Austin Bay : "meant to link to this Wall St Journal essay yesterday– a very different take on the military “story scandal” in Iraq. The author makes an interesting point about military intel units and “information operations” (propaganda in this case). I think paying papers to take stories is absurd, unless the papers run it as advertising. Public relations is something else. Every organization engages in PR– and calling attention to stories (then letting journalists decide if they want to cover it) is part of the PR business."

The WSJ author thinks military intel is not fully competent; Austin thinks he's 40 years out of date.

I, too, think "paying" papers to take stories is bad -- but the military should have it's own news website, and offer MilNews in a print format, too.