Media Whores' BLATANT Hypocrisy: Lieberman primary challenger "a PARTISAN liberal!", Lincoln Chaffee's Right-Wing challenge "NO COMMENT..."

This is a masterpiece editorial by Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist and NY Times editorial writer. In one understated editorial, it does at least 3 things:

#1. Documents that the US nightmare quagmire in Iraq is the Frankenstein creation, first and foremost, of Secretary of War (Defense) Donald Rumsfeld. But anyone who heard Rumsfeld declare of Saddam's (nonexistent) WMD's "They are in the region around Tikrit, to the points north, east, south and west" already knew that Rumsfeld is a blithering idiot whose only talent, as with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove, is to get cowering Democrats to scurry for their bunny holes, rather than stand up for America's combat servicemen and women and American citizens (much less, heaven forbid, Iraqi nationals caught up in Rumsfeld's hell-hole).

#2. Krugman effortlessly and understatedly documents what hapless, pathetic cheerleaders Joe Lieberman (and, by extension, the whole crop of pro-war Democrats) have been for Rumsfeld's babbling folly.

#3. And most important for this editorial, Krugman puts the RANK HYPOCRISY of the 'MSM" - the main-stream-media 'news' whores - on stark display, the nation's major networks playing up the theme that Lieberman's Connecticut primary loss to an anti-war opponent was "PARTISAN!" and "DEFEATIST!"

NOW note the sound of the MSM media whores covering the challenge to Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee by his RIGHT-WING primary challenger...

As Krugman says, "Sounds of crickets."

Yet more proof, as if any were needed, that today's MainStreamMedia mavens are PAID PROFESSIONAL LIARS.. they have a corporate agenda to sell (in this case, boost the Bush administration's incompetent and corrupt use of "war on terror" to bolster they own political power, in return for huge corporate tax cuts for media conglomerates), and NO LIE, NO DISTORTION, NO SMEAR, NO OMISSION is to brazen for our "Karl Rove is our Master!" media whores to get on their knees for.


(For a, perhaps, less over-the-top example of "paid professional media liars," simply recall the "experts" and media blitzes the Tobacco companies put forward in the 1970s and 1980s to tell America that they had "No idea! No, none!" that tobacco smoking caused cancer.)



Nonsense and Sensibility
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Published: August 11, 2006

After Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut, I saw a number of commentaries describing Joe Lieberman not just as a "centrist" — a word that has come to mean "someone who makes excuses for the Bush administration" — but as "sensible." But on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered sensible?

Take a look at Thomas Ricks's "Fiasco," the best account yet of how the U.S. occupation of Iraq was mismanaged. The prime villain in that book is Donald Rumsfeld, whose delusional thinking and penchant for power games undermined whatever chances for success the United States might have had. Then read Mr. Lieberman's May 2004 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, "Let Us Have Faith," in which he urged Mr. Rumsfeld not to resign over the Abu Ghraib scandal, because his removal "would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America's presence in Iraq."

And that's just one example of Mr. Lieberman's bad judgment. He has been wrong at every step of the march into the Iraq quagmire — all the while accusing anyone who disagreed with him of endangering national security. Again, on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered "sensible"? But I know the answer: on Planet Beltway.

Many of those lamenting Mr. Lieberman's defeat claim that they fear a takeover of our political parties by extremists. But if political polarization were really their main concern, they'd be as exercised about the primary challenge from the right facing Lincoln Chafee as they are about Mr. Lieberman's woes. In fact, however, the sound of national commentary on the Rhode Island race is that of crickets chirping.

So what's really behind claims that Mr. Lieberman is sensible — and that those who voted against him aren't? It's the fact that many Washington insiders suffer from the same character flaw that caused Mr. Lieberman to lose Tuesday's primary: an inability to admit mistakes.

Imagine yourself as a politician or pundit who was gung-ho about invading Iraq, and who ridiculed those who warned that the case for war was weak and that the invasion's aftermath could easily turn ugly. Worse yet, imagine yourself as someone who remained in denial long after it all went wrong, disparaging critics as defeatists. Now denial is no longer an option; the neocon fantasy has turned into a nightmare of fire and blood. What do you do?

You could admit your error and move on — and some have. But all too many Iraq hawks have chosen, instead, to cover their tracks by trashing the war's critics.

They say: Pay no attention to the fact that I was wrong and the critics have been completely vindicated by events — I'm "sensible," while those people are crazy extremists. And besides, criticizing any aspect of the war encourages the terrorists.

That's what Joe Lieberman said, and it's what his defenders are saying now.

Now, it takes a really vivid imagination to see Mr. Lieberman's rejection as the work of extremists. I know that some commentators believe that anyone who thinks the Iraq war was a mistake is a flag-burning hippie who hates America. But if that's true, about 60 percent of Americans hate America. The reality is that Ned Lamont and those who voted for him are, as The New York Times editorial page put it, "irate moderates," whose views are in accord with those of most Americans and the vast majority of Democrats.

But in his non-concession speech, Mr. Lieberman described Mr. Lamont as representative of a political tendency in which "every disagreement is considered disloyal" — a statement of remarkable chutzpah from someone who famously warned Democrats that "we undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril."

The question now is how deep into the gutter Mr. Lieberman's ego will drag him.

There's an overwhelming consensus among national security experts that the war in Iraq has undermined, not strengthened, the fight against terrorism. Yet yesterday Mr. Lieberman, sounding just like Dick Cheney — and acting as a propaganda tool for Republicans trying to Swift-boat the party of which he still claims to be a member — suggested that the changes in Iraq policy that Mr. Lamont wants would be "taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England."

In other words, not only isn't Mr. Lieberman sensible, he may be beyond redemption.
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