NBC Nightly News (10/7/11) marked the 10th anniversary of the Afghan War on October 7 with a segment that linked the war to the Occupy Wall Street protests. As anchor Brian Williams put it in the introduction:

Tonight protesters remain in the streets of a dozen U.S. cities, angry over what's happened to their lives and our country; and a big part of that, over these last 10 years, the two wars we've been fighting, starting 10 years ago today. This is the anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan, longer now than World War II and the Civil War combined.

That's pretty unusual. The report that followed was not.  Quoted in Jim Miklaszewski's report: Retired general Karl Eikenberry, retired general David Barno and retired general Barry McCaffrey (who some might recall for his role as part of Pentagon propaganda effort to feed talking points to TV pundits; he's also on the board of military companies that profit from government contracts).

Not to worry--also quoted in the piece was Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is not retired. Getting current and former military officials into a story counts is a kind of balance, right?

Tags: Barry McCaffrey, Brian Williams, Jim Miklaszewski, Leon Panetta

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Afghanistan, NBC, War/Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.