is one, and the McClatchy News Service is another.

Go look at the entire interview. It is very good.

McKlatchy reports that the "Surge" is failing.

McKlatchy News presents an analysis of the last, final and most significant effort to "win" the Iraq War. To no one's surprise, the same old problems that were there before the "Surge" remain.

• Violence is on the rise,
  
• Iraqi troops aren't showing up to secure neighborhoods,
  
• U.S. troops are having to revisit neighborhoods they'd already cleared, and
  
• Iraq's politicians haven't met any of their benchmarks.

Surprise, surprise...

The current surge, which President Bush announced on Jan. 10, was to be different. U.S. forces in Baghdad were to increase by at least 17,000, bringing the total U.S. force in Baghdad to more than 30,000. The troops were to work alongside 30,000 Iraqi army and national police forces and 21,000 policemen to secure neighborhoods. U.S. forces would be stationed in neighborhoods in newly built mini-bases and patrol with their Iraqi counterparts.
That hasn't happened as rapidly as U.S. commanders had hoped. In an assessment completed at the end of May, one U.S. division found that U.S. and Iraqi forces control only 146 of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods. [Snip]

Last October, ... Casey [Then U.S. military ground commander in Iraq] said then that the Iraqi forces were improving and that the plan was having a "dampening effect" on sectarian violence, in spite of statistics that suggested otherwise.

"We are about 75 percent of the way through a three-step process in building those forces," Casey said of the Iraqi army. "Their leaders are feeling more responsible for the security of Iraq, and they want to take the reins, and I think we need to do that."

Four days later, the U.S. announced the end of its security plan, conceding that violence had reached unprecedented levels.

McKlatchy Newspapers also points out [elsewhere] that the Secretary of Defense will not let the McKlatchy reporters on the Press plane with the rest of the Press Corps.

With honest reporting going on by McKlatchy reporters, is that any surprise that the DoD and Bob Gates don't want them around in this, the final collapse of the failed and unnecessary war in Iraq? Their motivation is clear. The real question is what the rest of the Press Corps is suppressing in order to get those free plane trips? Are they getting anything else for not doing their jobs? Because whatever their price has been, the U.S. Press Corps has sold out and done so way too cheaply.

But why should that matter to TV, the New York Times and the Washington Post? They still have Paris Hilton to report on, don't they? I'm sure Katie Couric is pleased at the exchange. Of course the real journalists who originally had souls and have had to give them up may feel the loss a bit more than the CBS blond bimbo does.

We need to all applaud the American military people who, in spite of the failed political and careerist leadership both inside the military and from the American politicians go forward day in and day out to risk their lives (and often lose them) to do the useless jobs they have been assigned to do. But more than applaud, the Veteran's Administration needs to be properly funded and restructured so that it gives back a little for the sacrifices so many have made in this stupid Republican War.
Oh, wait. that would require leadership in the military and in the White House, wouldn't it? I guess sacking Don Rumsfeld and Peter Pace is a start, but it is damned sure too little and too late.