My lastest gripes about Obama ratifying GOP "bipartisanship" and "moral values" talking points here:

http://tinyurl.com/3cm4zb

* Glenn refers us to a woman who thinks invading another country is just fine.
* Thinks discussion of diplomatic strategy should be public, keeping the object of said strategy informed at all times,
* Is a despairing that someone he has called "deceitful", a "war lover", "underhanded", and a writer of "adolescent war pornography", is reticent to let Glenn interview him. Now that's detachment from reality.

More interesting is this....

I conducted an interview today with Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution about his views on the war and his trip to Iraq. I will post the transcript in a couple of days along with some thoughts about it.

I wonder why the unabridged version isn't available somewhere, and why a few days to think about it are needed. My guess is that O'Hanlon has caught on that Glenn is a hostile interviewer more interested in making himself look good than getting any real information from the interviewee. My guess is that we'll see an edited version, spun like cotton candy.

My guess is that no matter what happens in American politics or the rest of the world, shooter242 will continue his retarded campaign of snotty, unthinking snark.

If he cared even a little bit about what happens in America or overseas, you'd see him change his schtick up at least once in a while.

It looks like Obama has clearly upset the apple cart. In a story just run on AP, Tariq Azim, minister of state for information in Pakistan is questioned on the subject of Musharraf declaring a state of emergency. Azim is quoted as saying no decision has yet been made. However, the article continues with this gem:

He also said statements coming from the United States, including from Sen. Barak Obama, D-Ill., a presidential hopeful, over the possibility of U.S. military action against al-Qaida in Pakistan "has started alarm bells ringing and has upset (the) Pakistani public."

It would appear to me that the serious folks in the State Department wasted no time in speaking with their serious comrades in Pakistan to play up the propaganda value of Obama's comments. The parallels here are completely frightening. If Obama's statements are used to justify a state of emergency in Pakistan, how far away are we from a bin Laden statement out of Pakistan justifying a state of emergency in the US?

This is what passes for foreign policy in our country today. No true long term policies are developed or enacted. Instead, the headlines of the day are manipulated for maximum gain with no concern for the fallout. Let's hope that we can all survive until a new generation of real adults takes over this vital work.

Raj said:

Brookings hasn't been truly liberal in ages. the rightward move behan back in the Reagan administration, when they brought in a Republican for their top spot.

This is the very reason that the Pollack/O'Hanlon Propaganda article was so amazing. It took me 5 minutes looking online on sourcewatch, wikipedia, and reading a few articles by these guys to realize that they were NeoCon Hawks. Yet every single media source including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, AOL, AP, Reuters, DrudgeReport, USAToday, LATimes, NewYorkTime, ChicagoTribune, Newsmax and every republican blog reported Pollack & O'Hanlon as liberal democrats that had finally seen the light.

This was the clearest most transparent case of propaganda I have seen in the US since Bush took office. There have been other major propaganda scandals but this one showed the most coordination between ALL media outlets and the Bush administration.

The really question for me is WHY did all of the MSM in perfect coordination sell Pollack/O’Hanlon as liberal democrats against the war??

It also seems like it was planned at least a week ahead of time. There is no way that every single media source picked up on the story and had an interview with or wrote and article on Pollack or O’Hanlon the very next, its way to coordinated for one day.

For me the scariest thing is that they did not even try to cloak their propaganda that well. If I could find out who Pollack/O'Hanlon really were online in 5 minutes. That tells me that they don’t care about the people that pay attention and read. They could care less if we know, they just want to influence the people that are on the fence and dont pay attention. And after the release of the Gallup poll yesterday it shows that it actually works.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/gallup/2007/08/a-hint-of-more-.html

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/08/latest-poll-sho.html

This is impressive. Not only does she ratify the unproven GOP talking point that Iran is wreaking havoc in Iraq (a neo-con claim which alternates rapidly with the claim that all the havoc in Iraq is from Al-Qaeda), she purports that Iran has an ongoing nuclear-weapons program.

--vastleft

I caught that, as well, and found it highly ironic in light of her other comments. While I agreed with much of what was in her statement, it wasn't the "revelation" I expected (because of the piece you quoted and other parts).

Maybe we're working with such lowered expectations that Power's piece looks like something much better than what it really is.

I think Obama's camp is on to something. It just needs refinement. You know, with facts and truth. ;)

The closing paragraph of Glenn's essay:

Leave aside whatever views you may have about the wisdom of attacking Osama bin Laden or other Al Qaeda elements inside Pakistan because that is a separate question entirely. There are few issues more vitally important than destroying the supremacy and monopoly of our Foreign Policy Community and forcing a re-examination of our most fundamental assumptions about America's role in the world. To the extent that Obama's campaign will continue to challenge not only the establishment's orthodoxies by the Establishment itself (and whether he will remains to be seen), that can only produce vitally needed outcomes.

Wordy, I know, but what he's saying seems fairly clear to me, if not to you.

Let's see if we can't render this into something more easily comprehensible: "Glenn not agree with smart lady some, maybe many, thing. But Glenn agree what smart lady say about people who always wrong. It not good thing give people who always wrong more chance to be wronger."

Does that help?