What a terrific op-ed contribution by Jeff Cohen at Buzzflash.com... the MEDIA VULTURES are once again circling JonBenet Ramsey's corpse, feasting on the tragedy as an opportunity to sell the American public ghoulish, diversionary **** as 'news.'
<< In a media system dominated by entertainment conglomerates, it's no accident that we're served up a steady stream of "top" stories saturated by sex, violence and celebrity: OJ, Princess Di, JonBenet, JFK Jr., Condit/Levy, child abductions (especially upper-middle class blonde girls), Laci Peterson, the runaway bride, the missing teen in Aruba, etc.
Let's face it: The Murdochs and Disneys and Time Warners and GEs that own our media system much prefer a nation of mindless consumers and spectators over a nation of informed, active citizens. They like the fact that avid TV viewers know all the intimate details about the JonBenet or OJ murder cases -- and almost nothing about how big corporations lobby against middle-class interests in Washington. >>
Jeff Cohen: TV News Vultures Circling JonBenet’s Corpse -- Again
Buzzflash guest Contribution
Fri, 08/18/2006
by Jeff Cohen
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/365
The top story on TV news lately has not been the Iraq war or tentative Lebanon peace, or major court rulings on tobacco and warrantless wiretapping, or oil prices or pension "reform" or any of a dozen stories that affect millions of citizens.
TV's top story -- a new suspect in the decade-old murder of 6-year-old beauty princess JonBenet Ramsey -- affects very few people.
But it has the potential of grabbing millions of us, as spectators. That's the beauty of the story to the owners and managers of TV news - my former bosses. They couldn't be more thrilled to see new life in the tabloid story of the death of Little Miss Colorado, a story they'd grudgingly given up on years ago.
In a media system dominated by entertainment conglomerates, it's no accident that we're served up a steady stream of "top" stories saturated by sex, violence and celebrity: OJ, Princess Di, JonBenet, JFK Jr., Condit/Levy, child abductions (especially upper-middle class blonde girls), Laci Peterson, the runaway bride, the missing teen in Aruba, etc.
Let's face it: The Murdochs and Disneys and Time Warners and GEs that own our media system much prefer a nation of mindless consumers and spectators over a nation of informed, active citizens. They like the fact that avid TV viewers know all the intimate details about the JonBenet or OJ murder cases -- and almost nothing about how big corporations lobby against middle-class interests in Washington.
Best of all to TV news managers, tabloid stories are cheap to cover, especially when pundits or legal experts can fill up hours of time with their (often ridiculously wrong) speculation. And these are stories that can't possibly offend powerful forces in Washington, or advertisers.
In my new book Cable News Confidential, I describe my years as a pundit at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Their instinct toward tabloidism is like a junkie's impulse toward crack. I know what it's like to have to fill up airtime with speculation on a tabloid story when there's no news to report. And I've seen my share of innocent people accused of murder by on-air analysts who suffered no repercussions for the evidence-free accusations. (In the JonBenet case, her parents were repeatedly found guilty of murder on TV.)
In the summer of 2001, as terrorists went about plotting the 9/11 attacks, cable news was obsessed with one and only one huge story: the disappearance of D.C. intern Chandra Levy. She'd had an affair with Congressman Gary Condit, who was wrongly accused over and over on cable news of involvement in the murder. Levy was the apparent victim of random street crime.
In 2002, I spent hours on-air at MSNBC as the "Beltway sniper" terrorized the D.C. area with long-range rifle attacks. The one thing most experts were sure about in the weeks of speculation is that the culprit was white, and he was a loner. Wrong and wrong. There were two culprits, both black.
It was the O.J. Simpson trial of 1995 that had changed TV news forever. That's when management saw that "news," turned into soap opera, could actually compete with entertainment programming for ratings . . . and was much cheaper to produce.
The next year, after MSNBC and Fox News had launched to compete with CNN, JonBenet was murdered. TV news thought it had its next O.J.-type story, and the kiddie beauty pageant footage -- looking creepily like kiddie-porn -- began to run in an endless, exploitative loop. But the JonBenet case lost steam when no one was charged. The circus-trial never materialized. Thankfully, Monica Lewinsky burst on the scene and cable news went virtually all-Monica-all-the-time until Clinton's impeachment acquittal in 1999.
The Clinton acquittal left cable news in the doldrums again. But wait, a JonBenet grand jury was now stirring in Boulder. By October 1999, indictments were expected. For cable news, the long-coveted trial and ratings bonanza were finally at hand. All eyes were on Boulder. The prosecutor stepped to the mike and announced the grand jury's conclusion: There was insufficient evidence to charge anyone.
It was a crushing setback for TV news. I went on the air on Fox News and joked that we could expect "mass suicides" among cable news executives. My prediction was unfortunately wrong.
With the new arrest of a murder suspect in Thailand, the tortured soul of JonBenet Ramsey is once again prey for TV news. She lived six sparkling years. And corporatized media have been able to feast on her death for many years since.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Media Whores DESPISE democracy. David Sirota's editorial masterpiece catches NYT's David Brooks SCORN for voters....
<< Take, for instance, New York Times columnist David Brooks’s piece yesterday - it is arguably the most brazen admission of elite disdain for democracy that has ever been printed in a major American newspaper. Before you dismiss that as hyperbole, read the third line of Brooks’ piece:
“Polarized primary voters SHOULD NOT be allowed to define the choices in American politics.”
Yes, you read that correctly: According to one of the most prominent columnists in America, “voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.” >>
<< But [Brook's] underlying message is, again, right there in black and white: “Voters SHOULD NOT be allowed to define the choices in American politics.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the first major American newspaper columnist to officially go on record publicly demanding that American democracy be substitued with dictatorship - and one undoubtedly run by a small, bodyguarded council, cloistered in a luxury Manhattan high-rise, made up of David Brooks, a few of his country-club golfing buddies and maybe - if Davey decides billionaire Tom Friedman is deserving enough - a few other select New York Times columnists. >>
Finally, The Media Elite Admit the Truth About Themselves
http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/08/11/finally-the-dc-media-admits-the-truth-about-itself/
Finally, oh thank God finally, the Washington media elite is making it easy. Usually, D.C.’s professional pundits, pontificators and partisan puppets very carefully package their language to hide their real motives and their real beliefs. But this week following the primary defeat of Sen. Joe Lieberman by first-time candidate Ned Lamont, America is witnessing a good-old-fashioned watershed moment: the perfume is off, the restraint is removed, and the ugly, rancid, sweaty-lockerroom stench of truth is there for all of us commoners to waft. Sniff up, contain your dry heaving, and you will finally understand that all the talk of the Establishment’s disdain for ordinary citizens is not just talk or conspiracy theory - it’s very real, and very powerful.
Take, for instance, New York Times columnist David Brooks’s piece yesterday - it is arguably the most brazen admission of elite disdain for democracy that has ever been printed in a major American newspaper. Before you dismiss that as hyperbole, read the third line of Brooks’ piece:
“Polarized primary voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.”
Yes, you read that correctly: According to one of the most prominent columnists in America, “voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.” Sure, he tries to couch his statement by targeting “polarized primary voters” (because, of course, in the world of David Brooks - a chickenhawk who avoided military service himself but aggressively pushed the Iraq War - the 60 percent of Americans who are now “polarized” in opposition to the war should have their voting rights immediately revoked). But his underlying message is, again, right there in black and white: “Voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.” Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the first major American newspaper columnist to officially go on record publicly demanding that American democracy be substitued with dictatorship - and one undoubtedly run by a small, bodyguarded council, cloistered in a luxury Manhattan high-rise, made up of David Brooks, a few of his country-club golfing buddies and maybe - if Davey decides billionaire Tom Friedman is deserving enough - a few other select New York Times columnists.
But no, folks, it gets better. Brooks goes on to offer up the transparently dishonest claim that “Lamont’s voters are rich.” As evidenced by its repitition, this lie is clearly a talking point crafted right in the Republican National Committee headquarters, Joe Lieberman’s campaign offices - or most likely, both. For instance, right-wing pundit Michael Barone wrote in the Wall Street Journal today that Lamont did not win “the lunch-bucket working class” in Connecticut, but instead was propelled to victory by “the secular transnational professional class” - an attempt, like Brooks, to portray Lamont’s victory as just a product of a few wealthy limousine liberal voters. Barone then tops off his tirade with an attack on Lamont, for being “one of several members of a Democratic caucus who have made, inherited or married big money.” Barone anger at Lamont for this doesn’t seem to be tempered by the fact that Barone himself became famous for marrying into the billionaire Shorenstein family.
How do we know this is a lie? Just take a look at the results. Lamont not only won 7 out of 8 of Connecticut’s counties, but he specifically won the poorest, most working-class areas of the state. For instance, Lamont won New Haven. That’s not only Lieberman’s hometown, but also “the seventh poorest community in the United States,” according to the Department of Education, where “one out of every four citizens lives in poverty,” according to the Yale Daily News. Lamont also won Hartford, the second-poorest city in America - one the American City Business Journals recently noted “is burdened with more socioeconomic stress than any other major city in the United States.” It’s possible that Brooks and Barone’s only firsthand knowledge of Connecticut is their treks circumventing these working-class bastions and heading to the state’s lavish vacation spots - but more likely, they knew what the results meant, but deliberately decided to ignore the facts.
Finally, there was ABC News political director Mark Halperin appearing on Charlie Rose’s PBS show doing his best, funniest, most slapstick stand-up comic routine - only he was being deadly serious and thinking he was making a very astute point, while everyone was likely laughing. He eagerly declared as fact that “every Democrat who is prominent now…the Republicans have succeeded in defining as weak, Jane Fonda-type Democrats.” Halperin - the guy who brags to Washington insiders about how much of a genius he is for supposedly possessing up-to-the-minute knowledge of all political news, polling and data - made this comment one day after the Washington Post released its major nationwide poll showing voters trust Democrats to do a better job of fighting terrorism. In fact, Halperin’s own employer, ABC News, reported less than a year ago that its polling showed Democrats had pulled even with the GOP on fighting terrorism. But no, that annoying reality didn’t fit nicely into Halperin’s pre-packaged storyline - and so he ignored the facts, grabbed for the most cliched stereotypes he could summon, and created his own hysterically laughable fantasy. It was as breathless, hysterical, crazed, unsupported and insulting as Joe Lieberman today telling a local Connecticut paper that a Lamont win in the general election would be a “tremendous victory” for terrorists like those who “wanted to blow up these planes” in the stymied Al Qaeda plot in England.
You can usually tell when you are becoming frightening to the powers that be when they begin to publicly freak out. The spasms began in the lead up to the Lieberman-Lamont primary, with D.C. cocktail party icons Marty Peretz, Lanny Davis, Cokie Roberts, Marshall Wittman, Robert Kagan and Little Stuey Rothenberg throwing temper tantrums and publicly having nervous breakdowns. And now, as shown, these elites are having a full-on, heart-pounding, Tony Soprano-style panic attack. The result is certainly a pretty entertaining show as elite after elite after elite very publicly embarrasses themselves. But it is also something more: it is the very clear, very well-documented admission of just how much hatred these elites really have both for ordinary people’s intelligence, and ordinary people’s growing political power.
It is no hyperbole to say that these elites hate democracy and democratic movements - they hate them so much they are willing to break the taboo and scream their hatred for democracy in the pages of the largest newspaper in the world. They hate ordinary people so much they are willing to fabricate storylines wholly unsupported by even a shred of fact. But thanks to the fact that democracy still exists in America and elections still happen here, their hatred is no longer the ideology that gets to govern unchallenged. This week in Connecticut we saw the first rumble. And come election day in November, that rumble is going to be an earthquake no matter how much the elites whine, cry and scream.
“Polarized primary voters SHOULD NOT be allowed to define the choices in American politics.”
Yes, you read that correctly: According to one of the most prominent columnists in America, “voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.” >>
<< But [Brook's] underlying message is, again, right there in black and white: “Voters SHOULD NOT be allowed to define the choices in American politics.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the first major American newspaper columnist to officially go on record publicly demanding that American democracy be substitued with dictatorship - and one undoubtedly run by a small, bodyguarded council, cloistered in a luxury Manhattan high-rise, made up of David Brooks, a few of his country-club golfing buddies and maybe - if Davey decides billionaire Tom Friedman is deserving enough - a few other select New York Times columnists. >>
Finally, The Media Elite Admit the Truth About Themselves
http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/08/11/finally-the-dc-media-admits-the-truth-about-itself/
Finally, oh thank God finally, the Washington media elite is making it easy. Usually, D.C.’s professional pundits, pontificators and partisan puppets very carefully package their language to hide their real motives and their real beliefs. But this week following the primary defeat of Sen. Joe Lieberman by first-time candidate Ned Lamont, America is witnessing a good-old-fashioned watershed moment: the perfume is off, the restraint is removed, and the ugly, rancid, sweaty-lockerroom stench of truth is there for all of us commoners to waft. Sniff up, contain your dry heaving, and you will finally understand that all the talk of the Establishment’s disdain for ordinary citizens is not just talk or conspiracy theory - it’s very real, and very powerful.
Take, for instance, New York Times columnist David Brooks’s piece yesterday - it is arguably the most brazen admission of elite disdain for democracy that has ever been printed in a major American newspaper. Before you dismiss that as hyperbole, read the third line of Brooks’ piece:
“Polarized primary voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.”
Yes, you read that correctly: According to one of the most prominent columnists in America, “voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.” Sure, he tries to couch his statement by targeting “polarized primary voters” (because, of course, in the world of David Brooks - a chickenhawk who avoided military service himself but aggressively pushed the Iraq War - the 60 percent of Americans who are now “polarized” in opposition to the war should have their voting rights immediately revoked). But his underlying message is, again, right there in black and white: “Voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.” Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the first major American newspaper columnist to officially go on record publicly demanding that American democracy be substitued with dictatorship - and one undoubtedly run by a small, bodyguarded council, cloistered in a luxury Manhattan high-rise, made up of David Brooks, a few of his country-club golfing buddies and maybe - if Davey decides billionaire Tom Friedman is deserving enough - a few other select New York Times columnists.
But no, folks, it gets better. Brooks goes on to offer up the transparently dishonest claim that “Lamont’s voters are rich.” As evidenced by its repitition, this lie is clearly a talking point crafted right in the Republican National Committee headquarters, Joe Lieberman’s campaign offices - or most likely, both. For instance, right-wing pundit Michael Barone wrote in the Wall Street Journal today that Lamont did not win “the lunch-bucket working class” in Connecticut, but instead was propelled to victory by “the secular transnational professional class” - an attempt, like Brooks, to portray Lamont’s victory as just a product of a few wealthy limousine liberal voters. Barone then tops off his tirade with an attack on Lamont, for being “one of several members of a Democratic caucus who have made, inherited or married big money.” Barone anger at Lamont for this doesn’t seem to be tempered by the fact that Barone himself became famous for marrying into the billionaire Shorenstein family.
How do we know this is a lie? Just take a look at the results. Lamont not only won 7 out of 8 of Connecticut’s counties, but he specifically won the poorest, most working-class areas of the state. For instance, Lamont won New Haven. That’s not only Lieberman’s hometown, but also “the seventh poorest community in the United States,” according to the Department of Education, where “one out of every four citizens lives in poverty,” according to the Yale Daily News. Lamont also won Hartford, the second-poorest city in America - one the American City Business Journals recently noted “is burdened with more socioeconomic stress than any other major city in the United States.” It’s possible that Brooks and Barone’s only firsthand knowledge of Connecticut is their treks circumventing these working-class bastions and heading to the state’s lavish vacation spots - but more likely, they knew what the results meant, but deliberately decided to ignore the facts.
Finally, there was ABC News political director Mark Halperin appearing on Charlie Rose’s PBS show doing his best, funniest, most slapstick stand-up comic routine - only he was being deadly serious and thinking he was making a very astute point, while everyone was likely laughing. He eagerly declared as fact that “every Democrat who is prominent now…the Republicans have succeeded in defining as weak, Jane Fonda-type Democrats.” Halperin - the guy who brags to Washington insiders about how much of a genius he is for supposedly possessing up-to-the-minute knowledge of all political news, polling and data - made this comment one day after the Washington Post released its major nationwide poll showing voters trust Democrats to do a better job of fighting terrorism. In fact, Halperin’s own employer, ABC News, reported less than a year ago that its polling showed Democrats had pulled even with the GOP on fighting terrorism. But no, that annoying reality didn’t fit nicely into Halperin’s pre-packaged storyline - and so he ignored the facts, grabbed for the most cliched stereotypes he could summon, and created his own hysterically laughable fantasy. It was as breathless, hysterical, crazed, unsupported and insulting as Joe Lieberman today telling a local Connecticut paper that a Lamont win in the general election would be a “tremendous victory” for terrorists like those who “wanted to blow up these planes” in the stymied Al Qaeda plot in England.
