"Eagle Scout" Ollie North is at it again?

I'm sure I'm not the only one having a Vietnam flashback right now.

Happy 9/11, America.

that I completely agree with Glenn on this issue.

North should never be allowed to report news and this should qualify as a fireable offense.

Britt Hume should do a detailed report on how they failed to accurately report this and how they enabled the military to lie.

The military should stop looking for quick hits and start doing the detail work that will win the war in Afghanistan.

My brother in law came back from two years in Afghanistan and said that it wasn't a matter of numbers of men but a lack of strategy that was hurting us most.

A society that prizes winning above (nearly) all and reliant on a "free press" to stay informed and to check government authority is subsequently hogtied by that same media when it shies away from focusing on policy failures and wartime losses as it relays government communications without critical analysis (from the left or the right).

Not so much a problem for the kids, who are growing up in a media environment of bullshit and will become increasingly sceptical or cynical. But for the older folks, easily manipulatable and often scared, Fox News has them by the short hairs. And that's to say nothing of the authoritarian types of all ages who crave reinforcement for their cognitive dissonance like crack heads needing a fix.

It's truly breathtaking to realize how irrelevant the corporate media has become to achieving the functions of a free press. The internet is the new journalism.

At least it has some good humor in it: http://tinyurl.com/62a8em (latest Get Your War On)

Wasn't Oliver North a Marine? Small point, but I'm sure it matters to some marines and soldiers.

A Yankee Doodle Dandy

Do or die

A real live son of a bitch spawn of 'ol uncle Spam

Born on the eve of the first of the big lie..

Nicely reported Glenn. Frankly, I simply do not trust our government to tell us or anyone else the truth about much of anything these days. And the fact the Fox News would lie and distort the truth is also (unfortunately) not really news at all. What I find most disturbing is the fact that so many formerly legitimate news organizations and individuals employed by those news organizations play along with this BS and have been so thoroughly coopted.

I think this is exemplified particularly well by the roll of Jim Angle in all this. A former Senior White House Correspondent for National Public Radio, Angle was once a respected journalist. Now he is part of the same uncritical mass that lies to us and fails to do the hard work of real journalism to help us stay informed about our government and important issues of the day. The same can be said for Cokie Roberts, Mara Liasson, and Juan Williams, all of whom have commercial gigs for major news corporations while continuing to work for NPR.

I'm old enough to remember when it was a point of pride that NPR correspondents were independent of the commercial media. Everyone knew they weren't paid very well, but that they could usually be counted upon to work to get the real story and keep us better informed than the commercial sources of information.

All of that is gone now. They have been either seduced or intimidated (or both) into making a pact with the commercial "news" providers and the quality of NPR's reporting has suffered dearly. Of course, there is also the fact that the Bush administration attempted to stage a right wing coup at NPR and Public Broadcasting via their high level appointments.

We are becoming some horrible hybrid of news media driven by purely commercial interests (do whatever you have to to get the maximum number of eyeballs to watch) and a media that is an unthinking propaganda arm of our government. Only the rise of the internet gives me any hope that we can succeed in returning to some semblance of honesty to the system.

"Afghan officials said Thursday that a deadly U.S.-led special forces raid on a remote western village last week was based on misleading information provided by a rival clan."http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i8dGftYb0s4XWdUMRdIVs3vh1CKAD92RH8481

This is the real scandal. The same thing happened repeatedly in Iraq during the "shock and awe" bombing. The U.S. would receive very thinly sourced intelligence regarding the location of a so-called "high value target", and would commence bombing without any attempt to corroborate the intelligence. According to the U.S.'s own bombing survey the U.S. conducted 50 such "high value target" sorties during the shock-and-awe campaign, and went ZERO FOR FIFTY. There were allegations that much of the intelligence was nothing more than attempts by feuding clans to eliminate their rivals by giving the U.S. Air Force bogus information regarding the whereabouts of these HVT's.

Human Rights Watch did an excellent study of the U.S.'s "time sensitive" bombing strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/4.htm. It's chilling stuff.

Most striking of all is that the "issues" of least significance, of zero import, are the ones which receive the most attention in the "political debates" conducted by our media -- pigs and lipstick and bowling scores and lapel pins and windsurfing tights -- while the ones of greatest significance are virtually ignored. And that is highly unlikely to change between now and November.

When I observe what passes for media coverage (both presentation and consumption) of a presidential campaign, I think of the dog that, when his master points to the moon, looks at the man's finger.

It's good to know that Glenn reads people like Chris Floyd. Floyd consistently sees beyond the bullshit cover stories and exposes the ugly reality of American foreign policy. (Take note Obama fans. More troops in Afghanistan will solve nothing.)

The relevant issue here is empire: who benefits and who bears the cost. It would be wise to question what the Democrats and Republicans agree on, and thus don't even publicly discuss.