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The important thing for Republicans is that the BS gets out there first, LOUD AND PROUD, so that when the truth comes out months later the lie is hardwired into the "common wisdom" David Broder.
Meet example 10,476 – December 2007, waterboarding is awesome:
Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds,” Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. “From that day on he answered every question.”
We know this is a lie, but from Limbaugh to Pantload they all spouted this nonsense. Mr. Kiriakou was soon everywhere proclaiming the ol’ waterboard had prevented many attacks. So you know what’s coming:
During the heated debate in 2007 over the use of waterboarding and other techniques, Mr. Kiriakou’s comments quickly ricocheted around the media. But lost in much of the coverage was the fact that Mr. Kiriakou had no firsthand knowledge of the waterboarding: He was not actually in the secret prison in Thailand where Mr. Zubaydah had been interrogated but in the C.I.A. headquarters in Northern Virginia. He learned about it only by reading accounts from the field.
And, you know what happened next:
Mr. Kiriakou was later hired by ABC to provide commentary on terrorism cases
AWESOME!!!
Update:
More Awesome! March 2009:
According to knowledgeable sources, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has hired John Kiriakou
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The most repugnant, immoral, unjustifiable act a govornment can commit is OK because some wad of fecal matter says so? We should listen to him because he read some reports? He’s on the news? He went to school? Fuck him and all like him.
Our govornment tortured prisoners. In our name. This is an unforgivable act and those that sought to justify it, those that ordered it and those that conspired to cover it up must be held to account.
The United States of America has long considered itself a “great nation”. While I have long considered this debatable, how could any sane person seek to argue a society that holds itself to be morally superior is justified in torturing prisoners. The abject stupidity of this defies reason.
It is all very simple;
A society is only as good as its’ treatment of those it considers the least worthy.
So, Mr. Kiriakou , fuck you.
PS
When you can show me your DD-214 we can talk.
Good morning and thanks for the post, Attaturk.
Kool aid drunk group think and talking points.
Taking ethics seriously, as well as legal law, seems too great an inconvenience for this culture.
Hey, morning guys. Take care.
and yet obama claims there;s no need for a fairness doctrine
the fall of civic knowledge in this country can be traced directly to the fall of the fairness doctrine
Morning all,
One would think that after the pentagon propoganda excapades the MSM would have learned something.
I don’t think the fairness doctrine would be effective in stopping wingnuts from distorting the news. I think a better way would be to prevent large corporations like GE and ADM from owning media companies.
I watched an abc early morning news anchor report on the anniversary (?) of Pat Tillman’s death last week I believe it was, and I think the anchor was profoundly CLUELESS of the reality surrounding Tillman’s death though he did mention “friendly fire.”
But he began this sentimentalized editorialization about how Tillman did what he, the anchor, and everyone else had wanted to nobly do after 9/11 – go out and protect our country by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and yada yada yada.
Even after the revelations that Tillman had become profoundly anti-Iraq war he is being used as poster boy for patriotism and a role model to obey one’s government military by this ignorant and lazy, sentimentalizing knee-jerk anchor. It is one thing when they commit sins of omission of stories from their corporate placating. But the colossal ignorance added to it. Talking points and lack of general knowledge and serving pablum, or just plain old kool-aid, to the watching public.
Style not substance prevails on the tube. And truth tragically succumbs to media’s “friendly fire.”
Y’know, ll, when news anchors do nothing but read what appears on the monitor in front of them, we can’t really expect them to absorb any long-term memory, can we? The difference between someone like you describe and Rachel Maddow whose research on topics is readily apparent is like the proverbial night and day….or “style vs. substance”. :-(
Anyone catch the MSNBC Joe already raising but refusing to name the stink ’some website’ is making on the ‘net about Collins “cutting some money out of the $900b.”
Hmm…who could that be?
