Fuck the US media.

A rando military guy was on CNN and I didn't know who he was so I scanned his Wikipedia for about 60 seconds.

Mark Kimmitt

Controversy

In the aftermath of the Mukaradeeb wedding party massacre [in 2004], Kimmitt claimed, "There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration. There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

However video footage obtained by the Associated Press seems to contradict this view. The video shows a series of scenes of a wedding celebration, and footage from the following day showing fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around a destroyed tent.

[...]

Mark Traecey Patrick Kimmitt (born 21 June 1954) is the former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, serving under George W. Bush from August 2008 to January 2009; he was the 16th person to hold the post. Prior to joining the State Department, he was a brigadier general in the United States Army, and served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East.

Kimmitt has also served as deputy director for strategy and plans for the United States Central Command, and deputy director for operations/chief military spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, and served at NATO's SHAPE headquarters in Belgium.

Remember message force multipliers? I don't know if he was one officially but I assume he was.

Pentagon military analyst program

The Pentagon military analyst program was a propaganda campaign of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) that was launched in early 2002 by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke. The goal of the operation is "to spread the administration's talking points on Iraq by briefing retired commanders for network and cable television appearances," where they have been presented as independent analysts.

A Pentagon spokesman said the Pentagon's intent is to keep the American people informed about the so-called War on Terrorism by providing prominent military analysts with factual information and frequent, direct access to key military officials. The Times article suggests that the analysts had undisclosed financial conflicts of interest and were given special access as a reward for promoting the administration's point of view. On 28 April 2008, the Pentagon ended the operation. A DoD Inspector General investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of the DoD.

[...]

Details of the operation were first revealed in a lengthy New York Times exposé written by David Barstow and published in April 2008. Within the documents the analysts were referred to as message force multipliers (q.v. force multiplication).