You can usually tell when you are becoming frightening to the powers that be when they begin to publicly freak out. The spasms began in the lead up to the Lieberman-Lamont primary, with D.C. cocktail party icons Marty Peretz, Lanny Davis, Cokie Roberts, Marshall Wittman, Robert Kagan and Little Stuey Rothenberg throwing temper tantrums and publicly having nervous breakdowns. And now, as shown, these elites are having a full-on, heart-pounding, Tony Soprano-style panic attack. The result is certainly a pretty entertaining show as elite after elite after elite very publicly embarrasses themselves. But it is also something more: it is the very clear, very well-documented admission of just how much hatred these elites really have both for ordinary people’s intelligence, and ordinary people’s growing political power.
It is no hyperbole to say that these elites hate democracy and democratic movements - they hate them so much they are willing to break the taboo and scream their hatred for democracy in the pages of the largest newspaper in the world. They hate ordinary people so much they are willing to fabricate storylines wholly unsupported by even a shred of fact. But thanks to the fact that democracy still exists in America and elections still happen here, their hatred is no longer the ideology that gets to govern unchallenged. This week in Connecticut we saw the first rumble. And come election day in November, that rumble is going to be an earthquake no matter how much the elites whine, cry and scream.
NY Times DELAYED the "Bush-NSA spying on all Americans" story until AFTER the 2004 election....
Far, far, far from being a "liberal-democrat" newspaper, the New York Times, owned by the Arthur Sulzberger family, is wholly and completely dedicated to the proposition of the Bush-Cheney government being UNACCOUNTABLE to either American (much less international) laws, nor to the American people.
NYT Delayed Publication Of NSA Spying Story Before 2004 Election
Byron Calame
Sunday August 13, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2006/08/13/nyt-delayed-publ_e_27151.html
On December 16, 2005, the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration had been eavesdropping on telephone calls without a warrant in an in-depth investigative report by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen. Controversially, it was also revealed that the NYT had "delayed publication for a year." Questions arose as to whether the NYT had had evidence of the program prior to the 2004 election and had kept mum. Today, NYT Public Editor Barney Calame has the definitive answer:
"I have now learned from Bill Keller, the executive editor, that The Times delayed publication of drafts of the eavesdropping article before the 2004 election."
Calame traces the language of the delay from "a year" to "more than a year" in subsequent references made in print and by executive editor Bill Keller. Calame writes that his attention was caught by Keller's "Talk to the Newsroom" web-only column in April wherein he was challenged for holding the story and thus influencing the outcome of the election — and he did not correct the timing.
Keller told Calame that drafts of the article had been around for "weeks" before the election, and that "the climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of the election." WOW. Keller dismisses this as "old business" to Calame; I'd say this is a fairly new and significant bombshell. (One which will, at least, momentarily shut up Peter King, Melanie Morgan, and the rest of the conservative Times bashers.)
Keller told Calame that his claim of a year-old story — missing a crucial month — was "inelegant wording" and claimed that "I don't know what was in my head at the time." Again, WOW. In the Calame article Keller cops to deliberating about publication in the weeks leading up to the election, having a "climactic discussion" on the eve of the election, and weighing the "fairness" of publishing the story just before the election without giving the administration a chance to respond. And now he can't remember what he was thinking? Calame agrees that it wouldn't have been "fair" to spring it on the Republicans; well golly gee whiz, I'm sure the millions of voters who might have liked to know this will totally agree.
(One more wow: Keller says that they initially held the story before the election because the administration had assured them that "everyone involved was satisfied with the program's legality." Gee, the administration making the claim that everything's hunky-dory leading up to an election. Why shouldn't the Times have taken that on faith? Oh, and what was that about fairness? Riiiiight. )
This is a big deal. Newspapers, magazines and, yes, blogs make decisions about what to publish and emphasize and draw attention to every day. But there are three big issues here: (1) The fact that the New York Times held back an explosive, important and possibly decisive revelation prior to the 2004 election; (2) The fact that the New York Times claimed that the story did not, in fact, date from prior to the 2004 election; and (3) The fact that executive editor Bill Keller, who ultimately made the call on whether to run or hold the piece, and who greelit the "delayed for a year" wording in the Dec. 16th article and was cagey about the timing thereafter, now claims to be fuzzy on why, exactly, he might have used inaccurate and misleading language.
The blogs are going to be on fire with this one, on both sides. In other news, that sound you hear is John Kerry banging his head against a wall.
NYT Delayed Publication Of NSA Spying Story Before 2004 Election
Byron Calame
Sunday August 13, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2006/08/13/nyt-delayed-publ_e_27151.html
On December 16, 2005, the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration had been eavesdropping on telephone calls without a warrant in an in-depth investigative report by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen. Controversially, it was also revealed that the NYT had "delayed publication for a year." Questions arose as to whether the NYT had had evidence of the program prior to the 2004 election and had kept mum. Today, NYT Public Editor Barney Calame has the definitive answer:
"I have now learned from Bill Keller, the executive editor, that The Times delayed publication of drafts of the eavesdropping article before the 2004 election."
Calame traces the language of the delay from "a year" to "more than a year" in subsequent references made in print and by executive editor Bill Keller. Calame writes that his attention was caught by Keller's "Talk to the Newsroom" web-only column in April wherein he was challenged for holding the story and thus influencing the outcome of the election — and he did not correct the timing.
Keller told Calame that drafts of the article had been around for "weeks" before the election, and that "the climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of the election." WOW. Keller dismisses this as "old business" to Calame; I'd say this is a fairly new and significant bombshell. (One which will, at least, momentarily shut up Peter King, Melanie Morgan, and the rest of the conservative Times bashers.)
Keller told Calame that his claim of a year-old story — missing a crucial month — was "inelegant wording" and claimed that "I don't know what was in my head at the time." Again, WOW. In the Calame article Keller cops to deliberating about publication in the weeks leading up to the election, having a "climactic discussion" on the eve of the election, and weighing the "fairness" of publishing the story just before the election without giving the administration a chance to respond. And now he can't remember what he was thinking? Calame agrees that it wouldn't have been "fair" to spring it on the Republicans; well golly gee whiz, I'm sure the millions of voters who might have liked to know this will totally agree.
(One more wow: Keller says that they initially held the story before the election because the administration had assured them that "everyone involved was satisfied with the program's legality." Gee, the administration making the claim that everything's hunky-dory leading up to an election. Why shouldn't the Times have taken that on faith? Oh, and what was that about fairness? Riiiiight. )
This is a big deal. Newspapers, magazines and, yes, blogs make decisions about what to publish and emphasize and draw attention to every day. But there are three big issues here: (1) The fact that the New York Times held back an explosive, important and possibly decisive revelation prior to the 2004 election; (2) The fact that the New York Times claimed that the story did not, in fact, date from prior to the 2004 election; and (3) The fact that executive editor Bill Keller, who ultimately made the call on whether to run or hold the piece, and who greelit the "delayed for a year" wording in the Dec. 16th article and was cagey about the timing thereafter, now claims to be fuzzy on why, exactly, he might have used inaccurate and misleading language.
The blogs are going to be on fire with this one, on both sides. In other news, that sound you hear is John Kerry banging his head against a wall.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
#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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, August 05, 2006
The inanity and INSANITY of Wllm. Kristol STILL rules in chicken**** DC...
<< A few days ago William Kristol, who is as responsible as anyone outside the Bush administration for the neocon dream of creating an empire in the Middle East—which has become the now-familiar NIGHTMARE—made clear his preference for military action against Iran, sooner rather than later. And not only that, once we start dropping bombs, the Iranian people will do their part and rise up to overthrow their government. “The right use of targeted military force,” Kristol told Fox News, “could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.”
That Kristol could make such a prediction without getting laughed out of Washington, never to be invited on television again, tells us something about the miasma of INANITY and INSANITY that envelopes our politics like a fog. Being wrong—or being an outright fool, or being possessed of not a shred of morality, for that matter—carries no cost. Only being “weak”—that is, insufficiently enthusiastic about spilling others’ blood—will earn you the contempt of the Washington establishment.
>>
Things Get Ugly When Bush 'Trusts His Gut'
By Paul Waldman, TomPaine.com
Posted on August 3, 2006, Printed on August 5, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/39530/
When President Bush was caught on tape saying to Tony Blair, “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over,” more than a few progressives said to themselves, “Well that’s a trenchant analysis of the situation, Sherlock.” And more than a few conservatives said, “Damn straight”—or as Michelle Malkin put it, “Sometimes, profanity is called for.”
Not that in mid-2006 anyone needed more proof that Bush is, depending on your perspective, either a simpleton or an admirably forthright straight talker who cuts to the chase. But as more and more evidence of the administration’s incompetence and hubris is revealed, we are presented with more proof that under George W. Bush, U.S. policies are governed by a strange amalgam of impulse and fantasy.
As Newsweek told us this week, Bush “still trusts his gut to tell him what's right, and he still expects others to follow his lead.” One might have thought Bush would have learned by now to view the proclamations of his gut with some suspicion—but then, that would be asking the president to rely on evidence and experience to make conclusions.
And it isn’t only friendly reporters like those at Newsweek who have noted the way policy is dictated by The Decider’s intestinal rumblings. One of the many disturbing pictures that emerges from Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine, is the way Bush’s preference for making decisions not on the basis of facts and analysis but on his “gut” meshed so perfectly with Dick Cheney’s desire not to let facts and analysis get in the way of his visions of empire. The two were perfect partners, and when 9/11 happened, it was like the pins of a combination lock clicking securely into place in Bush’s mind. Everything made sense—there are evildoers out there, and his divinely appointed mission is to smite them. (If you’ve wondered why Bush has such affection for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, all you need to know is that at their first meeting, Koizumi said Bush reminded him of Gary Cooper.)
For his part, Cheney was finally unbound, free to bend the government to his will. The presidency—and of course, the vice presidency—need no longer be constrained by petty bureaucrats with their “analysis” and their “laws.” If we wanted to invade Iraq, we’d damn sure invade Iraq, and if we wanted to say it was because they were about to attack us with their fearsome arsenal of weapons, well that’s what we’d say.
A few days ago William Kristol, who is as responsible as anyone outside the Bush administration for the neocon dream of creating an empire in the Middle East—which has become the now-familiar nightmare—made clear his preference for military action against Iran, sooner rather than later. And not only that, once we start dropping bombs, the Iranian people will do their part and rise up to overthrow their government. “The right use of targeted military force,” Kristol told Fox News, “could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.”
That Kristol could make such a prediction without getting laughed out of Washington, never to be invited on television again, tells us something about the miasma of inanity and insanity that envelopes our politics like a fog. Being wrong—or being an outright fool, or being possessed of not a shred of morality, for that matter—carries no cost. Only being “weak”—that is, insufficiently enthusiastic about spilling others’ blood—will earn you the contempt of the Washington establishment.
Why? Because that establishment, both governmental and journalistic, is ruled by weenies. They burn to show that they’re real men, that they’re tough and strong and mean, that they don’t cower from a fight, that they’re the ones who get going when the going gets tough. Washington is an arena of institutional and ideological competition, but it is also a throbbing mass of insecurities.
We sometimes see it as ironic that those calling for the most bellicose foreign policy are almost invariably those both in and out of government, like Bush and Cheney and Gingrich and DeLay and Limbaugh and O’Reilly, who never served in the military and never got within a thousand miles of combat. But it is not ironic at all; in fact, it is absolutely predictable. Combine a personal history devoid of evidence that one’s manliness has been tested (let alone proven) with an ideology inclined to divide the world into enemies and friends, and you have a recipe for frantic muscle-flexing.
Those with actual military experience, on the other hand, have been of late far more hesitant to beat the war drums. For one thing, they tend to have a better understanding of how easily things can go wrong when you start lobbing ordnance around. But they also seem to feel the need to prove their manhood far less urgently.
In 2004, Dick Cheney reacted to John Kerry’s suggestion that in the war on terror we had to be “sensitive” to our allies’ concerns by responding contemptuously, “He talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror, as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.” No one asked just why Cheney was so concerned with “impressing” al-Qaida.
But listen to Republican rhetoric and it begins to seem as though they are practically obsessed with how the terrorists think about us. Are they impressed? Do they think we’re weak, or do they think we’re strong? Have we sent them the right message? Indeed, there may be no justification for failed policy offered more frequently than the need to send the right message. And while we’re sending messages to al-Qaida, we’d better send some messages to the troops. Look at some of the things George Bush said during the first presidential debate in 2004:
What kind of message does it say to our troops in harm's way, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time? Not a message a commander in chief gives... I know we won't achieve if we send mixed signals… The way to make sure that we succeed is to send consistent, sound messages to the Iraqi people… But by speaking clearly and sending messages that we mean what we say, we've affected the world in a positive way.
Some might wonder why it is that all this posturing, message-sending, and attempts to look “tough” are so seldom seen for what they truly are. The answer is partly repetition: say that Bush is “strong” and “bold” and “resolute” enough times, and after a while it becomes part of how people think about him. That includes reporters, who fancy themselves cynical enough to see through the theater to the truth, but end up eating the image-making with a spoon.
As each new development occurs, they place it in the context of what they already believe. So when Bush changes his mind about something, he’s not a weak flip-flopper but a smart politician who tempers his unquestioned strength with realism. And his reliance on his “gut” is evidence of a man who knows what he believes.
As we move into the 2008 election, reporters will once again begin plumbing the candidates’ personal psychology to determine their “character.” This is critical work, which makes it all the more galling that they so often miss the mark. Think about the 2000 race, in which we were told that Bush was dumb and Gore was a liar. We saw who the liar turned out to be. But the real question with Bush was not whether he could pass a current-events quiz, but whether his Manichean worldview, his tendency to over-simplify, and his burning desire to show his father he’s a real man might have dire consequences for our country and the world.
As for the current Republican front-runner, John McCain, his solution to the quagmire in Iraq, as he told an audience at a fundraiser two months ago, is this: “One of the things I would do if I were president would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.’” You might say those are the words of someone possessed of a truly epic and dangerous naïveté. Or you might say it shows him to be a strong, straight-talking kinda guy. Want to guess what the reporters who will be covering the 2008 campaign think?
Paul Waldman is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America. His next book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success, will be released in the spring.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/39530/
That Kristol could make such a prediction without getting laughed out of Washington, never to be invited on television again, tells us something about the miasma of INANITY and INSANITY that envelopes our politics like a fog. Being wrong—or being an outright fool, or being possessed of not a shred of morality, for that matter—carries no cost. Only being “weak”—that is, insufficiently enthusiastic about spilling others’ blood—will earn you the contempt of the Washington establishment.
>>
Things Get Ugly When Bush 'Trusts His Gut'
By Paul Waldman, TomPaine.com
Posted on August 3, 2006, Printed on August 5, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/39530/
When President Bush was caught on tape saying to Tony Blair, “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over,” more than a few progressives said to themselves, “Well that’s a trenchant analysis of the situation, Sherlock.” And more than a few conservatives said, “Damn straight”—or as Michelle Malkin put it, “Sometimes, profanity is called for.”
Not that in mid-2006 anyone needed more proof that Bush is, depending on your perspective, either a simpleton or an admirably forthright straight talker who cuts to the chase. But as more and more evidence of the administration’s incompetence and hubris is revealed, we are presented with more proof that under George W. Bush, U.S. policies are governed by a strange amalgam of impulse and fantasy.
As Newsweek told us this week, Bush “still trusts his gut to tell him what's right, and he still expects others to follow his lead.” One might have thought Bush would have learned by now to view the proclamations of his gut with some suspicion—but then, that would be asking the president to rely on evidence and experience to make conclusions.
And it isn’t only friendly reporters like those at Newsweek who have noted the way policy is dictated by The Decider’s intestinal rumblings. One of the many disturbing pictures that emerges from Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine, is the way Bush’s preference for making decisions not on the basis of facts and analysis but on his “gut” meshed so perfectly with Dick Cheney’s desire not to let facts and analysis get in the way of his visions of empire. The two were perfect partners, and when 9/11 happened, it was like the pins of a combination lock clicking securely into place in Bush’s mind. Everything made sense—there are evildoers out there, and his divinely appointed mission is to smite them. (If you’ve wondered why Bush has such affection for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, all you need to know is that at their first meeting, Koizumi said Bush reminded him of Gary Cooper.)