Good morning, pups. We have Douthat, Brooks and Herbert this morning. It’s Ross Douthat’s maiden performance at the Times today. I may have to pass on Tuesdays. I don’t know if I can handle both Bobo and Asshat on the same day… Wee Mr. Douthat hits the lunacy ball right out of the park on his first at bat, giving us “Cheney for President,” in which he opines that a Cheney-for-President campaign would have been an instructive test of the Republican Party’s political viability. Bobo, in comparison, sounds almost sane. He’s served up “Globalism Goes Viral,” in which he says swine flu isn’t only a health emergency. It’s a test for how we’re going to organize the 21st century. Mr. Herbert, in “Workers Walk the Plank,” says while Wall Street is breaking out the Champagne, the rest of the economy is beyond terrible, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Here they are.
The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got a selection of bagels with cream cheese. After both Asshat and Bobo I think I’m going to have to go and lie down with a cool cloth on my forehead. Have a great day.
it wouldn’t be effective it would simply be more effective
I believe we need far more then any one method, I agree corporations should not be owners of the media, I also think there should never be allowed a single owner multiple media asset ownership (ie murdoc)
the simple fact is clear channel would be forced to put on someone like randi rhodes directyl after rush, and if someone only had randi rhodes they would then be forced to broadcast someone like rush
side by side the informed program would be much more effective then the sraw man programming from neo con land
tell it bro
It is made worse by media ownership. We have corporate monopolies which own and control the media. We’ve allowed corporations to grow to big and then be able to eat all competition and control the market where they were supposed to compete.
If we got back to busting up these huge corporations we would have better and more diverse products for the people on ALL fields/sectors.
Very soon we will be left with one or two lousy airlines for example.
Wow, just peeked in and was hoping to see you, my friend! Yeah, what a difference. You know the more exposure to real thoughtful commentary like here and Rachel and Greenwald, and then catching a bit of the shallow titillating stuff, it is so stark. The cherry picking of facts. The cherry picking even of what are laws to take seriously and what laws our status quo political and oliogarchal classes say are to be ignored. The cherry picking even of historical events, here was the preamble but let’s pretend the aftermath say with Tillman didn’t actually happen. Yipes.
Please Rachel, don’t let teevee compromise you. So far she is walking the walk as well as talking the talk so well. Maybe she is not seen as a threat because media figures most people in the words of Nicholson, “Can’t handle the truth.” Probably have a point. Look at poor whistleblowers today. They risk so much and press and congress too compromised and corrupt to encourage them.
Take care Waccamaw, hope to see more of you and I will try to be on campus more often.
Last Saturday on the lake I caught Darcy Burner and I think I am going to volunteer to help her support the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House of Reps. She was recruiting volunteers. I figure I can make a few phone calls each week or do research for her on the net, fight the corporate/political machine in the comfort of my own home. Maybe that will help me deal with daily shock and awe and helplessness from the fresh hells that are still surfacing from Bushco. And Darcy’s fight will push back those dastardly Blue Dog Dems who are willing to align with defiant Republicans to protect the toxic, cancerous status quo and block progressive recovery.
Wow… worked all night. Time for bed. Rant-prone when this tired. :) Later!
The networks are pathetic as far as informing the public. The people they put forth as “experts” are ignorant, uneducated ideologues. Certainly they lack real reporting and are only mouthpieces for the PR put out by corporations and government.
People now look to the internet for information and so forth. TV is pretty much on its last gasp.. destroyed by corporate greed, which believed that the dumbing down of America was good for biz.
Just comical. And people still try to argue with me that BigMedia cares about “ratings!” The Conglomerate Media exists now solely to push ideology onto the voters, so that voters continue to vote against their own self interest, and for the interests of the various BigMoney industries.
This Ross Douchehat debut is another perfect example. There was nothing in this 29 year-old’s past that can possibly be used to justify this new job at the NY Times. Terrible writer. Mostly wrong. No exceptional accomplishments. Yet, here he is right out of the gate with a completely laughable nothing. DeadEye Cheney had/has lower approval ratings that the notoriously low rated Congress. Somewhere around 9%, and this pathetic pundit tries to make a case for Cheney as a Prez candidate?!? Good one, Ross! Hahaha! It’s all just a game for you, isn’t it?
