Letters to the Editor
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Why would G.E. report anything that might discredit its own spokesmodels?
Why would NewsCorp report anything that ill-serves Rupert Murdoch's political agenda?
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The ever growing gap between Greenwald and Joan Walsh.
It is the height of irony that Salon, which has been obsessed with Democratic primary infighting, links to this post with a front page headline of "Why is media ignoring military propaganda exposé?"
Gee, perhaps for the same reason Salon has ignored the torture approval scandal and the food riots? Because all they care about is a narrow concept of outrage mining, and leave everything else to their few prestige affiliates.
At this point, Greenwald's presence does not redeem Salon because he's not editorial staff, just a blog the site is underwriting. One which could probably survive easily without its support. Meanwhile Salon itself seems to be in flight from the values it once espoused.
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errata last sentence: update
"...sources deeemed too critical of the Government."
I believe that's, "deeeemed".
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@nuf said
Yeah, I remember that ... as well as North's comment about obeying a 'higher law', or however he put it. Ollie was not a West Pointer (neither was I), but it feels like a corruption of the WP concept of the 'harder right', i.e. it's easy to be narrowly right and just do what you're told, but sometimes you have to look at the big picture and exercise broader judgment ... within the confines of your own legal obligations and responsibilities.
IMNSHO, (some) military officers get confused about their professional and ethical obligations for the same reason other human beings do; egotism, lack of clear thinking (for whatever reason), ideological blindness. Some would do what these guys have done in response to what they preceive as wrongs. The media has always done a crappy and even insulting job of covering the media; it's not hard to think they are intentionally hostile, as some have at times been. If you watched pundits throw around the word 'quagmire' in the first two days of the Iraq invasion because the advance had stalled, you might think you're justified in 'countering enemy propoganda' with some of your own (which you would assure yourself would be accurate, but given a properly supportive spin). You might think it's important to preserve respect for the institution by countering negative reporting about war crimes, for example, in order to avoid a repeat of the post-Vietnam experience. You'd be wrong in thinking all this, but it's understandable why one would fail. Gen. Vallely (in the NYT) seems to believe that it's okay to do psyops on the American people in support of the war; I find that appalling, but I understand that he thinks he is just defending them from 'enemy propoganda'. Either way, he still fails the ethics test, and he must have willfully ignored what he learned about it (esp military-civilian relations in war time) at the War College.
Unlike civilians, though, they don't have the excuse of not having been rigorously trained in such ethics, or being part of a culture that encourages both ethical behavior and accountability. In my experience, it can be pretty effing hard to apply those lessons when you hang up the uniform, and very costly when you do ... and your colleagues are more than likely going to dismiss you as excessively rigid when you do the right thing. You have to rely on your own ethical foundations, and maybe imagine yourself standing in a roomful of your former peers in uniform and having to be accountable to them for your decision.
Which is why I take this story very personally; when an officer lies to the public like this to shil for a war based on lies, s/he has compromised a scarce and precious resource that I rely on, and fucked me in a very personal way. Since the military belongs to the American people, and it's credibility and quality, the care with which it will handle the sons and daughters it takes on loan, are public assets, I would expect some other 'civilians' to feel the same way ...
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All about money...
1) If the money's big enough, people will lie.
2) If it's bigger, people will kill.
3) If it's bigger still, people will start wars guaranteed to kill innocent civilians.
TV news media stands at step 1, with even their lower-tier "journalists" making million-dollar salaries. What's the big deal with hypocrisy if the money's flowing?
"Liberal" media or not, Bush, McCain and the Republicans create policies that strongly favor people making TV news media-level money.
Real-life anecdote: an aunt and uncle of mine were liberal-progressive med students. After landing six-figure plus jobs, they had a change of heart. And why not? A Republican in office meant they kept $20,000 or more per year, which they could use however they wanted.
Why would a guy like CNN's John Klein be any different?
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oh yeah, and ...
my apologies to everyone for being so long-winded today.
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Diana Powe
You can inform Mr. Noonan at Blogs for Victory that there is already a well-publicized case of an innocent man being detained at Guantanamo for several years. He's a German of Turkish descent named Murat Kurnaz. Read a transcript of the "60 Minutes" segment here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/28/60minutes/main3976928.shtml
I'd love to see how Mr. Noonan contorts himself to explain this away.
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Another Snow Job
Take comfort, because Larry King interviews Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow about the PA primary, and announces that he has joined CNN as a Political Contributor
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/22/snow.q.a/index.html
I mean, history has shown that there are no pundits more politically objective than former White House press secretaries! Even better than hand picked by Pentagon ex-Generals/current military contractors, since those Generals had to waste their time learning things like tactics, weaponry etc. instead of spending their lives figuring out how to mislead their listeners.
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Kudos to GG (for promoting) and DCLaw1 (publishing )
And over here
http://humanityagainstcrimes.blogspot.com/
is a post by ondelette, on a tangentially related topic (how torture is treated by the movie/TV media)
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OT @ DCLaw
Congratulations, DC, on the launch of your new site. You've built it, and I have no doubt they will come.
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No Apologies Needed
Quickstrategy,
Your comments are some of the best I've read here, ever. Thank you, sir.
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette comment
Today, a columnist covered many of Greenwald's points.
Maybe some other smaller town newspapers are touching it.