For his part, Cheney was finally unbound, free to bend the government to his will. The presidency—and of course, the vice presidency—need no longer be constrained by petty bureaucrats with their “analysis” and their “laws.” If we wanted to invade Iraq, we’d damn sure invade Iraq, and if we wanted to say it was because they were about to attack us with their fearsome arsenal of weapons, well that’s what we’d say.
A few days ago William Kristol, who is as responsible as anyone outside the Bush administration for the neocon dream of creating an empire in the Middle East—which has become the now-familiar nightmare—made clear his preference for military action against Iran, sooner rather than later. And not only that, once we start dropping bombs, the Iranian people will do their part and rise up to overthrow their government. “The right use of targeted military force,” Kristol told Fox News, “could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.”
That Kristol could make such a prediction without getting laughed out of Washington, never to be invited on television again, tells us something about the miasma of inanity and insanity that envelopes our politics like a fog. Being wrong—or being an outright fool, or being possessed of not a shred of morality, for that matter—carries no cost. Only being “weak”—that is, insufficiently enthusiastic about spilling others’ blood—will earn you the contempt of the Washington establishment.
Why? Because that establishment, both governmental and journalistic, is ruled by weenies. They burn to show that they’re real men, that they’re tough and strong and mean, that they don’t cower from a fight, that they’re the ones who get going when the going gets tough. Washington is an arena of institutional and ideological competition, but it is also a throbbing mass of insecurities.
We sometimes see it as ironic that those calling for the most bellicose foreign policy are almost invariably those both in and out of government, like Bush and Cheney and Gingrich and DeLay and Limbaugh and O’Reilly, who never served in the military and never got within a thousand miles of combat. But it is not ironic at all; in fact, it is absolutely predictable. Combine a personal history devoid of evidence that one’s manliness has been tested (let alone proven) with an ideology inclined to divide the world into enemies and friends, and you have a recipe for frantic muscle-flexing.
Those with actual military experience, on the other hand, have been of late far more hesitant to beat the war drums. For one thing, they tend to have a better understanding of how easily things can go wrong when you start lobbing ordnance around. But they also seem to feel the need to prove their manhood far less urgently.
In 2004, Dick Cheney reacted to John Kerry’s suggestion that in the war on terror we had to be “sensitive” to our allies’ concerns by responding contemptuously, “He talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror, as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.” No one asked just why Cheney was so concerned with “impressing” al-Qaida.
But listen to Republican rhetoric and it begins to seem as though they are practically obsessed with how the terrorists think about us. Are they impressed? Do they think we’re weak, or do they think we’re strong? Have we sent them the right message? Indeed, there may be no justification for failed policy offered more frequently than the need to send the right message. And while we’re sending messages to al-Qaida, we’d better send some messages to the troops. Look at some of the things George Bush said during the first presidential debate in 2004:
What kind of message does it say to our troops in harm's way, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time? Not a message a commander in chief gives... I know we won't achieve if we send mixed signals… The way to make sure that we succeed is to send consistent, sound messages to the Iraqi people… But by speaking clearly and sending messages that we mean what we say, we've affected the world in a positive way.
Some might wonder why it is that all this posturing, message-sending, and attempts to look “tough” are so seldom seen for what they truly are. The answer is partly repetition: say that Bush is “strong” and “bold” and “resolute” enough times, and after a while it becomes part of how people think about him. That includes reporters, who fancy themselves cynical enough to see through the theater to the truth, but end up eating the image-making with a spoon.
As each new development occurs, they place it in the context of what they already believe. So when Bush changes his mind about something, he’s not a weak flip-flopper but a smart politician who tempers his unquestioned strength with realism. And his reliance on his “gut” is evidence of a man who knows what he believes.
As we move into the 2008 election, reporters will once again begin plumbing the candidates’ personal psychology to determine their “character.” This is critical work, which makes it all the more galling that they so often miss the mark. Think about the 2000 race, in which we were told that Bush was dumb and Gore was a liar. We saw who the liar turned out to be. But the real question with Bush was not whether he could pass a current-events quiz, but whether his Manichean worldview, his tendency to over-simplify, and his burning desire to show his father he’s a real man might have dire consequences for our country and the world.
As for the current Republican front-runner, John McCain, his solution to the quagmire in Iraq, as he told an audience at a fundraiser two months ago, is this: “One of the things I would do if I were president would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.’” You might say those are the words of someone possessed of a truly epic and dangerous naïveté. Or you might say it shows him to be a strong, straight-talking kinda guy. Want to guess what the reporters who will be covering the 2008 campaign think?
Paul Waldman is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America. His next book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success, will be released in the spring.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/39530/
Kruathammer (wp) WHINES "Hezbollah's UNPROVOKED attack." WHAH...
To see some of the CLAPTRAP that comes out of the whore-iffic, presstitute Washington Post, one need look no farther than today's Charles Krauthammer column.
Krauthammer is whining about "ISRAEL'S SEARCH FOR VICTORY ON THE CHEAP."
Hey, you neo-con idiot: IT IS CALLED POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS.
NO matter how deep into Lebanon the IDF pushes, they have two choices: set up an OCCUPATION (up to an including "ethnically cleansing" locals from the 'cleansed' areas), or retreat and let the Hez. militia return.
The bigger, unanswered question is, "HOW CAN ISRAEL SURVIVE in the face of the great Muslim BIRTH RATE?"
And, unfortunately, in your greed and self-serving pursuits, the neo-con Jews - the "best and brightest" of America's educational, academic, and editorial influences - have joined with America's right-wing Neo-Confederates to effectively CENSOR the national discussion on BIRTH CONTROL.
Ergo, Israel is exercising its primitive form of population control - burying young bodies in the rubble of collapsed apartment buildings.
HOORAY!
A few more years of this, and we WILL be back to the "good ol' days' of M.A.D. - MUTALLY ASSURED nuclear destruction.
HOW GOD MUST LOVE THE STENCH OF DECOMPOSING BABIES!
Israel's Lost Moment
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, August 4, 2006; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301258.html
Israel's war with Hezbollah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel's destruction, to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Israel's leaders do not seem to understand how ruinous a military failure in Lebanon would be to its relationship with America, Israel's most vital lifeline.
For decades there has been a debate in the United States over Israel's strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970 Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982 American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in one week without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).
The End of the Right?
» E.J. Dionne Jr. | Is conservatism finished? What might have seemed an absurd question less than two years ago is now one of the most important issues in American politics.
Krauthammer: Israel's Lost Moment
Alex Hinton: Punish the Khmer Rouge
PostGlobal: Iraq: Ethnic Enclaves?
But that was decades ago. The question, as always, is: What have you done for me lately? There is fierce debate in the United States about whether, in the post-Sept. 11 world, Israel is a net asset or liability. Hezbollah's unprovoked attack on July 12 provided Israel the extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate its utility by making a major contribution to America's war on terrorism.
America's green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light -- indeed, the encouragement -- is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.
Unlike many of the other terrorist groups in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a serious enemy of the United States. In 1983 it massacred 241 American servicemen. Except for al-Qaeda, it has killed more Americans than any other terror organization.
More important, it is today the leading edge of an aggressive, nuclear-hungry Iran. Hezbollah is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary. Its mission is to extend the Islamic Revolution's influence into Lebanon and Palestine, destabilize any Arab-Israeli peace, and advance an Islamist Shiite ascendancy, led and controlled by Iran, throughout the Levant.
America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances and give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.
The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the United States to let Israel take down that organization. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but also against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.
Hence Israel's rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron. The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower.
The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive cabinet debates are broadcast to the world, as was Olmert's own complaint that "I'm tired. I didn't sleep at all last night" (Haaretz, July 28). Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.
His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence -- and the relationship it reinforces -- is as important to Israel's survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Krauthammer is whining about "ISRAEL'S SEARCH FOR VICTORY ON THE CHEAP."
Hey, you neo-con idiot: IT IS CALLED POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS.
NO matter how deep into Lebanon the IDF pushes, they have two choices: set up an OCCUPATION (up to an including "ethnically cleansing" locals from the 'cleansed' areas), or retreat and let the Hez. militia return.
The bigger, unanswered question is, "HOW CAN ISRAEL SURVIVE in the face of the great Muslim BIRTH RATE?"
And, unfortunately, in your greed and self-serving pursuits, the neo-con Jews - the "best and brightest" of America's educational, academic, and editorial influences - have joined with America's right-wing Neo-Confederates to effectively CENSOR the national discussion on BIRTH CONTROL.
Ergo, Israel is exercising its primitive form of population control - burying young bodies in the rubble of collapsed apartment buildings.
HOORAY!
A few more years of this, and we WILL be back to the "good ol' days' of M.A.D. - MUTALLY ASSURED nuclear destruction.
HOW GOD MUST LOVE THE STENCH OF DECOMPOSING BABIES!
Israel's Lost Moment
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, August 4, 2006; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301258.html
Israel's war with Hezbollah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel's destruction, to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Israel's leaders do not seem to understand how ruinous a military failure in Lebanon would be to its relationship with America, Israel's most vital lifeline.
For decades there has been a debate in the United States over Israel's strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970 Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982 American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in one week without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).
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But that was decades ago. The question, as always, is: What have you done for me lately? There is fierce debate in the United States about whether, in the post-Sept. 11 world, Israel is a net asset or liability. Hezbollah's unprovoked attack on July 12 provided Israel the extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate its utility by making a major contribution to America's war on terrorism.
America's green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light -- indeed, the encouragement -- is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.
Unlike many of the other terrorist groups in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a serious enemy of the United States. In 1983 it massacred 241 American servicemen. Except for al-Qaeda, it has killed more Americans than any other terror organization.
More important, it is today the leading edge of an aggressive, nuclear-hungry Iran. Hezbollah is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary. Its mission is to extend the Islamic Revolution's influence into Lebanon and Palestine, destabilize any Arab-Israeli peace, and advance an Islamist Shiite ascendancy, led and controlled by Iran, throughout the Levant.
America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances and give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.
The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the United States to let Israel take down that organization. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but also against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.
Hence Israel's rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron. The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower.
The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive cabinet debates are broadcast to the world, as was Olmert's own complaint that "I'm tired. I didn't sleep at all last night" (Haaretz, July 28). Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.
His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence -- and the relationship it reinforces -- is as important to Israel's survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Rolling Stone mag. EVISCERATES cowardly David Brooks, paid professional liar for the New York Times....
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11034127/the_low_post_why_the_democrats_are_still_doomed/print
Peter Beinart, The New Republic, whores as his own PR flack vs poor trash stuck in Iraq combat...
This excellent article by David Sirota captures the American media doing what it does best: LYING their cowardly asses off ABOUT EVERYTHING.
In this case, The New Republic editor Peter Beinart writes an editorial PRETENDING to be concerned for the divide between the media elite who CHEER for WAR, and the grunts and dogfaces and poor-trash who get stuck serving for MONTHS at a time in the 120º F heat of Iraq, breathing Depleted Uranium dust from exploded US shells and of course dodging the ever present insurgent roadside bombs.
In reality, Mr. Benart is ONLY concerned with bloviating his opinion in the pages of the TNR, getting paid for it, and securing his position as an 'elite' in the American media myopia.
Our only concern with Mr. Sirota's column, and the term is not of his creation, is that the derisive term "101st keyboarders" takes its numerals from the famous 101st US Army Airborne division, parachute infantry who are among the best fighters in the US armed forces, and hence the world. While some men from the 101st have been caught up in the inevitable trigger-happy gunfire of the Iraq conflict (i.e. civilian casualties, i.e. potential war crimes), at least this unit with its great history is on the line in Iraq, risking their lives every day.
So to connect the real 101st Airborne, even tangenitally, with the "101st keyboarders," is an unfortunate smear of a real fighting unit.
Perhaps "CHICKEN*** keyboarders" or "Chickenhawk keyboarders" would be a better descriptive?
But other than that, a "Well Done" to Mr. Dave Sirota, who is undertaking the mighty task of exposing Washington (and the nation's) legions of PRESS CORPSE WHORES and TOADIES as the lying, war-promoting flunkies that they are.
SOLDIER: 101st Keyboard Brigade Refuses to Answer Hypocrisy
by David Sirota
08.02.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/soldier-101st-keyboard-b_b_26305.html
The New Republic was one of the strongest and most aggressive voices pushing for the invasion of Iraq. Their editor, Peter Beinart, led the charge, attacking Democrats who dared to question the move. He and the magazine have yet to seriously consider how easy it is to advocate for a massive military operation based on lies when the advocates themselves never have to face the blood-and-guts consequences of their advocacy.
Now, of course, the New Republic and Beinart would like everyone to forget their record, as Beinart pushes a new book trying to position himself as a "liberal" foreign policy guru and a chest-thumping "hawk." But at least one Army lieutenant catches Beinart and his magazine in some dishonest and grossly self-serving editing.
Here's an excerpt from a piece by Second Lt. John Renehan in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education:
"In 2004, shortly before I left for basic training, The New Republic ran a piece in which Peter Beinart, then the magazine's editor, bemoaned the increasingly narrow demographics of those who serve and the consequent emergence of 'two countries' -- one that serves, and a second, more-affluent one that thinks of service as a thing done by other Americans. Notably, Beinart admitted his own mixed feelings on being a member of the nonserving elite, wondering aloud what he might say when a child of his someday asks, 'What did you do in the terror war, Daddy?' Impressed, I wrote a letter to Beinart praising his frankness and noting my own decision to join the military -- one prompted by similar callings of conscience. Then I offered him what I called a 'public-spirited challenge': One of The New Republic's own should serve, and the magazine should write about it...It was a naïve sort of thing to write. My girlfriend took a look at the letter and said, 'You know they're never going to print this, don't you?' I did. But they did print it -- with a notable omission. My 'public-spirited challenge' had been excised, leaving only praise for Beinart."
The netroots have labeled people like Beinart and his "hawkish" friends in the punditocracy as members of the 101st Fighting Keyboard Brigade - authors/insiders/operatives who are "very enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it." The fact that members of the 101st would resort to selectively editing an Army lieutenant's sincere letter to the editor in order to dishonestly heap praise on themselves and avoid facing the tough questions about their behavior tells you all you need to know about how unprincipled these people really are. In their comfortable bubble, war is all just a fun little political game based on Washington's false definition of "strength" as a politician willing to sit in their guarded, air conditioned Beltway office and call in airstrikes and ground assaults - regardless of the consequences for the targets or America's national security.
In this case, The New Republic editor Peter Beinart writes an editorial PRETENDING to be concerned for the divide between the media elite who CHEER for WAR, and the grunts and dogfaces and poor-trash who get stuck serving for MONTHS at a time in the 120º F heat of Iraq, breathing Depleted Uranium dust from exploded US shells and of course dodging the ever present insurgent roadside bombs.
In reality, Mr. Benart is ONLY concerned with bloviating his opinion in the pages of the TNR, getting paid for it, and securing his position as an 'elite' in the American media myopia.
Our only concern with Mr. Sirota's column, and the term is not of his creation, is that the derisive term "101st keyboarders" takes its numerals from the famous 101st US Army Airborne division, parachute infantry who are among the best fighters in the US armed forces, and hence the world. While some men from the 101st have been caught up in the inevitable trigger-happy gunfire of the Iraq conflict (i.e. civilian casualties, i.e. potential war crimes), at least this unit with its great history is on the line in Iraq, risking their lives every day.
So to connect the real 101st Airborne, even tangenitally, with the "101st keyboarders," is an unfortunate smear of a real fighting unit.
Perhaps "CHICKEN*** keyboarders" or "Chickenhawk keyboarders" would be a better descriptive?
But other than that, a "Well Done" to Mr. Dave Sirota, who is undertaking the mighty task of exposing Washington (and the nation's) legions of PRESS CORPSE WHORES and TOADIES as the lying, war-promoting flunkies that they are.
SOLDIER: 101st Keyboard Brigade Refuses to Answer Hypocrisy
by David Sirota
08.02.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/soldier-101st-keyboard-b_b_26305.html
The New Republic was one of the strongest and most aggressive voices pushing for the invasion of Iraq. Their editor, Peter Beinart, led the charge, attacking Democrats who dared to question the move. He and the magazine have yet to seriously consider how easy it is to advocate for a massive military operation based on lies when the advocates themselves never have to face the blood-and-guts consequences of their advocacy.
