Category Archives: Journalism

#IraqWar Liars: We Knew Then What We Know Now

Bush, Iraq, Journalism, Just War, Media, Republicans, WMD

“Iraq Liars & Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“If we knew what we know today, we would not have gone into Iraq”: This is as good an apology Republicans vying for the highest office are willing to offer, 12 years after launching a war that was immoral and unjust from the inception—as some of us pointed out from the inception—cost trillions in treasure, tens of thousands of lives (American and Iraqi), and flouted America’s national interests.

The big reveal began with Jeb Bush, who told anchor Megyn Kelly that knowing what we know now about Iraq, he would absolutely still have invaded Iraq. Broadcaster Laura Ingraham was having none of it. With the benefit of hindsight, she had arrived at the belated conclusion that the invasion was wrong. Ingraham suggested that Bush III was insane for sticking to his guns about Iraq.

Next to disgrace was Sen. Marco Rubio, also in the running. Six weeks back, Rubio had been unrepentant about the catastrophic invasion. After The Shaming of Jeb, Rubio changed his tune.

The title of Judith Chalabi Miller’s “rehab book tour” is, “If we knew what we now know … .” Over the pages of the New York Times, Miller, the Gray Lady’s prized reporter had shilled for the Iraq war like there was no tomorrow. In her reporting, she channeled Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi conman who fed the moronic Miller with misinformation and lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The other conman was Bush II, president at the time. His administration assisted Miller—a woman already prone to seeing faces in the clouds—to tune-out and become turned-on and hot for war (also the title of a January 2003, “Return To Reason” column). No tale was too tall for our Judith; no fabrication too fantastic.

Miller’s “mistakes,” and those of America’s news cartel, are no laughing matter. But it took a Comedy Central icon to deconstruct her national bid for redemption. The fact that others were on board, Republicans and Democrats, is not exculpatory. Idiocy is bipartisan. Not everybody got it wrong. Miller and her ilk chose not to consult those who got it right.

Miller had company. The Fox News war harpies were certainly a dream come true for many American men. Who cared about honest reporting or basic fact-checking when a heaving bosom is yelling from the screen, “Sock it to Saddam, Dubya!”?

In any event, the meme, “If we knew what we know now, we would not have gone to war in Iraq,” is false; a lie. We most certainly knew what we know now as far back as 2002, which was when this column wrote:

Iraq is a secular dictatorship profoundly at odds with Islamic fundamentalism. No less an authority than the former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism office, Vincent Cannistraro, stated categorically that there was no evidence of Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda. Even the putative Prague meeting between Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of Sept. 11, and Iraqi intelligence, turned out to be bogus. … Iraq has been 95-percent disarmed and has no weapons of mass destruction, an assessment backed by many experts in strategic studies.

The column excerpted was published on September 19, 2002, in Canada’s national newspaper. On that day, the flirty notes and the gracious dinner invitations from America’s leading neoconservatives ceased.

Indeed, there were many experts, credible ones, who categorically rejected the contention that there were WMD in Iraq. But they were silenced …

Read the rest. “Iraq Liars & Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now” is now on WND.

#JonStewart Shames The Shameless #JudithMiller

Foreign Policy, History, Iraq, Journalism, War, WMD

Jon Stewart makes short work of Judith Miller, who is on a “rehab tour,” concerning her role in the ramp-up to war on Iraq. He dismantles her mindless lies, methodically. The fact that others were on board is not exculpatory, he tells her. Idiocy is bipartisan. Not everybody got it wrong, he tutors her (your truly and like-minded libertarians never count to these two).

Now if only Stewart applied the same rigor to gratuitous wars waged by the Obama-Hillary posse.

Miller is one of those disgusting specters American journalism spits out ever so often, as are her Fox News cheerleaders.

Oh, Please: #SeymourHersh Is Old-School Reliable

Bush, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Journalism, Military

Seymour M. Hersh is not only “a legendary investigative reporter,” known for his shoe-leather journalism; he’s positively old-school in his methods. Hersh’s London Review of Books “national-security” piece details “Pakistan’s involvement in the SEAL Team Six raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.” The lengthy report would be quite humdrum had it not shattered the mythical thinking perpetuated by the elites about the US military, the commander-in-chief and his national security apparatus.

Who was it who said that, “The military is government; the military works like government; is financed like government and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government…”?

And the military marches to the beat of government. No need to “pray to the military Moloch.”

This is not to say that the SEALS did not do the deed, only that “the Osama bin Laden assassination” had a few extra kinks to it. As I say, Hersh’s account sounds like business as usual: government SOP (standard operating procedure).

Hersh explained that, days after the May 2, 2011 SEAL operation, he told Remnick that his intelligence sources were saying Obama’s account was fiction. “I knew right away that there were problems with the story,” Hersh said.

If anything, the hyperbole being disgorged by the media and military’s professional myth-makers is more fantastic than Hersh’s report. Examples:

“The Hersh piece reads like Frank Underwood from House of Cards.”

“all wrong.”

“Sy Hersh is a far-left fantasist and conspiracy theorist.”

The Obama of the Obamacare hoax, the NSA, Fast and Furious, government-by-executive order; Libya, lawless immigration, on and on, and the Bush of WMD in Iraq, illegal, unlawful wars and similar spending: These stellar statists would never lie in the service of self-aggrandizement, now would they?! Perish the thought.

READ “The Killing of Osama bin Laden” by Seymour M. Hersh. As I say, it’s pretty unremarkable.

Now For Some Real News: Indonesian Executions

Drug War, Journalism

Away from the American “news” media’s lazy, solipsistic navel-gazing in Baltimore, Indonesia has gone ahead and executed eight out of nine prisoners for drug-related offenses. Al Jazeera:

… A firing squad in Indonesia has shot Australian drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran together with six out of seven other alleged narcotics traffickers. Their deaths have caused an international outcry.

Over the past few days, the foreign ministers of Australia, Brazil, France, and the Philippines had all expressed their dismay over their nationals’ imminent execution. …

MORE.