MILNET:

MILNET Brief
Sources and Methodology

Sources

MILNET's editorial staff has worked for sometime on collecting information from various sources and will use both opinion and factual briefs from leading analysts, firms, and national/political services. For instance, the U.S. Congressional Reporting Service regularly researches area of interest to lawmakers using highly respected analysts and occasionally include pre-release information for America's intelligence agencies. The data is, naturally colored by political interests of the nation and of Congress, however there is concerted effort by the analysts to present a balanced picture of the topic area.

We take great efforts to find information from authoritative sources. For instance, MILNET is one of the nations leading mirror sites for important white papers and official government reports, and include papers produced by U.S. military thinkers and movers as they go through the various services War Colleges (i.e. the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks Strategic Studies Institute or the Air Forces War College).

Another well used sources for MILNET analysis are the works from professional analysts such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies or the Council on Foreign Relations. These professionals also carry their own political bias, however as with the CRS, their intent is to inform the public with factual information and serious attempts at and an excellent track record of reducing that inborn bias prompts us to use their analysis as a basis for our own.

Finally, to provide multiple sources for much of our information, we will use periodicals and mainstream media to establish time frames and the major players in pending crisis areas. We do not, however rely on any single source and rarely base our analysis on simply the media whether it be one outlet or another.

Our friend Alan Simpson, for instance, will always tend to fall on the side of "If the Journalist says it, then it must be true." We on the other hand, not being professional journalists, will fall on the side of "How reliable is that journalist and his or her sources?" We constantly remind ourselves of Pierre Salinger or Dan Rather and tend to treat the mainstream media as note takers whom we carefully vett before using their material.

Methodology

As we mentioned before we go to great lengths to confirm information from multiple sources. We may not always list all sources, opting instead to bring you the source we find most credible, succinct, and informative. However, behind the scenes we are pouring over multiple sources (at last three, but usually more). In terms of facts and figures, we will usually find that the numbers vary. Therefore we stick with one source, but use our multiple sources to provide you with a range of possible values if the numbers disagree considerably.

Understand that MILNET has no access, nor wishes to access Classified information. Thus we are as susceptible to disinformation as anyone operating in the public view. We hope that by using a broad spectrum of multiple sources, we can eliminate some of that disinformation.

You will find tables used extensively in our reports. The intent of our tables is to quickly summarize the information for our visitors, and they also force us to write succinctly. These tables should make it easier to find the sub-topic of interest to our visitors, as well as logically categorize these sub-topics for a logical read.

Where we believe it necessary, we will provide footnotes and superscripted numbers to those footnotes. This may be done simply to inform the reader the primary source used for a particular piece of data or opinion, or it may be used to illustrate a public source of what might have been classified information at one time -- MILNET always wishes to protect ourselves and our visitors from accusations of releasing sensitive information. We do not use one of the academically acceptable forms of footnoting, rather combing several in order to make our footnoting straight-forward and easy to follow. If you "sniff" at our "poor" literary usage, tough. The information and readability is far more important than the academic form.

And finally a decade of service to the subject matter and almost as long to the Internet has provided us with a stable of in-service or retired military, intelligence or political operatives around the world. From time to time we will ask these contacts for their professional opinions. While they usually wish to remain anonymous, their "In the Know" expertise is invaluable in providing real world balance to "the spin" that might be found elsewhere.

From time to time, we may insert the following headings. The chart below will help you understand EXACTLY what is going on -- we are extremely sensitive to the possibility of our own bias and thus offer these "headlines" to help you understand the pedigree of the information laid before you.

Term	Meaning
ANALYSIS	An analysis of the facts present, the "expert" or "educated" opinion of the authors, attempting to ignore any personal bias. All analysts bring a certain amount of bias to their work, however, in sections marked ANALYSIS, the authors proofread to eliminate what could easily be bias rather than logical conclusions of the facts involved.
BRIEFING	Substantial factual content, authors do their best to ensure removal of bias, speculation or unconfirmed facts. Typically MILNET requires more than one source and usually three. This also includes original sources -- i.e. four newspaper deriving their stories from the same A.P. story is considered a single source.
OPINION	An opinionated response which analyzes the information based upon life experience and may incorporate the author's pesronal bias on political issues. OPINION will allow personal bias to color judgements and conclusions where logical conclusions may not be clearly drawn or possible to discern.
SPECULATION	MILNET's authors may, from time-to-time, speculate as to the underlying causes, hidden facts, or rationale behind a particular issue or news story. While speculation is usually wrong and may be dangerous, it helps the reader understand the origin of fears or concerns of people involved in and around a particular issue or event. This speculation may also make it possible to point to answers to solving the human problems associated with certain problems -- for instance, speculating on why someone reacts violently to a suggestion might indicate how communication can be used to prevent that occurance again, or perhaps prevent it from occuring at all by taking care of the problem up front.