Lets name names. Bill Keller is the Executive Editor of the Times and Andrew Rosenthal edits the editorial page. They are "liberal" hawks and neocons. Keller keeps Gordon on the payroll and allows him to propagandize for the Pentagon. He also had John Burns as the Baghdad bureau chief for what seemed like since Old Testament times. Burns would wring his hands and always conclude we needed to stay in Iraq forever.

Just yesterday Rosenthal had a group of op-eds about the "next step" in Iraq. Almost all were from neocons like Fred Kagan and Richard Perle. Not one was from a real progressive critic of the war.

The Times wants to have it both ways, promoting the Administration's wars on the one hand and saying they're just reporters on the other.

Full right of return would make Israeli Jews the minority in Israel. Now maybe the Palestinians would suddenly forget all those decades of rhetoric about driving the Jews into the sea and suddenly become happy and peaceful partners with their Jewish minority.

But it's nonetheless delusional to say it's "easy" for a people to risk their own existence like that, particularly a people who's cultural identity is deeply tied to their long history of persecution. And particularly when that people would be surrendering an enormous military advantage in the course of adopting minority status.

Shooter uses the example of a "fake news report" from France as a reason to never trust a French newspaper (I put it in quotes because I have no idea whether or not its fake).

The reporting by the NYT has, however, always been stellar and reliable, so Shooter thinks we should trust Michael Gordon. The U.S. government also would never lie in any of its reports, or slant anything so as to influence citizens, so they are a completely trustworthy source, as well, even when identified as "a government spokesman" or some such. (This latter would, of course, change should a Democrat take office next year.)

We're the government, trust us! You, peon citizen, don't you know there's a war on? Fall in line! (I'm also quite sure that Shooter supported Clinton's war in Serbia to the hilt -- love it or leave it, amiright?)

Michael Gordon wants a war with Iran. Sounds like he might get it. It is really hard to express how much I hate these people.

Full right of return would make Israeli Jews the minority in Israel. Now maybe the Palestinians would suddenly forget all those decades of rhetoric about driving the Jews into the sea and suddenly become happy and peaceful partners with their Jewish minority.

I don't know (and, to be honest, for purposes of his Iraq reporting, don't much care about) Nir Rosen's views on how best to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But I definitely did not understand the quote you provided to be one where he advocated "Full right of return."

Even if Israel were to incredibly accept minority status for its Jewish citizens, where is the evidence that this would lead to regional peace? Would this eliminate the problem of Sunni dictatorships, of sectarian disagreements, of regional national ambitions?

I don't think so.

I don't know how else to read it:

Any actual expert on the region, or any sincere person with even passing familiarity with it would know that genuine peace has always been easy to achieve, it requires Israel to abandon all its settlements and occupied territories, allow for the return of the refugees and compensate them for their dispossession. It also means granting equal rights to the Palestinian citizens of Israel. The so called "peace process," nothing of the sort, is merely a way to enshrine the dispossession of the Palestinians using unpopular but pliant and hand chosen collaborators like Mahmud Abbas.

As long as the Israeli government can persecute a minority under its authority and control (Palestinians, let's say), then the Jews will be safe from persecution by that minority if that minority were ever to become a majority.

Gotcha. Good to know.

Worse, despite noting that "there has been debate among experts about the extent to which Iran is responsible for instability in Iraq," the article does not contain a single skeptical word about any of these accusations, nor does it quote a single "expert" who questions or disputes them. -- greenwald

...the info is from questioning of prisoners who should know. Does GG expect other sources to contradict closed interrogations? -- shooter242

prisoners who should know ...what? On whose word do you rely for this assertion?

My guess is that "GG" expects a high level reporter at a U.S. newspaper (who had 2 stringers' help for this article, see bottom of p. 2) to find someone to critique/assess the U.S. government's assertions regarding the status and words of these alleged "prisoners who should know". His expectations had little to do with the contents of the U.S. government's interrogation reports; it had everything to do with the expectation that an independent news agency assess the information in that report independently.

You were correct in your assessment that I finished reading the Gordon article after my first post; somehow I'd gotten the impression it was a time-devouring monster in excess of 10 pages. (Everybody: It's only 2 pages long! An easy read.)

The arguments made in the article about why Iran allegedly employs Hezbollah men to teach Iraqis guerilla tactics seem quite sound. They believed native Arab speakers would do better as teachers for reasons of both language and "culture". (What goes unmentioned in the article about the "cultural" issue is that the Quds experts who might teach these Iraqis directly might also have been on the frontlines in the Iraq-Iran war ~20 years ago, personally killing these young mens' fathers and uncles. It's a very good reason for farming out the training to Hezbollah operatives.)

This latter analytical point is one that Gordon might have brought up in the article; it would only have supported the government assertions he presented. But, even supportive "background" like this was not included. And the reader was slapped with HEZBOLLAH! 4 times in the headline and first 3 paragraphs of the article.

It's organized like a piece of agitprop, shooter242; it should therefore be critiqued as such.