Now, of course, the New Republic and Beinart would like everyone to forget their record, as Beinart pushes a new book trying to position himself as a "liberal" foreign policy guru and a chest-thumping "hawk." But at least one Army lieutenant catches Beinart and his magazine in some dishonest and grossly self-serving editing.
Here's an excerpt from a piece by Second Lt. John Renehan in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education:
"In 2004, shortly before I left for basic training, The New Republic ran a piece in which Peter Beinart, then the magazine's editor, bemoaned the increasingly narrow demographics of those who serve and the consequent emergence of 'two countries' -- one that serves, and a second, more-affluent one that thinks of service as a thing done by other Americans. Notably, Beinart admitted his own mixed feelings on being a member of the nonserving elite, wondering aloud what he might say when a child of his someday asks, 'What did you do in the terror war, Daddy?' Impressed, I wrote a letter to Beinart praising his frankness and noting my own decision to join the military -- one prompted by similar callings of conscience. Then I offered him what I called a 'public-spirited challenge': One of The New Republic's own should serve, and the magazine should write about it...It was a naïve sort of thing to write. My girlfriend took a look at the letter and said, 'You know they're never going to print this, don't you?' I did. But they did print it -- with a notable omission. My 'public-spirited challenge' had been excised, leaving only praise for Beinart."
The netroots have labeled people like Beinart and his "hawkish" friends in the punditocracy as members of the 101st Fighting Keyboard Brigade - authors/insiders/operatives who are "very enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it." The fact that members of the 101st would resort to selectively editing an Army lieutenant's sincere letter to the editor in order to dishonestly heap praise on themselves and avoid facing the tough questions about their behavior tells you all you need to know about how unprincipled these people really are. In their comfortable bubble, war is all just a fun little political game based on Washington's false definition of "strength" as a politician willing to sit in their guarded, air conditioned Beltway office and call in airstrikes and ground assaults - regardless of the consequences for the targets or America's national security.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
WashPost cites "power and sophistication of missiles" used vs Israel in Lebanon. well, duh...
This WaPo "Weapons" article, while mostly accurate, demonstrates one of the Washington Post's two favored propaganda techniques. Well, make that "Three" favorite propaganda techniques.
#1. Technique #1. of course is "say/write nothing; if we don't report it, we can pretend we didn't know!"
The ultimate example of this technique, of course, is the death camps of Hitler (and Stalin), where the "Good press in wartime" simply did NOT report, "Today, a trainload of victims from (Poland, Italy, France, etc., take your pick) arrived at camp _____; as with previous such trainloads, the victims will never be seen again." By NOT reporting, the victims simply DO_NOT_EXIST. DNE - a mathematical notation that is technique #1. in human propaganda.
OK, to get technical, we will expand our discussion of Propaganda Techniques to cover a few more categories:
#2. Technique #2., of course, would be "Accentuate the bravery and virtues of your side!"
#3. and the closely related third pillar of propaganda, Technique #3. ACCENTUATE the NEGATIVES of your opponents:
"They are evil, criminal, subhuman deviant scum! They breed like vermin, are treacherous liars, brutes, rapists, and murderers, and they will breed and devour resources and steal from good citizens, so to befoul our beloved motherland/fatherland/great nation/etc."
Which brings us up to the WASHINGTON POST's more sophisticated techniques, which are,
#4. Presents ALL issues in terms of a "He said, she said" format, or the "Horse race handicapping" that political pundits so favor over boring and tedious discussion of issues and policy.
For example, TORTURE. In the case of the Bush administration's CLEAR and UNAMBIGUOUS SUPPORT OF TORTURE, we can blend Technique #4. Straight into the more primordial step #3. "The terrorists deserved it! THE VICTIMS (of torture) ARE TO BLAME! And besides, it wasn't official policy - WATCH OUR KANGAROO COURT show-trials CONVICT little ol' female VOLUNTEER PRIVATES of 'abuse' - as their commanders GET PROMOTED for instigating the sadism and humiliation and dehumanization process in the first place!" THAT (those kangaroo court show trials - the ultimate 'he said/she said') PROVES that WE DIDN'T KNOW NUTHING 'bout TORTURE, we swear on a stack of bibles!"
Another excellent example of technique #4. would be the campaign of Al Gore vs George W. Bush in the summer of 2000, when the craven media - in complicit support of the RIGHT-WING TAX CUTS for BILLION-DOLLAR CORPORATIONS agenda, including tax rebates for media conglomerates, and further consolidation powers for those conglomerates -threw their entire editorial and 'news' weight behind that TAX CUTS agenda.
Thus instead of reporting "Texas Governor Bush SLASHED preschool, after-school, and healthcare for poor children in Texas, so to give Texas' WEALTHIEST CORPORATIONS HUGE TAX BREAKS," the WaPost instead wrote up the entire 2000 campaign as "Bush says this, Gore says that" even in cases where (for example) the Bush campaign was just making facts up, claiming progress in Texas public education (using misleading statistics to MASK the above-mentioned BUDGET CUTS) or nonexistent environmental programs, etc.
WHICH brings us up to technique #5, the technique of this WP "weapons" story.
#5. SOUND TECHNICAL, OFFICIAL, authoritative, informative - even if you might not be saying much.
In this case, "the United State AND Israel have been CAUGHT OFF GUARD... by the power and sophistication of the missiles and rockets of Hezbollah."
WELL, DUH!
Hezbollah targets have been on the RECEIVING END of US-made HELLFIRE, MAVERICK, and god-only-knows what other US missiles over the past decade, and in wartime, opponents tend to COPY each other's weaponry. In W.W.II a SINGLE technological advantage (radar, sonar, water-injection under high turbo boost; jet engines, swept wings, proximity fuses, etc.) could spell the difference between life and death. Opposing armies, navies, and airfleets WOULD COPY their enemies technology in months - W.W.II only lasted 4 years from official US involvement, so ALL of America's advance in radar, jet engines, and nuclear technology occurred in that brief time span.
Today, advanced surface-to-surface missiles are available on the open weapons market - indeed, America LOVES NOTHING MORE than trading weaponry (especially high-dollar systems) for ARAB PETRODOLLARS. (This week marks the Farnborough Air Show, where American weapons manufacturers join their European and Asian counterparts, TRYING their damnedest TO SELL THE MOST MURDEROUS weapons they can devise.)
SO, if US and Israeli analysts are "surprised" that Hezbollah has finally gotten their hands on some recent-model missiles, it is because they are living in a myopic, looking-glass dream world.
Even more to the point, in 1964 two powerful US Navy ships, operating in the "blue water" off the Vietnam coast, CLAIMED that they were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats - and the US Navy, and America itself - used this phantom, NONEXISTENT ATTACK as an excuse to START A WAR.
Not exactly the US Navy's shinning moment of honor, the USS Lester Maddox and Turner Joy claiming "we were attacked by little ol' NVA plywood torpedo boats over the night! Really! Even if we do NOT have A SINGLE SCRATCH (much less wounded crew, much less battle damage) to point out as proof."
How did the mighty US Navy, and the even Mightier United States, use a NONEXISTENT ATTACK as an excuse to launch a war???
-ans: because the Navy truly was paranoid that NVA torpedo boats would be able to sink a US Navy destroyer, not with torpedoes, but with GUIDED MISSILES.
THAT was back in 1964.
So, today, the Washington Post is joining the Right-Wing chorus (Fox News: "All war, all the time") in trumpeting "IRAN SUPPLIES HEZBOLLAH TERRORISTS!"
We don't know exactly how much Iran supplies Hezbollah, but then again, we couldn't tell you the specific details of who supplied the Jewish Irgun terrorists who fought and bombed Arabs AND BRITISH officials to "win" Israel after WWII.
So, even a mild STEP BACK from today's events, to the long historical view, illustrates that, #1. the US blue water navy was paranoid of guided missile attacks - WAY BACK in 1964;
and, #2. IF the United State's excuse for attacking Iraq was that it had a sophisticated WMD capability in full production.... then it is pretty stupid to think that a well armed, funded, organized, and supplied militia hasn't tried to obtain 'off-the-shelf' surface-to-surface missiles.
THANKS, Washington Post, for your alarmist and oh-so UNINFORMATIVE article, that OMITS ANY HISTORICAL CONTEXT.
And all that technical gobbledygook that tells us so very little.
Arming of Hezbollah Reveals U.S. and Israeli Blind Spots
By MARK MAZZETTI and THOM SHANKER
Published: July 19, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/world/middleeast/19missile.html?ex=1310961600&en=f924f46388609f34&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
WASHINGTON, July 18 — The power and sophistication of the missile and rocket arsenal that Hezbollah has used in recent days has caught the United States and Israel off guard, and officials in both countries are just now learning the extent to which the militant group has succeeded in getting weapons from Iran and Syria.
While the Bush administration has stated that cracking down on weapons proliferation is one of its top priorities, the arming of Hezbollah shows the blind spots of American and other Western intelligence services in assessing the threat, officials from across those governments said.
American and Israeli officials said the successful attack last Friday on an Israeli naval vessel was the strongest evidence to date of direct support by Iran to Hezbollah. The attack was carried out with a sophisticated antiship cruise missile, the C-802, an Iranian-made variant of the Chinese Silkworm, an American intelligence official said.
At the same time, American and Israeli officials cautioned that they had found no evidence that Iranian operatives working in Lebanon launched the antiship missile themselves.
But neither Jerusalem nor Washington had any idea that Hezbollah had such a missile in its arsenal, the officials said, adding that the Israeli ship had not even activated its missile defense system because intelligence assessments had not identified a threat from such a radar-guided cruise missile.
They said they had also been surprised by the advances that Hezbollah had made in improving what had been crude rockets — for example, attaching cluster bombs as warheads, or filling an explosive shell with ball bearings that have devastating effect.
The Bush administration has long sought to focus attention on Iranian missile proliferation, and regularly discusses with journalists intelligence evidence of those activities. But American officials in Washington made clear this week that they were reluctant to detail Iran’s arming of Hezbollah in the current conflict.
The reason, according to officials across the government, was a desire by the Bush administration to contain the conflict to Israeli and Hezbollah forces, and not to enlarge the diplomatic tasks by making Iranian missile supplies, or even those of Syria, a central question for now.
Still, some officials in Washington admitted to being blindsided by the abilities of Hezbollah’s arsenal.
“You have to acknowledge the obvious — we’ve seen a new capability in striking the naval vessel and in the number of casualties that have been sustained from the Hezbollah missile attacks,” a Bush administration official said.
“In the past, we’d see three, four, maybe eight launches at any given time if Hezbollah was feeling feisty,” the official added. “Now we see them arriving in large clusters, and with a range and even certain accuracy we have not seen in the past.”
The officials interviewed agreed to discuss classified intelligence assessments about Hezbollah’s capabilities only on condition of anonymity.
While Iranian missile supplies to Hezbollah, either by sea or overland via Syria, were well known, officials said the current conflict also indicated that some of the rockets in Hezbollah’s arsenal — including a 220-millimeter rocket used in a deadly attack on a railway site in Haifa on Sunday — were built in Syria.
“The Israelis did forensics, and found several were Syrian-made,” said David Schenker, who this spring became a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy after four years working on Middle East issues at the Pentagon. “Everybody recognizes that Syria has played an important role in facilitating transshipment — but not supplying their own missiles to Hezbollah.”
Officials have since confirmed that the warhead on the Syrian rocket was filled with ball bearings — a method of destruction used frequently in suicide bombings but not in warhead technology.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said one Western intelligence official, speaking about the warhead.
But it was Friday’s successful launching of a C-802 cruise missile that most alarmed officials in Washington and Jerusalem.
Iran began buying dozens of those sophisticated antiship missiles from the Chinese during the 1990’s, until the United States pressured Beijing to cease the sales.
Until Friday, however, Western intelligence services did not know that Iran had managed to ship C-802 missiles to Hezbollah.
Officials said it was likely that Iran trained Hezbollah fighters on how to successfully fire and guide the missiles, and that members of Iran’s Al Quds force — the faction of the Revolutionary Guards that trains foreign forces — would not necessarily have to be on the scene to launch the C-802.
At the same time, some experts said Iran was not likely to deploy such a sophisticated weapon without also sending Revolutionary Guard crews with the expertise to fire the missile.
An administration official said intelligence reports have concluded that a small number of Iranians are currently operating in Lebanon, but the official declined to disclose their number or mission.
More Articles in International »
#1. Technique #1. of course is "say/write nothing; if we don't report it, we can pretend we didn't know!"
The ultimate example of this technique, of course, is the death camps of Hitler (and Stalin), where the "Good press in wartime" simply did NOT report, "Today, a trainload of victims from (Poland, Italy, France, etc., take your pick) arrived at camp _____; as with previous such trainloads, the victims will never be seen again." By NOT reporting, the victims simply DO_NOT_EXIST. DNE - a mathematical notation that is technique #1. in human propaganda.
OK, to get technical, we will expand our discussion of Propaganda Techniques to cover a few more categories:
#2. Technique #2., of course, would be "Accentuate the bravery and virtues of your side!"
#3. and the closely related third pillar of propaganda, Technique #3. ACCENTUATE the NEGATIVES of your opponents:
"They are evil, criminal, subhuman deviant scum! They breed like vermin, are treacherous liars, brutes, rapists, and murderers, and they will breed and devour resources and steal from good citizens, so to befoul our beloved motherland/fatherland/great nation/etc."
Which brings us up to the WASHINGTON POST's more sophisticated techniques, which are,
#4. Presents ALL issues in terms of a "He said, she said" format, or the "Horse race handicapping" that political pundits so favor over boring and tedious discussion of issues and policy.
For example, TORTURE. In the case of the Bush administration's CLEAR and UNAMBIGUOUS SUPPORT OF TORTURE, we can blend Technique #4. Straight into the more primordial step #3. "The terrorists deserved it! THE VICTIMS (of torture) ARE TO BLAME! And besides, it wasn't official policy - WATCH OUR KANGAROO COURT show-trials CONVICT little ol' female VOLUNTEER PRIVATES of 'abuse' - as their commanders GET PROMOTED for instigating the sadism and humiliation and dehumanization process in the first place!" THAT (those kangaroo court show trials - the ultimate 'he said/she said') PROVES that WE DIDN'T KNOW NUTHING 'bout TORTURE, we swear on a stack of bibles!"
Another excellent example of technique #4. would be the campaign of Al Gore vs George W. Bush in the summer of 2000, when the craven media - in complicit support of the RIGHT-WING TAX CUTS for BILLION-DOLLAR CORPORATIONS agenda, including tax rebates for media conglomerates, and further consolidation powers for those conglomerates -threw their entire editorial and 'news' weight behind that TAX CUTS agenda.
Thus instead of reporting "Texas Governor Bush SLASHED preschool, after-school, and healthcare for poor children in Texas, so to give Texas' WEALTHIEST CORPORATIONS HUGE TAX BREAKS," the WaPost instead wrote up the entire 2000 campaign as "Bush says this, Gore says that" even in cases where (for example) the Bush campaign was just making facts up, claiming progress in Texas public education (using misleading statistics to MASK the above-mentioned BUDGET CUTS) or nonexistent environmental programs, etc.
WHICH brings us up to technique #5, the technique of this WP "weapons" story.
#5. SOUND TECHNICAL, OFFICIAL, authoritative, informative - even if you might not be saying much.
In this case, "the United State AND Israel have been CAUGHT OFF GUARD... by the power and sophistication of the missiles and rockets of Hezbollah."
WELL, DUH!
Hezbollah targets have been on the RECEIVING END of US-made HELLFIRE, MAVERICK, and god-only-knows what other US missiles over the past decade, and in wartime, opponents tend to COPY each other's weaponry. In W.W.II a SINGLE technological advantage (radar, sonar, water-injection under high turbo boost; jet engines, swept wings, proximity fuses, etc.) could spell the difference between life and death. Opposing armies, navies, and airfleets WOULD COPY their enemies technology in months - W.W.II only lasted 4 years from official US involvement, so ALL of America's advance in radar, jet engines, and nuclear technology occurred in that brief time span.
Today, advanced surface-to-surface missiles are available on the open weapons market - indeed, America LOVES NOTHING MORE than trading weaponry (especially high-dollar systems) for ARAB PETRODOLLARS. (This week marks the Farnborough Air Show, where American weapons manufacturers join their European and Asian counterparts, TRYING their damnedest TO SELL THE MOST MURDEROUS weapons they can devise.)
SO, if US and Israeli analysts are "surprised" that Hezbollah has finally gotten their hands on some recent-model missiles, it is because they are living in a myopic, looking-glass dream world.
