Embassy Memo Flap and the Decline of the Right Blogosphere
Glenn Greenwald and Iraqslogger on that memo about food shortages at the US embassy in Baghdad (which have ended for the moment).
The right blogosphere went crazy about this little memo and its authenticity. Uh, guys, I like State Department folks fine (certainly better than you do), but even they would admit that there are bigger issues than what choices they get at the cafeteria. Like for instance the mortar fire landing in the Green Zone or the bombing of the Abdul Qadir al-Jilani Sufi shrine on Monday that might well set off sectarian violence. The memo was not a big deal one way or another.
And as for the invocation of Dan Rather, why don't they look into Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon if they want to look into fraudulent documents.
There was a guy named Curveball, who was far more important than Dan Rather because he helped get us into this quagmire of a war. Then there was the Niger forgery. So many rightwing forgeries, so little investigation by those with little green feet and balls.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/28/2007 01:53:00 PM
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Those people with the 'little green feet and balls' are attack dogs, not investigative journalists. Matter of fact, I don't consider them to be journalists at all.
And to that list of Chalabi, Curveball Sharabi, Berlusconi's Niger Memos, Secret Downing Street Memos, Hidden CIA "aardwolf" updates from Baghdad, and ignored intel agency reports prior to the Bush War in Iraq, I would also add the names of:
1. Gen. Abdullah Al Shahwani - the current head of Iraqi intel services was part of a CIA militia set up in 2002 to provoke a war with Iraq... Shahwani briefed Bush more than one year after the invasion and warned him that the insurgents had surrounded Baghdad... Bush ignored him.
2. INC (Chalabi's) Intel Chief Aras Habib – a liar, whose claims were often quoted by the Bush cabal. He is now suspected of having been a double agent for Iran.
3. Adnan Ehsan al-Haideyri - also coached by INC to claim he knew of WMD burial sites. The CIA said he was a fabricator, but Bush and Cheney kept repeating his claims well into and long after the war.
4. The secret briefings by David Kay, the CIAs WMD hunter, who kept telling Bush and Cheney he was finding nothing, while Bush Cheney cabal kept insisting WMDs had been found.
5. Sabah Khalifa al-Lami - claimed of links between 9/11 and Iraq. Dismissed by the CIA but still used by Bush cabal in public speeches before and after war.
6. Ibn Al Sahikh al-Libi - the Al Qaeda leader from Libya who confessed to Al Qaeda-Iraq links under torture. Bush cabal kept repeating these claims even after CIA determined all of his comments to be false.
Of course, these are only the names disclosed so far by works by enterprising journalists, such as the book "Hubris." Who knows what other dirty bloody secrets are hidden by the Bush cabal.
You know, I was going to write a short note about 'disinformation' after that little flap about the food, and I was going to use Dan Rather's "Tailwind" scandal as an example of how the truth gets shouted down.
I procrastinated. Nevertheless.
Anyone who was following the Vietnam war closely, at the time it was happening, had heard that story.
Heck, the East Village Other, a notorious hippie underground paper, in 1969 (70?) had run a story about a mountain in Virginia with big blast doors on a two lane back road graded for heavy truck traffic.
The mountain the 'shadow government' works at in the DC vicinity.
The source was weird, and the whole story got buried by the not quite yet concentrated media, but it was true.
The 'poison gas' story is also true.
If I remember correctly, US soldiers had managed to close parts of the N-S trail in Vietnam and the 'Viet Cong' had taken to walking trails over the borders in it's neighbors territory.
SF/SOG groups (w/CIA attached) had been sent over the border to roust villagers, and check the hooches for VC AND US deserters (that may just be apocryphal, there were safer places for a deserter to be, like Saigon's sprawling suburbs).
The problem was that there were tunnels everywhere and just because no one was 'home' didn't mean someone wasn't hiding under the shacks.
So they tear gassed the hooches with CS type gas heavily to flush them out. CS is heavier than air and it would settle into the assumed tunnels, and after a bit, you might get a straggler.
CS type tear gas can cause nausea, respiratory distress, blindness, chemical burns... I could go on, been there, done that.... and that's in open air.
It's more than eye-watering compound, it's meant to incapacitate.
If you were in a tunnel, or unventilated area, and due to whatever reason, you couldn't (wounded VC) or wouldn't come out. It could kill you.
That's right. CS CAN be 'poison gas' under certain circumstances.
Dan Rather backed down over semantics, not the truth.
Just because the cannisters don't come with a poison warning advisory label doesn't mean that it isn't poison under some, and in this case, quite possible, circumstances.
But he backed down... don't know if he even really pushed back. Don't care. I had written off the big 3 TV media outlets long before... while he was still jumping out of Hueys with our troops doing live reporting.
In the process, we lost a story that would have raised *more* questions about subversions like US illegal ops in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.
We in the blog-0-sphere should have more 'cohones' than Dan Rather, trust our sources, and stick by them to the end.
We have that privilege.
No editor.
No publisher.
...and it is a responsibility/risk that IS tangible... measurable, but necessary if the blog-0-sphere is to fulfill it's function of being on the bleeding edge of journalism, instead of another hack uninvolved medium with infotainment on every website.
The job description requires thick skin, and ear plugs to muffle the sound of people who say you are wrong but have no evidence to prove that.
Let them talk... I can't hear them.
I had linked to the food disruption story on this site (and had linked to a copy of the memo on my site, so the document wasn't going to disappear).
This is what I put at the top as a disclaimer:
The memo mentioned in this post has been contested. Juan Cole has taken the memo off his site which will not affect the link below, as the document is on my site. Please note as well that the Washington Post has reported this story [Link], and I see no retraction. The story stands as the Buffalo originally published it.
So sue me.
Short and succinct.
The remaining right wing who have anything to say seem similar as the last hangers on with Nixon. Even they finally realized the futility of pretending, but eventually everything decends to admitting the truth, or years from now being the bitter holdout that says Nixon was innocent. What bothers me is that in other circumstances my stubborn partisanship may deposit me into the same situation.
Where is the apology from Ace for insulting Juan Cole? Where is the most basic human dignity?
Truth be told, his balls are blue.
like crumbs to a starving man, as the right blogosphere slides further and further into insanity, each tiny chance at validation drives them into greater and greater paroxysmal feeding frenzies.
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