Glenn, you are a smart boy. You have documented time and time again how the US media and government agencies play this game. And more power to you, sir. You deserve a medal, you and many other fine bloggers like Atrios and Juan Cole.

But when does it come time to draw some hard and fast conclusions about the real state of Us media and government? Are you going to keep documenting one case (like this) after another, until...? I fear that your work may never end!

But if you draw some hard and fast conclusions - if you say, for instance, that both the corporate media and the government itself have become tools of the wealthy elite - then your credibility is forever damaged.

The knives will be out, and you will spend the rest of your days defending yourself against countless attacks for stating just such a simple truth. Critics will repeat your words ad infinitum, in or out of context, and their readers will write you off without a second thought.

Crazy! Un-American! Unhinged!

...

When do WE get a turn? When do those of us who cling to truth and justice get our own think tanks, our own newspapers, our own benevolent billionaire patrons?

Never.

but you don't think it's a warning to you and by extention a warning to every one else who is demonized in the Brennan coverage (ie: "liberal" bloggers and the collective "Left?")

The emphasis on what "liberal" bloggers did and said (though not actually or accurately reported) is telling, as is the fact that the Democratic Party's "base" is being implicitly threatened by the Agency's flacks.

The message: "Don't interfere. You'll pay for it. Big time."

The complete and total failure to report accurately, not just on "liberal" bloggers and the 200 psychologists, and the increasingly shrill demonization of Brennan opponents (including you yourself), and the apparent decision to cast Obama as a passive victim of all this "liberal" perfidy should be setting off multiple alarms.

The play is written.

A stage is being set.

It doesn't come out well.

Just saying...

Overall, it has been stunning since the election (let alone before it) how many prefabricated memes have dominated even progressive conversation:

http://www.correntewire.com/us_robot

I think that there is a real panic within the CIA that they might be run from someone who is not from the inside. (The evil lefties are trying to prevent anyone from inside getting the post, implying: therefore, Mr. Obama, to fight this, you must appoint someone from inside.) Coverup, sure; what has really been going on, we do not know.

Overall, it has been stunning since the election (let alone before it) how many prefabricated memes have dominated even progressive conversation:

You obviously haven't heard that this is not the time to be questioning or criticizing:

http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/07/obama-deputy-steve-hildebrand-liberals-need-to-stfu/

You just need to wait a little, until this is done:

"first let's get our economy moving, bring our troops home safely, fix health care, end climate change and restore our place in the world."

Then, maybe it'll be your time pipe up -- maybe not though;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-hildebrand/a-message-to-obamas-progr_b_149089.html

Where are other voices from within the CIA? "The left" had been defending certain aspects and people within the real CIA from the fake and terribly injurious Doug Feith/Dick Cheney CIA for eight grueling years. Where are those within the CIA who are well aware of that and had benefited, at least in a moral boosting sense, from that hurculean effort by "liberal bloggers and "the left"?

Those warnings are issued with an eye towards the events they know full well are imminent: debates over how legally restrained the CIA should be in its interrogation and detention powers; demands that light be shined on what the CIA spent the last eight years doing at the behest of Dick Cheney and with the legal imprimatur of David Addington's cabal; and, most of all, efforts to hold those who committed war crimes accountable (efforts which would and should be directed at high-level Bush policy makers and legal advisers who enabled those crimes, not lower-level intelligence agents, but which the CIA nonetheless fears).

Emphasis added.

One of the best calls for prosecution of war criminals involved in torture that I have seen appeared in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer. It was written by two law professors, one of whom is a former captain in the Army JAG corps. Two snippets:

The obligation is absolute. The United States must either initiate prosecution or extradite to another state.

/snip/

It is time for real change in America. It is time for a return to the rule of law, an end to seven years of impunity, and restoration of U.S. honor, integrity and respect within the international community. This can be accomplished only with Obama's adherence to an unavoidable constitutional duty to faithfully execute the law.

An Oxdown Gazette diary I did on the Op-Ed piece is linked at my name.

It will be interesting to see if there is any CIA-orchestrated push-back against D'Amato and Paust. After all, they aren't "liberal bloggers", but I suppose they can be called "liberal law professors". You can bet that Paust's exerience in JAG will be completely overlooked in the stories planted by CIA sources. He'll be just another DFH.

From the very beginning of the "intelligence community" after WWII (or even before, for all I know), they believed that the "ends justify the means". They would not view any act of evil as wrong as long as our side did it and it was "for our protection".

The CIA and friends have "protected us" into bankruptcy both moral and financial; as well as "protecting us" into slavery.

Some people blame just the odious Reagan administration for horrors in South America during that administration's time in office, but that is wrong. They stupidly believed that the CIA and friends knew what they were doing, and that a nation could do evil things as long as the ends were laudable. Blame both.

Note to all: you can not fight evil with evil --- unless you want to be evil yourself. This does not require a PhD. to understand.