Even more to the point, in 1964 two powerful US Navy ships, operating in the "blue water" off the Vietnam coast, CLAIMED that they were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats - and the US Navy, and America itself - used this phantom, NONEXISTENT ATTACK as an excuse to START A WAR.
Not exactly the US Navy's shinning moment of honor, the USS Lester Maddox and Turner Joy claiming "we were attacked by little ol' NVA plywood torpedo boats over the night! Really! Even if we do NOT have A SINGLE SCRATCH (much less wounded crew, much less battle damage) to point out as proof."
How did the mighty US Navy, and the even Mightier United States, use a NONEXISTENT ATTACK as an excuse to launch a war???
-ans: because the Navy truly was paranoid that NVA torpedo boats would be able to sink a US Navy destroyer, not with torpedoes, but with GUIDED MISSILES.
THAT was back in 1964.
So, today, the Washington Post is joining the Right-Wing chorus (Fox News: "All war, all the time") in trumpeting "IRAN SUPPLIES HEZBOLLAH TERRORISTS!"
We don't know exactly how much Iran supplies Hezbollah, but then again, we couldn't tell you the specific details of who supplied the Jewish Irgun terrorists who fought and bombed Arabs AND BRITISH officials to "win" Israel after WWII.
So, even a mild STEP BACK from today's events, to the long historical view, illustrates that, #1. the US blue water navy was paranoid of guided missile attacks - WAY BACK in 1964;
and, #2. IF the United State's excuse for attacking Iraq was that it had a sophisticated WMD capability in full production.... then it is pretty stupid to think that a well armed, funded, organized, and supplied militia hasn't tried to obtain 'off-the-shelf' surface-to-surface missiles.
THANKS, Washington Post, for your alarmist and oh-so UNINFORMATIVE article, that OMITS ANY HISTORICAL CONTEXT.
And all that technical gobbledygook that tells us so very little.
Arming of Hezbollah Reveals U.S. and Israeli Blind Spots
By MARK MAZZETTI and THOM SHANKER
Published: July 19, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/world/middleeast/19missile.html?ex=1310961600&en=f924f46388609f34&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
WASHINGTON, July 18 — The power and sophistication of the missile and rocket arsenal that Hezbollah has used in recent days has caught the United States and Israel off guard, and officials in both countries are just now learning the extent to which the militant group has succeeded in getting weapons from Iran and Syria.
While the Bush administration has stated that cracking down on weapons proliferation is one of its top priorities, the arming of Hezbollah shows the blind spots of American and other Western intelligence services in assessing the threat, officials from across those governments said.
American and Israeli officials said the successful attack last Friday on an Israeli naval vessel was the strongest evidence to date of direct support by Iran to Hezbollah. The attack was carried out with a sophisticated antiship cruise missile, the C-802, an Iranian-made variant of the Chinese Silkworm, an American intelligence official said.
At the same time, American and Israeli officials cautioned that they had found no evidence that Iranian operatives working in Lebanon launched the antiship missile themselves.
But neither Jerusalem nor Washington had any idea that Hezbollah had such a missile in its arsenal, the officials said, adding that the Israeli ship had not even activated its missile defense system because intelligence assessments had not identified a threat from such a radar-guided cruise missile.
They said they had also been surprised by the advances that Hezbollah had made in improving what had been crude rockets — for example, attaching cluster bombs as warheads, or filling an explosive shell with ball bearings that have devastating effect.
The Bush administration has long sought to focus attention on Iranian missile proliferation, and regularly discusses with journalists intelligence evidence of those activities. But American officials in Washington made clear this week that they were reluctant to detail Iran’s arming of Hezbollah in the current conflict.
The reason, according to officials across the government, was a desire by the Bush administration to contain the conflict to Israeli and Hezbollah forces, and not to enlarge the diplomatic tasks by making Iranian missile supplies, or even those of Syria, a central question for now.
Still, some officials in Washington admitted to being blindsided by the abilities of Hezbollah’s arsenal.
“You have to acknowledge the obvious — we’ve seen a new capability in striking the naval vessel and in the number of casualties that have been sustained from the Hezbollah missile attacks,” a Bush administration official said.
“In the past, we’d see three, four, maybe eight launches at any given time if Hezbollah was feeling feisty,” the official added. “Now we see them arriving in large clusters, and with a range and even certain accuracy we have not seen in the past.”
The officials interviewed agreed to discuss classified intelligence assessments about Hezbollah’s capabilities only on condition of anonymity.
While Iranian missile supplies to Hezbollah, either by sea or overland via Syria, were well known, officials said the current conflict also indicated that some of the rockets in Hezbollah’s arsenal — including a 220-millimeter rocket used in a deadly attack on a railway site in Haifa on Sunday — were built in Syria.
“The Israelis did forensics, and found several were Syrian-made,” said David Schenker, who this spring became a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy after four years working on Middle East issues at the Pentagon. “Everybody recognizes that Syria has played an important role in facilitating transshipment — but not supplying their own missiles to Hezbollah.”
Officials have since confirmed that the warhead on the Syrian rocket was filled with ball bearings — a method of destruction used frequently in suicide bombings but not in warhead technology.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said one Western intelligence official, speaking about the warhead.
But it was Friday’s successful launching of a C-802 cruise missile that most alarmed officials in Washington and Jerusalem.
Iran began buying dozens of those sophisticated antiship missiles from the Chinese during the 1990’s, until the United States pressured Beijing to cease the sales.
Until Friday, however, Western intelligence services did not know that Iran had managed to ship C-802 missiles to Hezbollah.
Officials said it was likely that Iran trained Hezbollah fighters on how to successfully fire and guide the missiles, and that members of Iran’s Al Quds force — the faction of the Revolutionary Guards that trains foreign forces — would not necessarily have to be on the scene to launch the C-802.
At the same time, some experts said Iran was not likely to deploy such a sophisticated weapon without also sending Revolutionary Guard crews with the expertise to fire the missile.
An administration official said intelligence reports have concluded that a small number of Iranians are currently operating in Lebanon, but the official declined to disclose their number or mission.
More Articles in International »
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Media Whore Howard Kurtz tries to pimp ME conflagueration as "Who is to blame? He said-she said" story...
DAMN YOU, media whore Howard Kurtz!
You are nothing but a WHORE at the WHORE WashPost. You are out there PIMPING B***S***, SLAPPING AROUND HONEST reporters (like Helen Thomas) while YOU COLLECT YOUR PAYCHECK LIKE A GOOD Nazi town official, "We have NO knowledge of that sprawling camp just outside town, the one with the smokestacks that smell of burned flesh and human soot."
In this case, Kurtz PRETENDS that the reporting on the Mideast at war is a "He said - she said story."
AS IF the TORTURE, LIES TO WAR, and QUAGMIRE in Iraq are somehow the fault of those reporters who have tried to contest the administration's voluminous lies and propaganda.
AS IF the Middle East blooming into all out war was an INEVITABLITY.
IF all-out WAR in the middle-east is SO DAMN INEVITABLE, WHY didn't Bush and Cheney run on "we promise to attack, invade, and occupy Iraq in 2003, and then EXPAND our war to the rest of the mideast in 2006" when they first ran for the White House....IN 2000?
It was then NO MYSTERY that Al Qaida wanted to ATTACK AMERICAN TARGETS - they HAD DONE SO, US embassies in Africa, Muslim extremist attacks on the NY World Trade Towers in 1993, and the US Navy destroyer USS Cole was attacked in Yemen in October of 2000... JUST as the Bush-Cheney-Rice-Powell-Rumsfeld team were finalizing their campaign strategy and plans for the November election just weeks later.
Indeed, to show how malevolent the Bush team was, October of 2000 was a PERFECT OPPORTUNITY to ATTACK the Clinton-Gore administration re the terror attack on the Cole... but this was one tactic the Bush team did not use very vocally in those final weeks of the 2000 campaign.
Why? Because Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other members of the soon-to-be Bush administration had ALREADY SIGNED the PNAC Manifesto, calling for US military force to attack Iraq and expell the regime of Saddam Hussein from that country, and the PNACers (including Jeb Bush, the gov. of Florida and then candidate George W. Bush's brother) DID NOT WANT TO CREATE A FUSS about the "war on terror."
They wanted to WAIT until they had won (stole) the White House, and THEN they would RELENTLESSLY FIND AN EXCUSE to START A WAR AGAINST IRAQ. As a prelude to a war with Iran, leading to an eventual occupation of Afghanistan, and then, ultimately, to the very doorsteps of China and Russia, the oil-rich Central Asian "-stan" states like Uzbekistan and Kazkhstan.
THIS WAS THE HEART AND SOUL of the PNAC agenda, which Cheney, Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Wolfowitz, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby HAD ALREADY SIGNED in 1997!
As we now know, their agenda of "Military strength and MORAL CLARITY" means siding with fiercely murderous rogues in the "war on terror" (Uzbekistan, etc.), IGNORING the ongoing genocide in Sudan, ENCOURAGING NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION in India (and, therefore, Pakistan), while using that problem - nuclear proliferation - as yet another excuse to talk about "PREVENTATIVE WAR," with the much-hoped for use of nuclear bunker busters against Iran.... oh yeah, and the DIEBOLDIZATION of the US voting process, a "PRIVATIZED" no receipt, NO VERIFICATION, NO RECOUNT vote system that is not only prone to hacking, BUT DESIGNED TO MAKE HACKING easy and inevitable. (In the 2004 election, EVERY SINGLE VOTING DISCREPENCY went FOR the campaign of George W. Bush.)
Mr. Howard Kurtz is GROSSLY IGNORANT, or CENSORS, ALL of the above facts and stories from his priorities list.
We, the United States of America, did NOT DECLARE WAR on the entire Mideast back in the summer of 2000, when George W. Bush was promising "A MORE HUMBLE FOREIGN POLICY."
BUT, our INTEL AGENCIES - the CIA, FBI, NSA, Hart-Rudman Commission on Terrorism, Gore Commission on Airline security... were ALL 'blinking red" about the threat of CONTINUED TERRORIST ATTACKS on American targets of opportunity.
SO.. how do we make a BEELINE from the "MORE HUMBLE FOREIGN POLICY" bush and cheney PROMISED us Americans in their 2000 campaign, to the NIGHTMARE that is unfolding today?
That's right... Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice DID NOTHING - NOT EVEN a General Traveller's Advisory - to warn American passengers, public, flight crews, or security of the "BLINKING RED LIGHTS" warning "bin Laden DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA."
Then they COVERED UP, WHITEWASHED, STONEWALLED the ANTHRAX ATTACKS on Senator Partrick Leahy and Tom Daschle's offices. AS IF any self-respecting mass-murder-minded A-rab terrorits would target "wimpy-Tom" and *******Leahy... and INCLUDE A WARNING on the letter... when similar letters, sent to the White House, Pentagon, and more prominent targets in the Capitol, would have claimed dozens of lives.
THEN, of course, bush-cheney-rumsfeld launched their little CAKEWALK into Iraq. Remember Rumsfeld's statement, when asked how long the war would continue, he said "A few days, weeks. I don't imagine this war lasting beyond five or six weeks"??
Remember "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"?
Remember ABU GHRAIB TORTURE PHOTOS
According to Howard Kurtz, ALL the above MUST BE THE FAULT of those who OPPOSE Mr. Bush and his two stolen elections.
<< Is it all Bush's fault?
Could the president have done something to prevent this? And why isn't he doing much now, other than using the S-word with Tony Blair in front of an open mike? (More on that in a moment.)
Our polarized political system simply doesn't allow for the idea that ancient enemies could be at war halfway around the world without the U.S. either bearing some responsibility or having the ability to shut it down. The White House must have miscalculated, not been engaged enough, screwed things up by invading Iraq. >>
Mr. Kurtz, you are a great example of a self-serving Media Whore, and furthermore your lies of ommission and commission give substance to the "anti-semitic" charge of a "JEWISH CONTROLLED MEDIA."
In case you didn't figure it out, THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANCIENT ENEMIES ENGAGING IN A FIGHT, and the United States of America INSERTING ITSELF INTO THAT FIGHT so to steal billions of gallons of oil.
Is It All Bush's Fault?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; 8:26 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html
Whether or not this is "World War III," in Newt Gingrich's phrase, the violence in the Middle East is straining the abilities of the media machine--and maybe our ability to absorb bad news.
The constant escalation of the battles between Israel and both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is beginning to devastate Lebanon and now has missiles landing in Haifa, is putting the cable news channels on a war footing. Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson have gone to the Mideast, joining the likes of Anderson Cooper. But there's still a split-screen mentality on the morning shows, with segments on new Marilyn Monroe photos ("Good Morning America") and diets ("Today") competing with war coverage.
Overshadowed, for the moment, is the carnage in Iraq (Suicide Blast Kills 26 gets a short AP wire on Page A-12 of yesterday's Post); the nuclear showdown with North Korea; the nuclear showdown with Iran, and the bombing of trains in India. It does seem, to the untrained eye, that the world is falling apart as fast as the ceiling panels in Boston's Big Dig tunnel.
But as the debate rages over why the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon precipitated this crisis by attacking Israeli soldiers, and whether Israel's military response could lead to a full-blown regional war, there is one question starting to bubble up in partisan circles in America, and one that you'll have no trouble recognizing:
Here is what some liberals are saying. Josh Marshall : "What stands out to me right now is the seeming irrelevance and marginality of the United States.
"Where is America? Whoever you believe is right or wrong in this mess, I doubt very much that the powers directly involved have the will and ability to de-escalate the situation. Some want to. Others don't . . .
"Some might say that the Bush administration's silence is acquiescence or approval of the Israeli raids into Lebanon and Gaza. But I think it's more than that. This is silence born of over-extension and policy exhaustion. Thinking back through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s -- with key crises in each decade -- I don't think there's any example where an American administration has so thoroughly marginalized itself or shown such impotence and irrelevance."
Arianna Huffington : "Given the tragic feel of recent events, his tone couldn't have been more false.
"It's a very sinking feeling, watching this all-hat, no-cattle puppet who was put in power by the GOP elite back in a very different time, when all it thought we needed was a CEO to help manage the good times, suddenly finding himself presiding over a series of cataclysmic events.
Watching Bush meander around the world stage is like watching an amateurish production of Shakespeare. We need Olivier and all we've got is this community theater ham."
Frank Rich : "So what's the latest White House strategy to distract from the escalating mayhem? Yet another P.R. scheme, in this case drawn from the playbook of fall 2003, when the president countered news of the growing Iraq insurgency by going around the media 'filter' to speak to the people through softball interviews with regional media outlets. Thus the past two weeks have brought the spectacle of Mr. Bush yukking it up at Graceland, flattering immigrant workers at a Dunkin' Donuts, patronizing a children's lemonade stand in Raleigh, N.C., and meeting the press in such comfy settings as an outside-the-filter press conference (in Chicago) and 'Larry King Live.' The people, surely, are feeling better already about all that nasty business abroad."
The newsmagazine columnists also weigh in. Time's Joe Klein :
"Last week's Middle East confrontation had Bush-folly written all over it--and not just because the Iranian government's cowboy faction might be strutting its stuff. Bush's failure to patiently broker a real Middle East settlement--mostly because he refused to speak to Yasser Arafat or demand concessions from the Israelis--helped lead to Israel's unilateral withdrawal policy in Gaza. Peace isn't made unilaterally."
Newsweek's Michael Hirsh :
"It is the calls Bush didn't--or couldn't--make that might mean the difference in containing this new Mideast conflict. As part of his policy of isolating terror-supporting groups and nations, the Bush administration has no relationship with any of the other parties at war or the states behind them. That apparently means no dialogue, even through back channels, with Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. Senior U.S. officials also said Bush and Rice had no intention of appointing a special envoy at this time . . . As a result, the president must watch and hope while his whole Mideast legacy--his goal of transforming a region that is the primary source for Islamist terrorism--stands at risk."
The right, as you would expect, is not pleased. Power Line's Paul Mirengoff rips the Dems:
"In an obscene attempt to obtain political mileage, the Democrats are claiming that President Bush is responsible for the outbreak of war in the Middle East. Howard Dean claims that the war would not have occurred if the Democrats had been in power because the Dems would have worked the past six years to prevent it. And Sen. Dodd has made basically the same assertion. Meanwhile, Rep. Jane Harmon contends that the Bush administration is to blame for our poor to non-existent relations with Syria and Iran which, she says, prevent us from using diplomacy to end the crisis.
