".. Now, we have Mullen, a political officer if there ever was one, carrying Ignatius around so as to "inform him..."

Lang on Mullen & Ignatius, at SST/ here

".... Traveling here with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I attended a shura hosted by Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar province....." David Ignatius

The rest of the editorial is marginally interesting. At this point the incompetence of the intelligence effort in Afghanistan no longer surprises.

You may remember that the Rumsfeld Pentagon had a highly developed PR and IO program that cultivated a number of groups of "opinion makers" so as to manage the "information battle" as they think of it. Journalists, retired military people, etc. Many millions of dollars were spent in contracts for "Information Operations" both external and implicitly internal. Eventually, the retired military briefings, meetings and distribution of talking points routine surfaced and a number of retired military people lost consultant contracts to the media. I was invited to one meeting in Rumsfeld's conference room. I asked questions and was not invited back. This was about a year after the invasion of Iraq. I had always wondered how some of the ex military I was on television with were so precisely informed. I found out at the meeting. They were briefed in detail regularly by the responsible senior officials including Rumsfeld himself. Interestingly, motives for the retired officers participating were not altogether mercenary. A lot of them believed it was their duty to fill the media with the unattributed assertions of the Defense Department and thus to participate in the war effort. A frightening thing. The armed forces are the most trusted institutions in the United States. To risk that for a momentary advantage and in service to the politics of the civilian side of the Pentagon was folly.

Now, we have Mullen, a political officer if there ever was one, carrying Ignatius around so as to "inform him." How many others are so "informed?."

Ignatius is usually the property of the CIA's information program. He carries their water.

I guess he is "branching out." pl