An active-duty major writes Tom Ricks (via) and notes just how wrong McCain and others were about DADT:
At what point in time should journalists, bloggers, etc … hold those who made wildly inaccurate predications on the lifting of the ban accountable? All the retired generals and officers (LTG Mixon, Merrill A. McPeak and Col. Dave Bedey for example) who predicted that soldiers would leave the military by the thousands, or John McCain and other politicians describing how it would affect us as a fighting force? At some point I feel that the public should be reminded of their predictions so the next time they make predictions that are way off the mark, fewer people will give them credence.
People do call out McCain and others all the time, but it’s in specific blog posts or articles. There’s no central repository of the ridiculous predictions that he and others have made about DADT and a host of other issues, so lazy journalists with no memory have to do some work to point out that McCain and others have been consistently wrong throughout their careers.
Perhaps Media Matters or a similar group could start an accountability wiki that focuses on the wrongness of establishment types. Take the top 20 guests from Sunday morning shows over the past ten years, pick a dozen or so issues, and tell us how many they got right. I’m sure that project would get some traction, and maybe even some of the establishment media would start using it.