"Once again, the Democrats are taking partisan politics to a previously unknown low. No past opposition party has attempted to blame the outbreak of an Arab-Israeli war on the party in power. Unless I'm mistaken, the Republicans didn't blame President Johnson for the war in 1967; the Dems didn't blame President Nixon for the war in 1973; nor did they blame President Reagan for the hostilities in Lebanon that occurred on his watch. Moreover, it is especially reprehensible for the Dems to be taking such a low road now, when unlike before, the U.S. is in the middle of essentially the same war as Israel -- the war on terrorism."
Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol seems to favor a wider war:
"While Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.
"The right response is renewed strength--in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.
"But such a military strike would take a while to organize. In the meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the silly G8 summit in St. Petersburg--a summit that will most likely convey a message of moral confusion and political indecision--to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies. This is our war, too."
I await the liberal response: "From the neocons who brought you Iraq . . . "
Slate's Fred Kaplan sounds nostalgic for Henry Kissinger:
"Where's the shuttle diplomacy? In any other administration, at least since Nixon's, the secretary of state would have flown to the Middle East days ago, would already have touched down in Tel Aviv, Beirut, and Damascus--maybe more than once--to hammer out a cease-fire, a settlement, or at least some sort of compromise to keep the conflict from expanding."
Marc Lynch , a political scientist at Williams College, doesn't trust Bush on the world stage:
"American public diplomacy has been virtually invisible on all this, at a time when it is more urgently needed than ever. I can understand this -- you have to have a policy if you want to try to explain or defend it, and right now the Bush administration doesn't seem to have any policy at all beyond supporting Israel and issuing calls for 'restraint' which Israel promptly and publicly rejects. And what administration official wants to subject him or herself to tough Arab questioning on live TV right now? The idea that Palestinian-Israeli relations could be cordoned off from wider Middle East questions was always misguided. It's now become actively destructive to all of our interests in the region.
"The only reason I'm not calling more loudly for Bush to get involved and take a leadership role in the conflict is the expectation that he would probably do the wrong thing. But at this point, doing nothing is, in fact, doing something. The Bush administration right now looks weak, confused, and vaguely pathetic."
Americablog's John Aravosis also brings the debate back to W.:
"If Hezbollah missiles are killing Israelis, and Hezbollah's actions are supported by Lebanon's Shia population, doesn't Israel have the right to retaliate against the Shia in Lebanon? At the very least against their utilities and their roads? Putting aside the wisdom geo-politically of such action, morally isn't it any country's right to strike back?
"Or, if you think that the Shia in Lebanon don't share responsibility, then do you also believe that Americans who supported Bush, and who voted for him twice, and who supported the war in Iraq don't share any of the blame for the mayhem Bush has unleashed over the past six years?"
All right, how did the morning papers deal with the president's open-mike curse?
The LAT uses the S-word: "President Bush thinks some of his fellow leaders on the world stage talk too much -- way too much. In a recording of luncheon chatter captured by Russian television, the president also is ready with some very undiplomatic language when talking about the Middle East."
So does the WP : "President Bush should know that in Russia, someone is always listening. In this case, it was the rest of the world."
The New York Post puts the word in the lead .
The NYT calls it a "vulgarity": "For anyone who has ever wondered what President Bush sounds like when the microphones are off, the answer, at least at lunchtime on Monday, was blunt to the point of profane, laced with a wise-guy edge and, like anyone forced to make small talk, willing to fall back on safe topics like air travel."
USA Today goes only with an "unvarnished assessment": "President Bush got bit again Monday by the open-microphone bug."
CNN carried the word without bleeping; the other networks did not.
Says ABC's Jake Tapper: "If the president is going to curse on camera is it too much to ask that he not appoint Federal Communications Commissioners who will fine us for broadcasting it?"
Israel knows something about the new media: Blogger Roger Simon gets a podcast interview with Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon at Pajamas Media.
The following helps explain why Hillary Clinton hired a Salon columnist as her ambassador to the blogs. First there was this NYT lead:
"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, returning to her red-state ties, chastised Democrats Saturday for taking on issues that arouse conservatives and turn out Republican voters rather than finding consensus on mainstream subjects."
Atrios , among other liberal bloggers, said the Times had misinterpreted the senator's remarks, and included part of the transcript:
"But with the Republican majority, that's not their priority. So we do other things, we do things that are controversial, we do things that try to inflame their base so that they can turn people out and vote for their candidates. I think we are wasting time, we are wasting lives, we need to get back to making America work again, in a bipartisan, nonpartisan way."
Blogger Susie Madrak was soon contacted by the newest member of Hillaryland:
"Peter Daou. who's Clinton's blog advisor, writes to tell me the Times story was uniquely misinterpreted by Anne Kornbluth, that this is Hillary's standard stump speech and that if you go back and read it again in context, she's speaking in the 'we' part as what the Republicans do, not the Democrats. Which does make a lot more sense."
You are nothing but a WHORE at the WHORE WashPost. You are out there PIMPING B***S***, SLAPPING AROUND HONEST reporters (like Helen Thomas) while YOU COLLECT YOUR PAYCHECK LIKE A GOOD Nazi town official, "We have NO knowledge of that sprawling camp just outside town, the one with the smokestacks that smell of burned flesh and human soot."
In this case, Kurtz PRETENDS that the reporting on the Mideast at war is a "He said - she said story."
AS IF the TORTURE, LIES TO WAR, and QUAGMIRE in Iraq are somehow the fault of those reporters who have tried to contest the administration's voluminous lies and propaganda.
AS IF the Middle East blooming into all out war was an INEVITABLITY.
IF all-out WAR in the middle-east is SO DAMN INEVITABLE, WHY didn't Bush and Cheney run on "we promise to attack, invade, and occupy Iraq in 2003, and then EXPAND our war to the rest of the mideast in 2006" when they first ran for the White House....IN 2000?
It was then NO MYSTERY that Al Qaida wanted to ATTACK AMERICAN TARGETS - they HAD DONE SO, US embassies in Africa, Muslim extremist attacks on the NY World Trade Towers in 1993, and the US Navy destroyer USS Cole was attacked in Yemen in October of 2000... JUST as the Bush-Cheney-Rice-Powell-Rumsfeld team were finalizing their campaign strategy and plans for the November election just weeks later.
Indeed, to show how malevolent the Bush team was, October of 2000 was a PERFECT OPPORTUNITY to ATTACK the Clinton-Gore administration re the terror attack on the Cole... but this was one tactic the Bush team did not use very vocally in those final weeks of the 2000 campaign.
Why? Because Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other members of the soon-to-be Bush administration had ALREADY SIGNED the PNAC Manifesto, calling for US military force to attack Iraq and expell the regime of Saddam Hussein from that country, and the PNACers (including Jeb Bush, the gov. of Florida and then candidate George W. Bush's brother) DID NOT WANT TO CREATE A FUSS about the "war on terror."
They wanted to WAIT until they had won (stole) the White House, and THEN they would RELENTLESSLY FIND AN EXCUSE to START A WAR AGAINST IRAQ. As a prelude to a war with Iran, leading to an eventual occupation of Afghanistan, and then, ultimately, to the very doorsteps of China and Russia, the oil-rich Central Asian "-stan" states like Uzbekistan and Kazkhstan.
THIS WAS THE HEART AND SOUL of the PNAC agenda, which Cheney, Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Wolfowitz, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby HAD ALREADY SIGNED in 1997!
As we now know, their agenda of "Military strength and MORAL CLARITY" means siding with fiercely murderous rogues in the "war on terror" (Uzbekistan, etc.), IGNORING the ongoing genocide in Sudan, ENCOURAGING NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION in India (and, therefore, Pakistan), while using that problem - nuclear proliferation - as yet another excuse to talk about "PREVENTATIVE WAR," with the much-hoped for use of nuclear bunker busters against Iran.... oh yeah, and the DIEBOLDIZATION of the US voting process, a "PRIVATIZED" no receipt, NO VERIFICATION, NO RECOUNT vote system that is not only prone to hacking, BUT DESIGNED TO MAKE HACKING easy and inevitable. (In the 2004 election, EVERY SINGLE VOTING DISCREPENCY went FOR the campaign of George W. Bush.)
Mr. Howard Kurtz is GROSSLY IGNORANT, or CENSORS, ALL of the above facts and stories from his priorities list.
We, the United States of America, did NOT DECLARE WAR on the entire Mideast back in the summer of 2000, when George W. Bush was promising "A MORE HUMBLE FOREIGN POLICY."
BUT, our INTEL AGENCIES - the CIA, FBI, NSA, Hart-Rudman Commission on Terrorism, Gore Commission on Airline security... were ALL 'blinking red" about the threat of CONTINUED TERRORIST ATTACKS on American targets of opportunity.
SO.. how do we make a BEELINE from the "MORE HUMBLE FOREIGN POLICY" bush and cheney PROMISED us Americans in their 2000 campaign, to the NIGHTMARE that is unfolding today?
That's right... Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice DID NOTHING - NOT EVEN a General Traveller's Advisory - to warn American passengers, public, flight crews, or security of the "BLINKING RED LIGHTS" warning "bin Laden DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA."
Then they COVERED UP, WHITEWASHED, STONEWALLED the ANTHRAX ATTACKS on Senator Partrick Leahy and Tom Daschle's offices. AS IF any self-respecting mass-murder-minded A-rab terrorits would target "wimpy-Tom" and *******Leahy... and INCLUDE A WARNING on the letter... when similar letters, sent to the White House, Pentagon, and more prominent targets in the Capitol, would have claimed dozens of lives.
THEN, of course, bush-cheney-rumsfeld launched their little CAKEWALK into Iraq. Remember Rumsfeld's statement, when asked how long the war would continue, he said "A few days, weeks. I don't imagine this war lasting beyond five or six weeks"??
Remember "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"?
Remember ABU GHRAIB TORTURE PHOTOS
According to Howard Kurtz, ALL the above MUST BE THE FAULT of those who OPPOSE Mr. Bush and his two stolen elections.
<< Is it all Bush's fault?
Could the president have done something to prevent this? And why isn't he doing much now, other than using the S-word with Tony Blair in front of an open mike? (More on that in a moment.)
Our polarized political system simply doesn't allow for the idea that ancient enemies could be at war halfway around the world without the U.S. either bearing some responsibility or having the ability to shut it down. The White House must have miscalculated, not been engaged enough, screwed things up by invading Iraq. >>
Mr. Kurtz, you are a great example of a self-serving Media Whore, and furthermore your lies of ommission and commission give substance to the "anti-semitic" charge of a "JEWISH CONTROLLED MEDIA."
In case you didn't figure it out, THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANCIENT ENEMIES ENGAGING IN A FIGHT, and the United States of America INSERTING ITSELF INTO THAT FIGHT so to steal billions of gallons of oil.
Is It All Bush's Fault?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; 8:26 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html
Whether or not this is "World War III," in Newt Gingrich's phrase, the violence in the Middle East is straining the abilities of the media machine--and maybe our ability to absorb bad news.
The constant escalation of the battles between Israel and both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is beginning to devastate Lebanon and now has missiles landing in Haifa, is putting the cable news channels on a war footing. Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson have gone to the Mideast, joining the likes of Anderson Cooper. But there's still a split-screen mentality on the morning shows, with segments on new Marilyn Monroe photos ("Good Morning America") and diets ("Today") competing with war coverage.
Overshadowed, for the moment, is the carnage in Iraq (Suicide Blast Kills 26 gets a short AP wire on Page A-12 of yesterday's Post); the nuclear showdown with North Korea; the nuclear showdown with Iran, and the bombing of trains in India. It does seem, to the untrained eye, that the world is falling apart as fast as the ceiling panels in Boston's Big Dig tunnel.
But as the debate rages over why the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon precipitated this crisis by attacking Israeli soldiers, and whether Israel's military response could lead to a full-blown regional war, there is one question starting to bubble up in partisan circles in America, and one that you'll have no trouble recognizing:
Here is what some liberals are saying. Josh Marshall : "What stands out to me right now is the seeming irrelevance and marginality of the United States.
"Where is America? Whoever you believe is right or wrong in this mess, I doubt very much that the powers directly involved have the will and ability to de-escalate the situation. Some want to. Others don't . . .
"Some might say that the Bush administration's silence is acquiescence or approval of the Israeli raids into Lebanon and Gaza. But I think it's more than that. This is silence born of over-extension and policy exhaustion. Thinking back through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s -- with key crises in each decade -- I don't think there's any example where an American administration has so thoroughly marginalized itself or shown such impotence and irrelevance."
Arianna Huffington : "Given the tragic feel of recent events, his tone couldn't have been more false.
"It's a very sinking feeling, watching this all-hat, no-cattle puppet who was put in power by the GOP elite back in a very different time, when all it thought we needed was a CEO to help manage the good times, suddenly finding himself presiding over a series of cataclysmic events.
Watching Bush meander around the world stage is like watching an amateurish production of Shakespeare. We need Olivier and all we've got is this community theater ham."
Frank Rich : "So what's the latest White House strategy to distract from the escalating mayhem? Yet another P.R. scheme, in this case drawn from the playbook of fall 2003, when the president countered news of the growing Iraq insurgency by going around the media 'filter' to speak to the people through softball interviews with regional media outlets. Thus the past two weeks have brought the spectacle of Mr. Bush yukking it up at Graceland, flattering immigrant workers at a Dunkin' Donuts, patronizing a children's lemonade stand in Raleigh, N.C., and meeting the press in such comfy settings as an outside-the-filter press conference (in Chicago) and 'Larry King Live.' The people, surely, are feeling better already about all that nasty business abroad."
The newsmagazine columnists also weigh in. Time's Joe Klein :
"Last week's Middle East confrontation had Bush-folly written all over it--and not just because the Iranian government's cowboy faction might be strutting its stuff. Bush's failure to patiently broker a real Middle East settlement--mostly because he refused to speak to Yasser Arafat or demand concessions from the Israelis--helped lead to Israel's unilateral withdrawal policy in Gaza. Peace isn't made unilaterally."
Newsweek's Michael Hirsh :
"It is the calls Bush didn't--or couldn't--make that might mean the difference in containing this new Mideast conflict. As part of his policy of isolating terror-supporting groups and nations, the Bush administration has no relationship with any of the other parties at war or the states behind them. That apparently means no dialogue, even through back channels, with Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. Senior U.S. officials also said Bush and Rice had no intention of appointing a special envoy at this time . . . As a result, the president must watch and hope while his whole Mideast legacy--his goal of transforming a region that is the primary source for Islamist terrorism--stands at risk."
The right, as you would expect, is not pleased. Power Line's Paul Mirengoff rips the Dems:
"In an obscene attempt to obtain political mileage, the Democrats are claiming that President Bush is responsible for the outbreak of war in the Middle East. Howard Dean claims that the war would not have occurred if the Democrats had been in power because the Dems would have worked the past six years to prevent it. And Sen. Dodd has made basically the same assertion. Meanwhile, Rep. Jane Harmon contends that the Bush administration is to blame for our poor to non-existent relations with Syria and Iran which, she says, prevent us from using diplomacy to end the crisis.
"Once again, the Democrats are taking partisan politics to a previously unknown low. No past opposition party has attempted to blame the outbreak of an Arab-Israeli war on the party in power. Unless I'm mistaken, the Republicans didn't blame President Johnson for the war in 1967; the Dems didn't blame President Nixon for the war in 1973; nor did they blame President Reagan for the hostilities in Lebanon that occurred on his watch. Moreover, it is especially reprehensible for the Dems to be taking such a low road now, when unlike before, the U.S. is in the middle of essentially the same war as Israel -- the war on terrorism."
Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol seems to favor a wider war:
"While Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.
"The right response is renewed strength--in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.
"But such a military strike would take a while to organize. In the meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the silly G8 summit in St. Petersburg--a summit that will most likely convey a message of moral confusion and political indecision--to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies. This is our war, too."
I await the liberal response: "From the neocons who brought you Iraq . . . "
Slate's Fred Kaplan sounds nostalgic for Henry Kissinger:
"Where's the shuttle diplomacy? In any other administration, at least since Nixon's, the secretary of state would have flown to the Middle East days ago, would already have touched down in Tel Aviv, Beirut, and Damascus--maybe more than once--to hammer out a cease-fire, a settlement, or at least some sort of compromise to keep the conflict from expanding."
Marc Lynch , a political scientist at Williams College, doesn't trust Bush on the world stage:
"American public diplomacy has been virtually invisible on all this, at a time when it is more urgently needed than ever. I can understand this -- you have to have a policy if you want to try to explain or defend it, and right now the Bush administration doesn't seem to have any policy at all beyond supporting Israel and issuing calls for 'restraint' which Israel promptly and publicly rejects. And what administration official wants to subject him or herself to tough Arab questioning on live TV right now? The idea that Palestinian-Israeli relations could be cordoned off from wider Middle East questions was always misguided. It's now become actively destructive to all of our interests in the region.