Kiriakou? Wasn’t that the spy on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ? David McCallum?
and the rap on rachel is that she’s immature and childish. Style. Substance. She just has a lot of fun doing what she’s doing.
yup
but let’s be clear, the media is owned by us and we lease rights to other contractors, they MUST abide by our rules, it’s our stuff they’re using
we simply must break them up, no murdocks allowed, no clear channel allowed, no “excellence in broadcasting” allowed
and there MUST be rules regarding syndicaition, we CANNOT have rush broadcast on every single station so there’s no choice
this is a clear channel trick, broadcast only what they want you to hear, then show demographics demonstrating “the majority of people listen to this programming”
sick stuff there
If waterboarding is so cinchy and non-life-threatening then why didn’t Sean Hannity offer himself up to be waterboarded for charity but instead backed out and wrote a check to charity so he didn’t have to go through with it? Huh. I’m confused. The neocons have to get their game down on waterboarding, because as of right now they look like a bunch of fans of Caligula!
Two more war criminal Torture activists that need to spend the rest of their life in jail .
When we lock up this cancer ,from top to bottom it will help balance the budget.
Treason Ringmaster dick cheney hoards over $100 million in war profits alone.
And when we strip every dime from the bush treason breeders ,we’ll have some breathing room with all of their ill gotten gains. Start puling passports.
Ever catch yourself reading the newscrawl at the bottom of the screen and waiting for the next letter and trying to guess what the next word will be?
Distract ya much?
How about the graphics (chyrons?) with their slow moving patterns and little flashes of light glistening on the network name. Then there’s always a little waving flag somewhere else.
Why the distractions when I’m sure (heh!) that the networks want us to pay close attention to the static talking head on the screen.
Not sure if I should wrap this in tin foil, but I do know that editing is a powerful tool in video production and think that it is being used as a tool in the dumb down effort.
Maybe more coffee. Good Morning All.
why didn’t Sean Hannity offer himself up to be waterboarded for charity but instead backed out and wrote a check to charity so he didn’t have to go through with it?
Becuase Hannity is a loud-mouthed pussy?
we need to reign in their puppeteers as well, the carlyle group and kock industries
cheney was far from the “master mind”, he’s almost as moronic as bush, think bush with a better vocabulary folder, that’s cheney, he’s got his strings being pulled he’s not the string puller
oohhh, I didn’t know he weaseled out of it, got linky?
But won’t they arrange for more shock and awe to rain down upon us? The swine flu, what of that strange ambush?
How can you not be a conspiracy theorist when they have outdistanced the past conspiracy theories with their horrors, and the biggest horror is how they MINIMIZE their horrors? The witnesses of the horrors feel crazier and more offbalance than the perpetrators hanging onto their party line. Too emotional and that is too “sissyish” for this culture.
There seems a fascination with people without conscience, mesmerizing, like watching a deadly cobra perform, wend its head hypnotically back and forth. And once again, corporate media extols the winner of the game, who doesn’t blink first. Who doesn’t let em see you sweat … just like a serious sociopath can maintain.
For Hannity to do a waterboarding thing would be the equivalent of a training session where the person knows what to expect and not to expect. Then again if he were to be turned over to the taliban he might get a better idea of what the detainees were experiencing.
Yeah. They learned to clap louder.
Take a look at what passes for the public editor in the NYT. He gutted my last letter about holding cheney responsible for treason from a page to a sentence . Gutted any point I took the time to put on paper.
Let’s have wholesale treason trails so they can relearn basic reporting.
Roll The Treason /Torture tapes with the guys laughing at work.
These people do marketing big time. They tailor their news show to the people their surveys tell them are watching. That audience has become redder and redder over the years, as sensible people simply stop watching the less sophisticated version of ‘Entertainment Tonight’ that gets passed off as network news. It’s a closed loop of stupid.
Flu Crisis Tests Administration
Loooooove that passive voice.
Yeah. He wanted to do ir under super-controlled circumstances but peopole started jumping at teh chance to get involved and he either had to undergo a real waterboarding or skip it. he chose the latter and was correct to do so, in my view. the ignoramus just never should have propsed doing it in the first place.
even in training those tortured voluntarily only lasted a few seconds
I proposed the waterboarding to consist of;
“we will stop drowning you when you admit you are a secret nazi, that you were personally responsible for the attack in 9/11, that you secretly hate america”
I am guessing that even though he volunteered for his session of torture he’d admit all of those things in less then 30 seconds
This is true but even in a controlled setting it’s horrific. Christopher Hitchens is proof of that.
