Back during the unpopular Vietnam war, the Pentagon ran 10-day junkets to the war zone to persuade news reporters as well as some public officials that the war was going well. Michigan’s Gov. George Romney ruined his chances for the Republican presidential nomination when he explained his initial support for that war by admitting that he had been “brainwashed.”

The unpopular war in Iraq poses a similar challenge, but the Pentagon’s response this time is different. A new and improved public relations offensive, described in the April 20 New York Times, uses several dozen retired military officers who now serve as on-air consultants to television news programs.

The Times reported that the Pentagon has mobilized, briefed and monitored the group, largely generals and colonels, to offset criticism by other generals, to support the invasion of Iraq, to describe Guantanamo as a humanitarian detention center, and to persuade the public that the Iraq war is going well and headed toward an American victory. After official briefings and special tours, the consultants usually have delivered optimistic reports and described critical generals as a tiny minority.

That much was no secret. But The Times went further. It sued the Defense Department to obtain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records of private briefings and trips to Guantanamo and Iraq, as well as thousands of “talking points” provided to the consultants.

The documents showed that the Pentagon’s “Key Influencer Engagement Strategy” focused on identifying the unpopular war with the more persuasive “global war on terror” and “reducing our reliance on mass communications.” The Pentagon called the military analysts “message force multipliers” and “surrogates” who would deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

The Times also traced connections between many of the analysts with groups and corporations under contract with the Pentagon. This potential conflict of interest sometimes has led analysts to keep any criticisms of their own to themselves.

Interviewing many of the military analysts, The Times found mixed views. For example, it quotes retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on a trip to Iraq, as saying, “I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south.” But on his return, he told Fox News viewers, “You can’t believe the progress” and predicted that the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers within months.”

No one should question the patriotism and sincerity of the retired officers, and not all of them are rubber stamps for the Pentagon’s talking points. But it helps in understanding the war to know more about the bemedaled authority figures who may have a hidden agenda.