"The only reason I'm not calling more loudly for Bush to get involved and take a leadership role in the conflict is the expectation that he would probably do the wrong thing. But at this point, doing nothing is, in fact, doing something. The Bush administration right now looks weak, confused, and vaguely pathetic."
Americablog's John Aravosis also brings the debate back to W.:
"If Hezbollah missiles are killing Israelis, and Hezbollah's actions are supported by Lebanon's Shia population, doesn't Israel have the right to retaliate against the Shia in Lebanon? At the very least against their utilities and their roads? Putting aside the wisdom geo-politically of such action, morally isn't it any country's right to strike back?
"Or, if you think that the Shia in Lebanon don't share responsibility, then do you also believe that Americans who supported Bush, and who voted for him twice, and who supported the war in Iraq don't share any of the blame for the mayhem Bush has unleashed over the past six years?"
All right, how did the morning papers deal with the president's open-mike curse?
The LAT uses the S-word: "President Bush thinks some of his fellow leaders on the world stage talk too much -- way too much. In a recording of luncheon chatter captured by Russian television, the president also is ready with some very undiplomatic language when talking about the Middle East."
So does the WP : "President Bush should know that in Russia, someone is always listening. In this case, it was the rest of the world."
The New York Post puts the word in the lead .
The NYT calls it a "vulgarity": "For anyone who has ever wondered what President Bush sounds like when the microphones are off, the answer, at least at lunchtime on Monday, was blunt to the point of profane, laced with a wise-guy edge and, like anyone forced to make small talk, willing to fall back on safe topics like air travel."
USA Today goes only with an "unvarnished assessment": "President Bush got bit again Monday by the open-microphone bug."
CNN carried the word without bleeping; the other networks did not.
Says ABC's Jake Tapper: "If the president is going to curse on camera is it too much to ask that he not appoint Federal Communications Commissioners who will fine us for broadcasting it?"
Israel knows something about the new media: Blogger Roger Simon gets a podcast interview with Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon at Pajamas Media.
The following helps explain why Hillary Clinton hired a Salon columnist as her ambassador to the blogs. First there was this NYT lead:
"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, returning to her red-state ties, chastised Democrats Saturday for taking on issues that arouse conservatives and turn out Republican voters rather than finding consensus on mainstream subjects."
Atrios , among other liberal bloggers, said the Times had misinterpreted the senator's remarks, and included part of the transcript:
"But with the Republican majority, that's not their priority. So we do other things, we do things that are controversial, we do things that try to inflame their base so that they can turn people out and vote for their candidates. I think we are wasting time, we are wasting lives, we need to get back to making America work again, in a bipartisan, nonpartisan way."
Blogger Susie Madrak was soon contacted by the newest member of Hillaryland:
"Peter Daou. who's Clinton's blog advisor, writes to tell me the Times story was uniquely misinterpreted by Anne Kornbluth, that this is Hillary's standard stump speech and that if you go back and read it again in context, she's speaking in the 'we' part as what the Republicans do, not the Democrats. Which does make a lot more sense."
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Charles Krathammer, Washington Post neo-nazi in residence, sneers at USSC for upholding Geneva Conventions...
Ignorant, pseudo-intellectual Charles Kruathammer, Washington Post's neo-Nazi in residence, sneers at the US Supreme Court for upholding LIMITS on presidential conduct. Krauthammer's ENTIRE RANT is that "IN TIME OF WAR" a president must be able to do as he pleases - WITH NO ACCOUNTABILITY TO ANYONE. IF the president decides to declare all of Vietnam a "free fire zone," Mr. Krauthammer would approve of that. IF the president decides to IGNORE the GENOCIDE and mass-enslavement of Southern Sudan, Mr. Krauthammer doesn't mind. And if the President wants to ethnically cleanse Iraq (of ALL Muslims, Sunni or Shia) Mr. Krauthammer would undoubtably like to see that, too. As Molly Ivins has written, Mr. Krauthammer, your rantings "sounds better in the original German".
(For those who actually want to know how bombings, tank-raids and combat-patrols by foreigners who don't speak the local lingo affect Aghan (or any other nation's) local sentiments, check the HBO movie "the Beast", about a Russian tank enaged in punitive attacks and long-range shellling of Afghan mountain villages.)
(http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005AVZU/imdbca-20/702-5417398-1631212)
While the plot of "The Beast" might be a tad fanciful, remember that all those casualties of Afghans killed by US bombs and bullets - "collateral damage" - are not mere statistics, but cause for pain, resentment, and worse on the part of a victim's survivors."
Emergency Over, Saith the Court
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 7, 2006; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070601552.html
1861. 1941. 2001. Our big wars -- and the war on terrorism ranks with the big ones -- have a way of starting in the first year of a decade. Supreme Courts, which historically have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict, have tended to give the president until mid-decade to do what he wishes to the Constitution in order to win the war.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus -- trashing the Bill of Rights or exercising necessary emergency executive power, depending on your point of view. But he got the whole troublesome business done by 1865, and the Supreme Court stayed away.
Emergency Over, Saith the Court
» Charles Krauthammer |
All rise: The Supreme Court has decreed a return to normality. A lovely idea, except that al-Qaeda has other ideas.
During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans. He, too, was left unmolested by the court. But Roosevelt also got his war wrapped up by 1945. Had the current war on terrorism followed course and ended in 2005, the sensational, just-decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case concerning military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay prisoners would have either been rendered moot or drawn a yawn.
But, of course, the war on terrorism is different. The enemy is shadowy, scattered and therefore more likely to survive and keep the war going for years. What the Supreme Court essentially did in Hamdan was to say to the president: Time's up. We gave you the customary half-decade of emergency powers, but that's as far as we go. From now on the emergency is over, at least judicially, and you're going to have to operate by peacetime rules.
Or, as Justice Anthony Kennedy, the new Sandra Day O'Connor, put it, Guantanamo (and by extension, war-on-terrorism) jurisprudence must henceforth be governed by "the customary operation of the Executive and Legislative Branches." This case may be "of extraordinary importance," but it is to be "resolved by ordinary rules."
All rise: The Supreme Court has decreed a return to normality. A lovely idea, except that al-Qaeda has other ideas. The war does go on. One can sympathize with the court's desire for a Harding-like restoration to normalcy. But the robed eminences are premature. And even if they weren't, they really didn't have to issue a ruling this bad.
They declared illegal President Bush's military tribunals for the likes of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard. First, because they were not established in accordance with congressional authority. And, second, because they violated the Geneva Conventions.
The first rationale is an odd but fixable misreading of congressional intent. The second is a grotesque and unfixable misreading of the Geneva Conventions.
The court feels that the president slighted Congress by unilaterally establishing military commissions. What is odd about this solicitousness for the powers of the legislature is that Congress, which is populated entirely by adults, had explicitly told the judiciary just six months ago that when it comes to Guantanamo prisoners, the judiciary should bug off.
The Detainee Treatment Act in December 2005 not only implicitly endorsed what the administration was doing with prisoners, it explicitly told the judiciary to leave the issue to Congress and the president to resolve, as they have historically.
The court's wanton overriding of Congress and the president is another in a long string of breathtaking acts of judicial arrogance. But it is fixable. The Republican leadership of the Senate responded to the court's highhandedness by immediately embarking on writing legislation to establish military tribunals.
The unfixable part of the Hamdan ruling, however, is the court's reading of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions, which were designed to protect civilian populations and those combatants who respect them, were never intended to apply to unlawful combatants, terrorists of the al-Qaeda kind. The court tortures the reading of Common Article 3 to confer upon Hamdan -- and by extension the man for whom he rode shotgun, bin Laden -- the kind of elaborate legal protections that one expects from "civilized peoples."
This infinitely elastic concept will allow courts to usurp from Congress and the president the authority to fashion the procedures for military tribunals -- an arrogation that mocks the court's previously expressed solicitousness for congressional authority.
But no matter. Logic has little place here. The court has decreed: There is no war -- or we will pretend so -- and henceforth it shall be conducted by the court. God save the United States. (This honorable court can fend for itself.)
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
(For those who actually want to know how bombings, tank-raids and combat-patrols by foreigners who don't speak the local lingo affect Aghan (or any other nation's) local sentiments, check the HBO movie "the Beast", about a Russian tank enaged in punitive attacks and long-range shellling of Afghan mountain villages.)
(http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005AVZU/imdbca-20/702-5417398-1631212)
While the plot of "The Beast" might be a tad fanciful, remember that all those casualties of Afghans killed by US bombs and bullets - "collateral damage" - are not mere statistics, but cause for pain, resentment, and worse on the part of a victim's survivors."
Emergency Over, Saith the Court
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 7, 2006; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070601552.html
1861. 1941. 2001. Our big wars -- and the war on terrorism ranks with the big ones -- have a way of starting in the first year of a decade. Supreme Courts, which historically have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict, have tended to give the president until mid-decade to do what he wishes to the Constitution in order to win the war.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus -- trashing the Bill of Rights or exercising necessary emergency executive power, depending on your point of view. But he got the whole troublesome business done by 1865, and the Supreme Court stayed away.
Emergency Over, Saith the Court
» Charles Krauthammer |
All rise: The Supreme Court has decreed a return to normality. A lovely idea, except that al-Qaeda has other ideas.
During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans. He, too, was left unmolested by the court. But Roosevelt also got his war wrapped up by 1945. Had the current war on terrorism followed course and ended in 2005, the sensational, just-decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case concerning military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay prisoners would have either been rendered moot or drawn a yawn.
But, of course, the war on terrorism is different. The enemy is shadowy, scattered and therefore more likely to survive and keep the war going for years. What the Supreme Court essentially did in Hamdan was to say to the president: Time's up. We gave you the customary half-decade of emergency powers, but that's as far as we go. From now on the emergency is over, at least judicially, and you're going to have to operate by peacetime rules.
Or, as Justice Anthony Kennedy, the new Sandra Day O'Connor, put it, Guantanamo (and by extension, war-on-terrorism) jurisprudence must henceforth be governed by "the customary operation of the Executive and Legislative Branches." This case may be "of extraordinary importance," but it is to be "resolved by ordinary rules."
All rise: The Supreme Court has decreed a return to normality. A lovely idea, except that al-Qaeda has other ideas. The war does go on. One can sympathize with the court's desire for a Harding-like restoration to normalcy. But the robed eminences are premature. And even if they weren't, they really didn't have to issue a ruling this bad.
They declared illegal President Bush's military tribunals for the likes of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard. First, because they were not established in accordance with congressional authority. And, second, because they violated the Geneva Conventions.
The first rationale is an odd but fixable misreading of congressional intent. The second is a grotesque and unfixable misreading of the Geneva Conventions.
The court feels that the president slighted Congress by unilaterally establishing military commissions. What is odd about this solicitousness for the powers of the legislature is that Congress, which is populated entirely by adults, had explicitly told the judiciary just six months ago that when it comes to Guantanamo prisoners, the judiciary should bug off.
The Detainee Treatment Act in December 2005 not only implicitly endorsed what the administration was doing with prisoners, it explicitly told the judiciary to leave the issue to Congress and the president to resolve, as they have historically.
The court's wanton overriding of Congress and the president is another in a long string of breathtaking acts of judicial arrogance. But it is fixable. The Republican leadership of the Senate responded to the court's highhandedness by immediately embarking on writing legislation to establish military tribunals.
The unfixable part of the Hamdan ruling, however, is the court's reading of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions, which were designed to protect civilian populations and those combatants who respect them, were never intended to apply to unlawful combatants, terrorists of the al-Qaeda kind. The court tortures the reading of Common Article 3 to confer upon Hamdan -- and by extension the man for whom he rode shotgun, bin Laden -- the kind of elaborate legal protections that one expects from "civilized peoples."
This infinitely elastic concept will allow courts to usurp from Congress and the president the authority to fashion the procedures for military tribunals -- an arrogation that mocks the court's previously expressed solicitousness for congressional authority.
But no matter. Logic has little place here. The court has decreed: There is no war -- or we will pretend so -- and henceforth it shall be conducted by the court. God save the United States. (This honorable court can fend for itself.)
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Will Aggressive net-root Progressives SELL OUT if hired by DLC Dems..???
HuffPost author Ceynk Ungur proposes a "Daou Index" to measure the honesty and agressive reporting of net-roots progressive (aka "liberal bloggers") hired by Democratic "leaders" to help out in campaign 2006.
The Daou Index
by Cenk Uygur
June 28, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/the-daou-index_b_23940.html
Peter Daou is one of the most astute and aggressive bloggers in the country. Senator Hillary Clinton is the poster child for equivocation and triangulation. So, it was interesting news when we found out that Senator Clinton has hired Peter Daou to be her web consultant. Hillary hiring Peter Daou is a little like Nixon going to China.
I know Peter and consider him a friend. I know for a fact that he understands the problems with the Democratic establishment and what needs to be done to fix it. And as much as anyone, Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party establishment.
So, that sets up an interesting question. Will Mohammed go to the mountain or will the mountain come to Mohammed?
There are three possibilities:
1. Hillary will actually listen to what Peter has to say and adjust her views and actions.
2. They will not be able to see eye to eye and Peter will be ignored and then will eventually leave the job.
3. Peter will become an apologist for Hillary’s current stances on things like Iraq, which are hideous and morally repugnant.
I would be really disappointed if option number two were to happen. I would be crushed if option three did. I was thinking of talking to Peter before writing this, but decided it would be better just to write it because I would feel bad even writing option number three down after I talked to him personally.
But that possibility must be mentioned because it is a critical question that is likely to face a lot of the prominent bloggers soon – how much do you accommodate the establishment without being co-opted by them?
There will be a struggle. The establishment won’t simply lay down their arms and run into the waiting arms of the netroots and ask for forgiveness. It is hard to get people out of a pattern they’re used to. On the other hand, there will be a lot of pressure on the bloggers hired by campaigns to serve their new employers faithfully.
It’s an interesting tightrope. I think it’s a phenomenon that should be tracked. Will the bloggers be co-opted or will the establishment finally see the light? Who doesn’t love a fun drama like that?
So, I propose The Daou Index. The scale of the index will be 0-100. 100 is when the Democratic Establishment understands the concerns of the netroots perfectly and does their best to faithfully address them. 0 is what we had when the Kerry campaign sat Peter Daou in a corner and didn’t listen to a word he said during 2004.
I believe the index has already risen from that 0 point in 2004. Presidential candidates came to Yearly Kos (the first bloggers convention held earlier this month) in droves. John Kerry and Russ Feingold frequently go out of their way to meet with bloggers now. Mark Warner is famously courting Jerome Armstrong of MyDD and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. And now Hillary has hired Daou.
So, by my estimation, we’re at about a 10 out of a 100 right now.
Of course, the score can also go down if there are signs that bloggers turned consultants have been co-opted or Democrats backtrack on the issues. Another confirmation proceeding like Sam Alito's or General Hayden's can bring the score back down to zero. Issues and action matter most.
Hiring bloggers as consultants isn’t a panacea that automatically boosts your score. That’s not the end of the job, that’s the beginning.
Remember, bloggers aren’t the netroots, they’re the rough representatives of the netroots. The netroots are actual people all across America that are sick of the way the Democratic Party has been handling itself over the last five years.
But talking to people who talk to the netroots every day is a positive first step. The next step would be to listen to them.
If you listen to them you could understand what their real concerns are. A good starting point is to stop buying into the hype that people who are active on the blogs want Democrats to be more leftist. Understand that their primary concern is that you learn to stand up and fight. And fighting doesn’t mean pounding your chest over how many wars you supported. It means standing up for principles you and your voters believe in.
No one understands this better than Peter Daou. If you asked me to pick one person to send into the teeth of the Democratic establishment to deliver this message, I couldn’t name anyone better than Peter. If Hillary doesn’t listen to him, then there’s no hope for her and no chance for reconciliation.
We’re not looking for a pat on the head or an acknowledgment of our relevance. We are looking for actual action. We know the job is done when Democrats start fighting for what’s right rather than calculating what is expedient (and often grossly miscalculating it at that).
That would be when The Daou Index hits a 100. But we have long way to go to get there. But to her credit, Hillary’s taken the first step.