Hope this week the people on your congress critters staff recognize your voice about this insanity.
Let them know we want the missing children spoken for.
And when calling ask if they support the Nuremburg outcome still?
I’ve been assigned arlin so it will never end. The girl wasn’t laughing when I said she’ll need to find a new boss after the treason trials. Good Day.
If he’s gonna run his mouth about it, then he bloody well needs to put his mouth where the water is! One of the main reasons all these twits keep spewing their swill is that they are *never* called to account for it.
aha, I believe it was hitchens who put it very nicely;
“the reason you have the sensation of drowing when being waterboarded is the fact that you ARE drowing”
excellant point, to which I will add;
“the reason you experience the throws of death is the fact that you’re body thinks you are dying
the reason your body thinks you are dying is the fact that you ARE dying”
Right. How long did Hitchens last? A few seconds? I mean, in New Hampshire Hannity beat feet when some Paultards threw a few snowballs at him. What made him think he could hold up to a waterboarding?
Yeah. What made him think people wouldn’t call him out on it? Imbecile.
From Ron Fournier’s flunkies:
I’m old enough to remember when a network that showed this
kind of disrepect for the Presidency during
a time of war and a public health emergency would
have been called un-American.
By the way, I had a Smithfield ham over the weekend and some leftovers last night.
it’ll be on FOX news. I’m not going to criticize them. It’s sweeps month and FOX doesn’t have political analysts or any of that. It’s a major revenue hit to lose the commercials. If it wasn’t on FOX News then I’d agree.
I came back. Y’know it awes how what Bill and Monica did was worth so much time, money, energy, litigation and what tortures have been delegated and committed is a massive sweep under the proverbial rug. The Geneva Convention was ratified by the U.S. so it is the law. Law just doesn’t seem to have the clout it used to have, now, does it. I mean if you are rich and empowered, that is. And media seems to see everything in terms of team competition. Who wins in terms of power manipulation, in terms of personality, affiliation, money.
for beerfart liberal and solai
I just watched the video
they made it easy on hitchens, they gave him some things to drop when he wanted the experiment to end and they gave him a word, “red”
I would have given him a sentence like;
“I was responsible for the attack on 9/11 and I am the leader of al qaeda”
that would have been more effective and on point
I’m telling you we need to up the ante against Fox. Start contacting all their advertisers all the time.
allan, they’re not there for the advertising, that’s a bonus, they lost money for the first few years in business and it didn’t phase murdoc one bit, they’re there for corporates ability to buy law
if the advertisers leave koch industries will begin paying the bill, which will cost them less then paying their taxes
never the less I agree, if they advertise on fox I am not buying the product
I refuse watching shows on fox as well
is anything on FOX worth watching? I’m serious. I have no idea what’s even on FOX. Football, right? I’ll watch that.
wouldn’t know beerfart, haven’t watched anything on fox since they first started broadcasting their opinion segment
Ilya Kuryakin, along with Napoleon Solo battling the Technological Heirarchy for Removal of Undesireables and the Subjegation of Humanity (THRUSH).
Seems to me Obama is a co-conspirator, at this juncture.
I wrote a short post about this NYT attempt to address the widely reported disinformation by Kiriakou. I hope if anyone sees any of our other establishment media outlets making a similiar attempt to correct this disinformation, that they spread far and wide, that you will post links to any such reporting on my blog. I’d really like to see if any of them will report this. Quite frankly, I have my doubt that they will do this because it doesn’t help their torture narrative.
If anyone who wasn’t a front pager or headliner (or whatever you want to call it) had written this, the criticism would have been scathing. I followed the links, but a lot of readers don’t. I spend a lot of time reading material like this, but a lot of readers don’t. Context is hugely absent on this post.
I know your work. I admire it. I also know you’re capable of so much better.
I totally agree with you, btw.