unusualmusic_lj_archive

Everything that's Wrong with the Media: Marc Ambinder on Why Progressives Are Always Wrong

So. Tom Ridge confirms what progressives have long known to be true. [Namely, Bush and his cronies conspiring to raise the Terrorist Threat levels so as to up the President's approval ratings and win elections.] Here's Marc "Divide the Baby in Half" Ambinder to confirm why you must never again rely on our "free press" to protect democracy.
Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong. Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence. But journalists should have been even more skeptical about the administration's pronouncements. And yet -- we, too, weren't privy to the intelligence. (emphasis added)
Marcy Wheeler saw that one off in fine style.
....

Hey, but what about all that "gut hatred"? Thers, writing at FDL:
There was always a certain inverted genius about the accusation. Because I did hate George W. Bush! But it was nothing personal. Strictly business. See, I thought, correctly, as it emerged, and as indeed was absurdly easy to figure out at the time, that George Bush was making up ridiculous crap in order to sucker the nation into a disastrous war that would get a lot of people killed for no sane reason. It seemed to me, not unreasonably, that someone who would do such a thing was kind of an asshole. And hence I concluded that George W. Bush was an utter asshole, as were his advisers, cronies, Sith-lords, sycophants, and Internet Fan-Base. They were all crazy assholes. And they still are!

But then these crazy assholes turned around and said to people like Armbinder, "these people are calling us crazy assholes. Isn't that rude?" And Armbinder by his own account nodded, and I dunno, rubbed his chin, chewed his cud, and decided that Civil Discourse requires that when one must consider the competing claims of those who dislike liars and say so, on the one hand, and on the other hand, liars, the only sensible way to come to a decision is to figure out who's nicer.

And since it's not nice to call someone a liar, even if they are a liar, it's kind of not a fair competition.

You know who was a real dick? That kid who said the Emperor had no clothes. What a presumptuous little shit.
MORE

Thers wins the internets with that snippet of blog. Because goddamn it, it ain't like Bush broke every fucking law, American and International, in committing these war crimes:

Here's just a few of the facts of what CIA interrogators did in our name, just the ones that come from this IG report, as masterfully summarized by Glenn Greenwald:

• Threats of execution, using semi-automatic handguns and power drills
• Threats to kill detainee and his children
• Threats to rape detainee's wife and children in front of him
• Restricting the detainee's carotid artery
• Hitting detainee with the butt end of a rifle
• Blowing smoke in detainee's face for five minutes
• Multiple instances of waterboarding detainees, of the type we prosecuted Japanese war criminals for using:
• Hanging detainee by their arms until interrogators thought their shoulders might be dislocated
• stepping on detainee's ankle shackles to cause severe bruising and pain
• choking detainee until they pass out
• dousing detainee with water on cold concrete floors in cold temperatures to induce hypothermia
• killing detainees through torture techniques, whether accidental or not
• putting detainee in a diaper for days at a time to live in their own filth

On that last point, Digby notes that this could have been used in tandem with another technique we know about, the use of forced enemas, a particularly degrading technique, part and parcel of the humiliations heaped on prisoners that were psycho-sexual in nature. A lot of these stem from misreadings of books like Raphael Patai's "The Arab Mind," which presumed a host of dubious generalizations about Muslims and their predispositions, all of it willingly lapped up by neoconservatives willing to believe that their opponents were somehow subhuman. As if anyone would react favorably to being made to live in their own shit. These stereotypical projections that manifested themselves in essentially an allowance for torturing brown-skinned people have dangerous and deadly repercussions.
more...

And the CIA hiring Blackwater to carry-out extra-judicial assassinations of members of AL Quaeda is all perfectly reasonable and legal. (Are there ever judicial assassinations)

Yes, Blackwater. That same company responsible for Nissour Square. (WEhich atrocity somehow managed to miss me entirely. WTF?)

THE killing of 17 Iraqis at Baghdad’s Nissour Square by contractors (read mercenaries) of the United States military firm Blackwater on September 17, once again highlights the controversial role played by the hired guns of the occupation forces. Similarly, in the second week of October, contractors working for an Australian-owned security company, under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), fired on a car carrying civilians. Two Iraqi women were killed in this incident.

The apparently unprovoked Nissour Square incident by Blackwater guards has enraged all Iraqis, cutting across the ethnic and political divide. Prime Minister Nouri al-Malki demanded $8 million in compensation for each of the victims and the removal of Blackwater guards from Iraq within six months. A government spokesperson said that such a high compensation was demanded because “Blackwater uses employees who disrespect the rights of Iraqi citizens even though they are guests in the country.” MORE

And this is just one of the long lists of Bush's crimes. But we liberals are just crazy with gut-hatred for that statesman, Pres. Bush. Doncha just LOVE the "librul" media?