Did you read today's New York Times?

The front-page story about the retired-military "defense experts" who all turned out to be wired in to the Bush DOD (and this was during the run-up to the war and then during Bremer's tour as head of the Provisional Authority) will give all the networks, Fox particularly, much to worry and apologize about in the coming week.

I expect by tomorrow we'll also know how many of those ex-generals have worked for the various campaigns as defense issues consultants. This could be a tough one to duck, as the Pennsylvania primary is in two days.

But it's not just a tough time for the candidates -- the news divisions of all the networks employed expert help that contradicted the work their own reporters were doing in the field (to be brief, the reporters saw we were losing and the military jocks bought the line that we were winning), had unrevealed (but pretty clear if you looked for them) ties to the players in the story they were supposedly covering as quasi-journalists, and best of all, lots of them were a,so doing BUSINESS in Iraq as defense contractors and consultants for some really big dough.

This means the networks were all used as conduits by the Bushies (Rumsfeld in particular) and now have to explain how they were either suckered into being patsies in a huge swindle OR admit that they were knowing participants. In either case, there isn't a network news department that has half the credibility of your average politician this year. They owe us a massive apology and a promise that they'll do better next time. Berlusconi doesn't have that kind of press control, and he OWNS the Italian media.