In early 2008 a
New York Times investigative report identified McInerney as one of several dozen retired military officers—many of whom served as military analysts for various media outlets—who had received briefings by the Bush administration as part of a controversial and hitherto unknown Pentagon program to put positive spin on U.S. policies in the "war on terror."
[11] According to the
Times, the Pentagon program selected the officers, who also included
Barry McCaffrey and
Paul Vallely, because as retired military personnel they "often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration's neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war."
[12] The Pentagon program, which began in 2002, ran until it was suspended in late April 2008, after the
Times investigation broke.
[13] Fox continued to use McInerney as an on-air analyst after the story's publication.
Since the election of President Barack Obama, McInerney has frequently lambasted the administration for its purported weakness on defense. In a July 2009 op-ed for Fox News, for example, McInerney criticized efforts to ax the controversial F-22 fighter jet program, described by many experts, including the secretary of defense, as too costly and serving no strategic purpose. McInerney opined to the contrary, arguing that the "nation can not afford [the] risk" of losing the F-22, which he described as the "the most capable fighter ever produced."
[23]
In a September 2009 op-ed for the right-wing media group Stand Up America, McInerney and coauthor Paul Vallely argued that Obama and his advisers had refused to acknowledge that "we are in a Global War Against Radical Islam (GWARI)."
[24] Alluding to misleading historical parallels often made by neoconservative ideologues, the authors wrote that "radical Islam" is "ideology that is as evil as Nazism, Fascism and Communism." To win this "war," they argued, the Obama administration must stop "appeasing" "Moderate Islam" and instead "hold them accountable for Radical Islam's conduct. … We will not defeat Radical Islam until Moderate Islam plays the key role in defeating this hideous evil ideology that bears no resemblance to a religion." McInerney and Vallely also worried that President Obama would not heed the recommendations of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the head of NATO forces in Afghanistan, to increase troops levels in Afghanistan, which they argued could lead to defeat.
[25]
In his appearances on Fox and in his writings for conservative outlets, McInerney has voiced extremely hawkish—and sometimes wildly conspiratorial—positions regarding America's purported enemies, including Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. In a February 2006 television interview with Bill O'Reilly, McInerney claimed—without evidence—that Russia helped Saddam Hussein hide weapons of mass destruction in Syria.
[26]
McInerney has also peddled the bizarre and thinly sourced theory, popularized by
Frank Gaffney and other Islamophobic conspiracy theorists, that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government in an effort to impose
sharia law on the United States. In a January 2014 talk radio interview, McInerney declared, "We've got Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. government today." Pressed to elaborate on the allegation, McInerney added, "I haven't got their names exactly but there's a list of them, at least 10 or 15 of them in the U.S. government." After echoing a thoroughly discredited charge against longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin—insisting that "her parents are Muslim Brotherhood and "her intuitions are in that direction"—McInerney encouraged his hosts to consult Gaffney or likeminded conspiracy theorist
Clare Lopez for further details.
[9]
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/McInerney_Thomas