It’s All A Matter Of Perspective

Yesterday’s Washington Examiner posted a short article about the reaction of the military to the amount of information that has been released about the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

The article reports:

When they published their revealing book last August about the nation’s fight against terrorism, the authors, two New York Times national security reporters, immediately felt heat from the Pentagon for dishing too much operational info about the killing of Osama bin Laden.

“I was stopped by a very senior officer in the special operations community who basically wanted to rip my lungs out,” said Thom Shanker, who co-authored “Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda,” with Eric Schmitt.

I totally understand the senior officer’s feelings. Details of a military operation or campaign should not come out until the campaign or operation is over. Last time I checked, we were still fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, the information in the book was released by the White House–it wasn’t even leaked–it was simply released.

The article further states:

 

Shanker, an acclaimed Pentagon reporter and author, said he had a little advice for the unidentified officer: If you make general, “this is part of your new world.”

Somewhere along the line we have misplaced our priorities. I can’t imagine the above statement being made during World War II. Mr. Schmitt, co-author of the book, points out that the New York Times has a ‘pretty good’ record of holding stories when asked to. I’m sorry; I totally disagree with that statement. The New York Times broke the story on how we were tracking terrorist money and took that weapon away from those who are fighting the war on terror. They have broken other stories which had impeded our efforts to find and deal with terrorists. Sometimes, the press gets a little over-impressed with what itself and does not consider the consequences of its actions.

 

 


 

Enhanced by Zemanta