The Young Turks
The Daou Index
by Cenk Uygur
June 28, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/the-daou-index_b_23940.html
Peter Daou is one of the most astute and aggressive bloggers in the country. Senator Hillary Clinton is the poster child for equivocation and triangulation. So, it was interesting news when we found out that Senator Clinton has hired Peter Daou to be her web consultant. Hillary hiring Peter Daou is a little like Nixon going to China.
I know Peter and consider him a friend. I know for a fact that he understands the problems with the Democratic establishment and what needs to be done to fix it. And as much as anyone, Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party establishment.
So, that sets up an interesting question. Will Mohammed go to the mountain or will the mountain come to Mohammed?
There are three possibilities:
1. Hillary will actually listen to what Peter has to say and adjust her views and actions.
2. They will not be able to see eye to eye and Peter will be ignored and then will eventually leave the job.
3. Peter will become an apologist for Hillary’s current stances on things like Iraq, which are hideous and morally repugnant.
I would be really disappointed if option number two were to happen. I would be crushed if option three did. I was thinking of talking to Peter before writing this, but decided it would be better just to write it because I would feel bad even writing option number three down after I talked to him personally.
But that possibility must be mentioned because it is a critical question that is likely to face a lot of the prominent bloggers soon – how much do you accommodate the establishment without being co-opted by them?
There will be a struggle. The establishment won’t simply lay down their arms and run into the waiting arms of the netroots and ask for forgiveness. It is hard to get people out of a pattern they’re used to. On the other hand, there will be a lot of pressure on the bloggers hired by campaigns to serve their new employers faithfully.
It’s an interesting tightrope. I think it’s a phenomenon that should be tracked. Will the bloggers be co-opted or will the establishment finally see the light? Who doesn’t love a fun drama like that?
So, I propose The Daou Index. The scale of the index will be 0-100. 100 is when the Democratic Establishment understands the concerns of the netroots perfectly and does their best to faithfully address them. 0 is what we had when the Kerry campaign sat Peter Daou in a corner and didn’t listen to a word he said during 2004.
I believe the index has already risen from that 0 point in 2004. Presidential candidates came to Yearly Kos (the first bloggers convention held earlier this month) in droves. John Kerry and Russ Feingold frequently go out of their way to meet with bloggers now. Mark Warner is famously courting Jerome Armstrong of MyDD and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. And now Hillary has hired Daou.
So, by my estimation, we’re at about a 10 out of a 100 right now.
Of course, the score can also go down if there are signs that bloggers turned consultants have been co-opted or Democrats backtrack on the issues. Another confirmation proceeding like Sam Alito's or General Hayden's can bring the score back down to zero. Issues and action matter most.
Hiring bloggers as consultants isn’t a panacea that automatically boosts your score. That’s not the end of the job, that’s the beginning.
Remember, bloggers aren’t the netroots, they’re the rough representatives of the netroots. The netroots are actual people all across America that are sick of the way the Democratic Party has been handling itself over the last five years.
But talking to people who talk to the netroots every day is a positive first step. The next step would be to listen to them.
If you listen to them you could understand what their real concerns are. A good starting point is to stop buying into the hype that people who are active on the blogs want Democrats to be more leftist. Understand that their primary concern is that you learn to stand up and fight. And fighting doesn’t mean pounding your chest over how many wars you supported. It means standing up for principles you and your voters believe in.
No one understands this better than Peter Daou. If you asked me to pick one person to send into the teeth of the Democratic establishment to deliver this message, I couldn’t name anyone better than Peter. If Hillary doesn’t listen to him, then there’s no hope for her and no chance for reconciliation.
We’re not looking for a pat on the head or an acknowledgment of our relevance. We are looking for actual action. We know the job is done when Democrats start fighting for what’s right rather than calculating what is expedient (and often grossly miscalculating it at that).
That would be when The Daou Index hits a 100. But we have long way to go to get there. But to her credit, Hillary’s taken the first step.
The Young Turks
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Media Whore Alert! Howie Kurtz Fellatio-fest over Rather's firing at CBS!
Whew! Talk about NAUSEATING TV! Howie Kurtz's swarmy appearance on CNN's "Reliable Sources" today was the most revolting spectacle of TV talk, since serial liar and terminal bloviator Rush Limbaugh tried to run his show on camera in front of a live TV audience.
The substance of Kurtz's show today was allegedly to celebrate the career and retirement of DAN RATHER, the CBS news anchor who has been unceremoniously shown the door by CBS for Rather's role in "Rathergate" - Rather's 2004 attempt to bring attention to George W. Bush's record from when Bush was a Lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard (ANG) in the early 1970s during the Vietnam war.
Leave 'Em Laughing (Or Just Leave)
Diary Entry by lindbergh
June 25, 2006
Rather and Chung retiring at the same time may be noted by the MSM only for it's irony. But it's the news behind the news that we ought to pay attention to.
::::::::
I think people mostly missed the points being made with the departures of both Dan Rather and Connie Chung from TV news. No doubt many people saw only irony in the two "leaving" broadcast journalism in the same week. Their relationship as co-anchors of CBS's Evening News in the early 90's had been tense and often terse -- on the air and off.
No doubt liberal-bashers broke open a few bottles of well-aged scotch to celebrate their "passing" -- especially Rather's. I know some of those folks are in TV news management. Many of them know deep-down they're also drinking to numb their own consciences as collaborators in government controlled news. As for their drinking -- one's probably too many and a hundred won't be enough.
Rather undergoing a forced retirement and Chung's "up yours" farewell to MSNBC were both part of the same process -- to present what little was left of moderate MSM as a "dying breed." Chung ought to get an Emmy for sticking it to GE/NBC the way she did. She was outrageously funny -- offering us a version of a sullen lounge "lizard" who once did the TV news and "wound up" the way Susan Alexander did in Citizen Kane.
The Rather story, though, is far more fetching. In 2004, Rather had been either set up by Viacom/CBS or was asked to take one for the team -- as they say -- with the Killian/Lt. Col. Burkett papers about Bush's Texas ANG service. That story couldn't possibly have been anything but a pre-emptive strike against anyone trying to bring up Bush's troubled and fraudulent National Guard service just before the Presidential election. In the end Dan got "swiftboated" and Viacom/CBS got "payback" at Mary Mapes -- who was eventually set-up as the ultimate fall guy (fall gal?) and fired over the affair.
In 2003-04 Mapes had produced news segments that 1) helped expose the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo atrocities, and 2) revealed that Strom Thurmond had fathered an interracial daughter out of wedlock.
I once thought that Rather was merely naive enough to get sucked into the now-called "Rathergate" affair but the set-up was indeed a sophisticated GOP plot to make it look like CBS was trying to throw the election to Kerry when the opposite was true. Many in the GOP had already been calling for Mapes' head -- especially since she'd produced a story casting "shame" on a GOP icon like Thurmond.
All the while, CEO Sumner Redstone was saying "that a Bush victory in 2004 was better for Viacom/CBS's bottom line." viacom/CBS had issues which would have to go before the FCC in 2005. A takeover of Vivendi/Universal was being contemplated -- although the deal fell apart the following year in its early stages. Still, a Bush defeat might mean a Democrat in charge of the FCC Board.
The White House eventually made out like a bandit after the Rather/Mapes trap had been sprung. Rather gave way to Bob Schieffer -- a conservative and far more acceptable to the Busheviks. Schieffer had also done an interview with Dubya right before the New Hampshire primaries that helped put Bush win the state.
I think Connie Chung's farewell was also her way of giving the finger to all of NBC's news programming. GE/NBC doesn't even bother with pretenses of fairness in TV journalism any more. The "S" in "MSNBC" must stand for "shill." The "C" in all of their ghastly manifestations now seems to stand for "crackpot."
But -- as expected -- nearly all of the MSM just "played dumb" and took Chung's farewell as "just another day at the office." Sadly, that gives you an idea of what a day at their office has become -- at places like CNN and Faux News and the others. Somebody in charge takes White House, Pentagon, and Treasury Department orders over the phone and fax machines and turns them into the day's neo-con propaganda.
Pravda reporters in the old USSR were more critical than the goons and lackeys brought in to run TV news today. What else has TV news become other than a propaganda weapon for the GOP, their lobbyists, major defense contractors, the oil "bidness," as well as the megacorps.
Popular actor;disgruntled office seeker;anarchist;patsy;bigger patsy
Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2006
=============================================
BuzzFlash Hates to Beat Up on a Dead War, But the Mainstream Media Won't
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/06/06/ana06050.html
We hate to beat up on a dead war -- but following up on our last several days of posts, it's worth noting that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating at an alarming pace.
While the mainstream media writes "speculative" news analyses asking if the Democratic opposition to the war is "politically" motivated, you can't find a paper or television station (at least we haven't found one) that "speculates" on whether or not the timing of the arrest of the Miami gang that couldn't shoot straight was "politically" motivated.
This is what we mean by news editors having an editorial bias. Their bias is toward the "fantasy island" faux news generated by the White House.
It is extremely safe for almost any news editor in the country to go with the daily spin of the Rovian propaganda machine. Asking questions, or focusing on the White House lies and deceptions -- well that can get you into career trouble, big career trouble.
To put it in the vernacular, in today's corporate media world -- where the parent companies rely on the Republicans for tax breaks, favorable FCC, IRS and SEC rulings, and legislative goodies -- it doesn't get you any bonus points by being a "smarty pants" reporter.
The distorted "fantasy island" news coverage you generally see on TV and in most newspapers is due to the decisions news editors make to emphasize the propaganda perspective of the White House. If you freelance with the truth, it may get you reassigned to the mailroom.
Choosing what news is important is a matter of judgment and careerism. Choosing to emphasize minor busts of terrorist wannabes from Liberty City in Miami is a total waste of millions and millions of dollars in "news resources." It is the same type of propaganda operation that was at work in the endless wars and endless enemies the government created in Orwell's "1984." Only now it is accomplished with the "appearance" of a free press, but one that is really on the corporate leash of the White House.
The CEOs and boards of the multi-million dollar enterprises that own the subsidiary news companies know that if you cross the Bush Administration, you won't go home with a doggy bag. Instead, you'll end up a stray dog rummaging through dumpsters for food.
Meanwhile, Bush fiddles and Cheney snarls while Iraq burns -- and the media writes endless stories about some bumbling fools in Miami.
Message to the Media: the real bumbling fools who threaten America are in the White House, and Iraq is on fire.
Will someone in the mainstream press report the truth?
We doubt it.
Everyone's too comfortable with their jobs to lose them.
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
The substance of Kurtz's show today was allegedly to celebrate the career and retirement of DAN RATHER, the CBS news anchor who has been unceremoniously shown the door by CBS for Rather's role in "Rathergate" - Rather's 2004 attempt to bring attention to George W. Bush's record from when Bush was a Lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard (ANG) in the early 1970s during the Vietnam war.
Leave 'Em Laughing (Or Just Leave)
Diary Entry by lindbergh
June 25, 2006
Rather and Chung retiring at the same time may be noted by the MSM only for it's irony. But it's the news behind the news that we ought to pay attention to.
::::::::
I think people mostly missed the points being made with the departures of both Dan Rather and Connie Chung from TV news. No doubt many people saw only irony in the two "leaving" broadcast journalism in the same week. Their relationship as co-anchors of CBS's Evening News in the early 90's had been tense and often terse -- on the air and off.
No doubt liberal-bashers broke open a few bottles of well-aged scotch to celebrate their "passing" -- especially Rather's. I know some of those folks are in TV news management. Many of them know deep-down they're also drinking to numb their own consciences as collaborators in government controlled news. As for their drinking -- one's probably too many and a hundred won't be enough.
Rather undergoing a forced retirement and Chung's "up yours" farewell to MSNBC were both part of the same process -- to present what little was left of moderate MSM as a "dying breed." Chung ought to get an Emmy for sticking it to GE/NBC the way she did. She was outrageously funny -- offering us a version of a sullen lounge "lizard" who once did the TV news and "wound up" the way Susan Alexander did in Citizen Kane.
The Rather story, though, is far more fetching. In 2004, Rather had been either set up by Viacom/CBS or was asked to take one for the team -- as they say -- with the Killian/Lt. Col. Burkett papers about Bush's Texas ANG service. That story couldn't possibly have been anything but a pre-emptive strike against anyone trying to bring up Bush's troubled and fraudulent National Guard service just before the Presidential election. In the end Dan got "swiftboated" and Viacom/CBS got "payback" at Mary Mapes -- who was eventually set-up as the ultimate fall guy (fall gal?) and fired over the affair.
In 2003-04 Mapes had produced news segments that 1) helped expose the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo atrocities, and 2) revealed that Strom Thurmond had fathered an interracial daughter out of wedlock.
I once thought that Rather was merely naive enough to get sucked into the now-called "Rathergate" affair but the set-up was indeed a sophisticated GOP plot to make it look like CBS was trying to throw the election to Kerry when the opposite was true. Many in the GOP had already been calling for Mapes' head -- especially since she'd produced a story casting "shame" on a GOP icon like Thurmond.
All the while, CEO Sumner Redstone was saying "that a Bush victory in 2004 was better for Viacom/CBS's bottom line." viacom/CBS had issues which would have to go before the FCC in 2005. A takeover of Vivendi/Universal was being contemplated -- although the deal fell apart the following year in its early stages. Still, a Bush defeat might mean a Democrat in charge of the FCC Board.
The White House eventually made out like a bandit after the Rather/Mapes trap had been sprung. Rather gave way to Bob Schieffer -- a conservative and far more acceptable to the Busheviks. Schieffer had also done an interview with Dubya right before the New Hampshire primaries that helped put Bush win the state.
I think Connie Chung's farewell was also her way of giving the finger to all of NBC's news programming. GE/NBC doesn't even bother with pretenses of fairness in TV journalism any more. The "S" in "MSNBC" must stand for "shill." The "C" in all of their ghastly manifestations now seems to stand for "crackpot."
But -- as expected -- nearly all of the MSM just "played dumb" and took Chung's farewell as "just another day at the office." Sadly, that gives you an idea of what a day at their office has become -- at places like CNN and Faux News and the others. Somebody in charge takes White House, Pentagon, and Treasury Department orders over the phone and fax machines and turns them into the day's neo-con propaganda.
Pravda reporters in the old USSR were more critical than the goons and lackeys brought in to run TV news today. What else has TV news become other than a propaganda weapon for the GOP, their lobbyists, major defense contractors, the oil "bidness," as well as the megacorps.
Popular actor;disgruntled office seeker;anarchist;patsy;bigger patsy
Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2006
=============================================
BuzzFlash Hates to Beat Up on a Dead War, But the Mainstream Media Won't
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/06/06/ana06050.html
We hate to beat up on a dead war -- but following up on our last several days of posts, it's worth noting that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating at an alarming pace.
While the mainstream media writes "speculative" news analyses asking if the Democratic opposition to the war is "politically" motivated, you can't find a paper or television station (at least we haven't found one) that "speculates" on whether or not the timing of the arrest of the Miami gang that couldn't shoot straight was "politically" motivated.
This is what we mean by news editors having an editorial bias. Their bias is toward the "fantasy island" faux news generated by the White House.
It is extremely safe for almost any news editor in the country to go with the daily spin of the Rovian propaganda machine. Asking questions, or focusing on the White House lies and deceptions -- well that can get you into career trouble, big career trouble.
To put it in the vernacular, in today's corporate media world -- where the parent companies rely on the Republicans for tax breaks, favorable FCC, IRS and SEC rulings, and legislative goodies -- it doesn't get you any bonus points by being a "smarty pants" reporter.
The distorted "fantasy island" news coverage you generally see on TV and in most newspapers is due to the decisions news editors make to emphasize the propaganda perspective of the White House. If you freelance with the truth, it may get you reassigned to the mailroom.
Choosing what news is important is a matter of judgment and careerism. Choosing to emphasize minor busts of terrorist wannabes from Liberty City in Miami is a total waste of millions and millions of dollars in "news resources." It is the same type of propaganda operation that was at work in the endless wars and endless enemies the government created in Orwell's "1984." Only now it is accomplished with the "appearance" of a free press, but one that is really on the corporate leash of the White House.
The CEOs and boards of the multi-million dollar enterprises that own the subsidiary news companies know that if you cross the Bush Administration, you won't go home with a doggy bag. Instead, you'll end up a stray dog rummaging through dumpsters for food.
Meanwhile, Bush fiddles and Cheney snarls while Iraq burns -- and the media writes endless stories about some bumbling fools in Miami.
Message to the Media: the real bumbling fools who threaten America are in the White House, and Iraq is on fire.
Will someone in the mainstream press report the truth?
We doubt it.
Everyone's too comfortable with their jobs to lose them.
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
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