Way to go, Stars and Stripes:

Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

How the policy works:

One reporter on the staff of one of America’s pre-eminent newspapers is rated in a Pentagon report as “neutral to positive” in his coverage of the U.S. military. Any negative stories he writes “could possibly be neutralized” by feeding him mitigating quotes from military officials.

Another reporter, from a TV station, provides coverage from a “subjective angle,” according to his Pentagon profile. Steering him toward covering “the positive work of a successful operation” could “result in favorable coverage.”

Full story:

Files prove Pentagon is profiling reporters | Stars and Stripes.

(h/t @jayrosen_nyu)

Last night, Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) tried to give a little hope to some of her fellow Sunflower State Republicans. Some white hope, that is.

Here’s a video from the Topeka Capital Journal. From the paper’s story:

Jenkins offered encouragement to conservatives at a town hall forum that the Republican Party would embrace a “great white hope” capable of thwarting the political agenda endorsed by Democrats who control Congress and President Barack Obama.

A spokeswoman for Jenkins later called the paper to “apologize for her word choice and to emphasize she had no intention of expressing herself in an offensive manner.” More from spokeswoman Mary Geiger:

“There may be some misunderstanding there when she talked about the great white hope,” Geiger said. “What she meant by it is they have a bright future. They’re bright lights within the party.”

Misunderstanding? Sure — sort of like the misunderstanding about the motivation of the birthers (turns out they’re just sticklers for properly-filed paperwork).

In fact, Jenkins may have been the one who was confused. More from the Rep’s spokeswoman:

Geiger said she had never previously heard Jenkins use the phrase “great white hope” in a political speech or private conversation.

So the excuse for saying “we need a great white hope” in regards to challenging Obama is “it just popped into her head”? I think that might be worse than the quote.

Read the full story:

Jenkins’ remark raises eyebrows | CJOnline.com.

The Washington Independent has posted the entire ‘04 CIA report destined to make news for the next several days.

Check out the heavily-redacted story of America and torture in all its international reputation-destroying glory:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19048367/v1

Read the WashIndy’s full coverage:

The Washington Independent » The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report on Torture.

Just in time for the final round of health care town halls, a MO Hummer dealership has begun offering the ultimate accessory kit for new buyers: assault weapons. Buyers can now pick up guns, ammo and all the fixins’ along with their Lux Series Equipment Group.

From an interview with Chesterfield, MO Hummer dealer Jim Lynch (from a story broadcast on St. Louis CBS affiliate KSDK):

“Well a lot of our Hummer owners were gun owners, already,” said Lynch. “So we had a very favorable response. Didn’t have enough business to keep this big, beautiful building going with the decline, so we decided we needed to do something else. And the guns fit in with our customer base… a lot of sportsman, a lot of outdoorsmen, and they’ve loved it.”

I wonder if other dealers will start adding these “lifestyle accessories” to their showrooms. Who wouldn’t want a “BMW Golf Shirt Collar-Popper” or a “Subaru Overly Fawned-Over Purebred Dog”?

Read the full story of the Chesterfield Hummer dealership promotion here:

Hummer dealership begins selling guns/ammo | ksdk.com | St. Louis, MO.

A startling and absolutely riveting story out of Columbus, GA yesterday: William Calley, the Army lieutenant imprisoned for the 1968 My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, faced an audience of his fellow Americans and forthrightly apologized for his role in one of the darkest moments of recent U.S. history.

From the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer:

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

In the four decades since the mass killings, Calley hasn’t spoken publicly about what happened — save for Calley’s 1971 court martial where he was convicted of 22 counts of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison. (He only served four and half months of that sentence, though, thanks to an early release by President Richard Nixon and a later sentence adjustment.)

Calley told the same story last week that he did back in ‘71: that he was acting on orders from above and (total shocker) faulty intelligence. More from the Columbus paper’s account:

Calley explained he had been ordered to take out My Lai, adding that he had intelligence that the village was fortified and would be “hot” when he went in. He also said the area was submitted to an artillery barrage and helicopter fire before his troops went in. It turned out that it was not hot and there was no armed resistance. But he had been told, he said, that if he left anyone behind, his troops could be trapped and caught in a crossfire.

This is all fascinating enough — especially for Seymour Hersh fanboys like me — but what’s really amazing about the newspaper account of the  meeting is the scene itself. A sample of the questions from the audience and Calley’s responses:

• Asked about American casualties, Calley said there were two injuries, but neither was the result of enemy fire, adding, “They didn’t have time.”

• One person asked about the story of a helicopter coming into My Lai during the massacre and its pilot threatening to open fire if the killing of civilians didn’t stop. Calley said the pilot asked if he could take children out of the area and he relayed that request to his captain, who said the pilot could.

• When asked if obeying an unlawful order was not itself an unlawful act, [Calley] said, “I believe that is true. If you are asking why I did not stand up to them when I was given the orders, I will have to say that I was a second lieutenant getting orders from my commander and I followed them — foolishly, I guess.” Calley then said that was not an excuse; it was just what happened.

These are regular, everyday folks confronting one of their fellow citizens about the questions they (and the rest of us) have had about My Lai since the first time we heard about it. Even decades removed from the story as I was when I first heard it as a high school student, My Lai is one of those events that make any of us desperate to know why and how something so objectively opposed to our professed values could have occurred under our flag.  After all, a Kiwanis Club meeting isn’t exactly Drinking Liberally, but the Columbus members still asked Calley the hard questions that help us all understand and learn from our history.

And he answered them, fully and honestly.

A call for a truth commission to uncover, discuss and process the mistakes made during the so-called War On Terror was quickly raised in the weeks after Obama’s inauguration brought the WOT as we knew it to an end. But, just as quickly, the idea was scrapped due to (here comes shocker number two) partisan rancor in Washington. The idea was a simple one, and one we all know to be true: sunshine cleans everything. The truth commission plan wasn’t about blame, prosecutions or aquittal. It was about letting American citizens confront the people that tortured, illegally spied, lied and of course killed on our behalf in the years after 9/11. We all know those people thought they doing their jobs when they did what they did. What we need to know is why they thought that — and how that idea worked its way through our entire government. That way, maybe, we can keep it from happening again.

Look again at Calley’s version of events — does it seem the least bit implausible in the wake of Weapons Of Mass Destruction and politically-motivated terror alerts? Calley didn’t have to go before those Kiwanis members and take their questions. But when he did — without fear of persecution or prosecution — he gave us insights into the last failed American war that can help us understand the current one.

Imagine what would happen if Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet, Rice and Bush all took their turn before the Columbus, GA Kiwanis Club. We’d have the tools to actually learn and grown from our recent past. And they would have the catharsis of telling their fellow Americans about the (sometimes reasonable) fear and guesswork that drove them after the towers fell. Plus — if the Columbus chapter is anything like the Lebanon, TN Kiwanis Club I used to cover as a reporter — they’d get a three-course free lunch to boot. Now that’s what I call win-win.