army recruiting

* arianna joins in, bashing the VF/Miller article: "And since Brenner is so intent on casting Judy as a journalistic superhero (even though no one bought her in that role last time around), she needs to put her up against a villain -- and casts the dastardly blogosphere in that part. She cluelessly treats bloggers as some kind of monolithic entity, "a vast amoeba," while totally missing the point of the blogosphere -- its relentlessness and its willingness to go where the establishment media won't."

* eric boehlert @ huffpo:

"It was Schumer, among others, according to the Journal, who "sparked" the "media firestorm."
I don't buy it, because Schumer's early port press conferences were not unlike the countless other Q&A's Democrats have held over the last six years; press conferences that raised serious questions about the policies and competency of the Bush White House, and press conferences that for the most part were completely ignored by Beltway media elites. The only, only, only reason the port story broke big was because Republicans turned on the White House. That's what made it newsworthy. Throughout the Bush presidency there's been a very simple formula for defining what's news -- if Republicans say it's news, than it is. Democrats are largely irrelevant."

* an interview with zarqawi's number two *cough*:

"An Interview with the Chief Aide of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Hafsa al-Ansari, by al-Watan al-Arabi (Part 1)... An interview with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s “chief aide” and supervisor of military operations... was recently posted to a password-protected al-Qaeda-affiliated forum. The interview touches upon a number of topics including the size and composition of the al-Qaeda organization in Iraq, its financial sources, kidnapping of hostages, targets, interpretations of the political issues and allegations concerning uprisings by Iraqis against the insurgency. In addition, al-Ansari also reveals information regarding Zarqawi’s injury and how he was saved by the use of chemical weapons."

yada yada

* speaking of propaganda:

"February was the ninth consecutive successful recruiting month for the active Army.... The active Army reported 6,114 accessions, 102 percent of its goal of 6,000.
The Army’s continued recruiting success this year is a change from fiscal 2005, when the active Army fell 8 percent short of its yearly goal...
Officials have credited this year’s success to a higher number of recruiters, various enlistment incentives and new marketing and advertising campaigns."

yada - note that they never pre-announce the quotas. by my rough count, they are about 10% behind where they were this time last year.