BULLY BOY
PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID
TABLE
KILLER BARRY O HAS A NEW ACCOMPLISHMENT TO BOAST OF, THE UNITED NATIONS REVEALS BARRY O'S KILLS BY DRONES INCREASED 72% LAST YEAR.
AND KILLER BARRY HAS DEVELOPED AN ENTIRE FLEET OF DRONES.
THINGS ARE SO BAD THAT EVEN NOTED WAR CRIMINAL ALBERTO GONAZLES IS EXPRESSING SOME SMALL CONCERNS.
REACHED FOR COMMENT, KILLER BARRY TOLD THESE REPORTERS, "DRONES ARE THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE. IN FACT, I'M LOOKING FOR ONE THAT WILL CRAWL INTO BED BESIDE SHE-HULK. THEN I'LL TRULY BE FREE AND HAPPY."
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Last night, MSNBC aired Rachel Maddow's awful special entitled Hubris and based on the over six-year-old book of the same title written by David Corn and Michael Isikoff. As noted here yesterday, the 'documentary' wasn't at all interested in anything other than Bully Boy Bush Lied. What effect did this have? That's what makes the lie matter. A person making a real documentary would grasp that. Hubris wasn't a documentary. It failed to show the consequences and the consequences are what the illegal war did to the Iraqi people. Yesterday, we contrasted the garbage Maddow offered with an actual documentary about Vietnam after US forces had left:
You can hear some of it in An Introduction To The Enemy, the documentary film Jane Fonda made with director Haskell Wexler and with Tom Hayden. (Click here for a video of Haskell Wexler discussing his films and the politics around them.)
The Pacifica Radio Archives has an interview, conducted by Paul McIsaac, with Jane about the documentary.
Jane Fonda: Well Tom and I felt -- and Haskell Wexler -- and the other people in the organization, the Indochina Peace Campaign, we all share the feeling that it's becoming possible now, even though the war continues in South Vietnam, but it is becoming possible to start to deal with the Vietnamese as people. It wasn't so easy when there were American troops there, POWs there, but now these people who have been viewed as victims or the enemy for so long must begin to be addressed as human beings. They are very eager to open up human relations with American people.
In contrast, Hubris celebrates xenophobia. What has happened to the Iraqis? Who cares? MSNBC doesn't. The Iraq War was a tragedy -- for all from the countries who participated but most of all for the Iraqi people.
Hubris is xenophobia, it's reducing the people whose lives were most effected to bit players in order to navel gaze and celebrity watch. It's as offensive as the initial war coverage was.
Remember the criticism? We see the missiles launch but we don't see the targets hit.
That is Hubris. And it's also hubris.
To watch MSNBC's awful special was to be left with the impression that the worst thing in the world was that Daddy lied to small children because small children need to believe Daddy never lies. It was not an anti-war special, it wasn't even an anti-Iraq War special in reality. There was no interest in the people who had been most effected and the term for that is xenophobia. That's not a minor point, that's key to understanding the crap that MSNBC threw on the air last night. David Swanson (War Is A Crime) hints at it in his review:
Hubris is the wrong word for what took the United States into war with Iraq. The forces at work were greed, lust for power, and sadistic vengeance. The word "hubris" suggests the tragic downfall of the guilty party. But the war on Iraq did not destroy the United States; it destroyed Iraq. It damaged the United States, to be sure, but in a manner hardly worthy of mention in comparison to the sociocide committed against Iraq.
Hubris, the film, provides a reprehensibly ludicrous underestimation of Iraqi deaths, and only after listing U.S. casualties.
And where were the Iraqi people on camera? Well they weren't on camera. They were rendered faceless. They weren't talking heads because, apparently, the fact that a US leader would lie was not something shocking to the Iraqi people.
If xenophobia is your fetish, you can click here to stream the awful special. You'll see Colin The Blot Powell's work-wife Lawrence Wilkerson gab a lot. And that's the most damning thing about the special and about the people writing about it and those whoring for Larry Wilkerson.
What MSNBC (and others -- Democracy Now!, Consortium News) have done is allow a liar to lie repeatedly. Author, activist and media analyst Norman Solomon writes about when he confronted Wilkerson on some of his lies and Wilkerson immediately shifted from we-did-not-lie-we-did-not-know to why-didn't-you-call-me-why-didn't-you-try-to-meet-with-me.
That's ridiculous. Rachel Maddow's had Larry Wilkerson on how many times now? The two of been together so often, you'd think they were planning a family. But where's Greg Thielmann? Where's Houston Wood?
Last night on MSNBC, Maddow again presented the revisionary lies that Colin Powell was tricked. But, too bad for Rachel, CBS News was on this story long before she was. Click here for Rebecca Leung (CBS News) writing up the report of Scott Pelley's October 2003 report for 60 Minutes II on how Colin Powell was advised about the inaccuracies but Powell included them. So much for Wilkerson's oft repeated lie that his wet dream Colin just didn't know the truth. (Do not e-mail this site and say, "It's 2009." We have noted before that about two years ago, CBS revamped their site. When that happened, dates went wrong. Ignore the date. If you don't trust my memory -- fine by me -- click here for Common Dreams' repost -- in October 2003 -- of the CBS notice about that report by Pelley. You can also click here, at CBS News, for the original date on Rebecca Leung's report.)
The audience reaction was intense to the original airing of the report and K. Jordan Chadwick, in her response, asked, "Please do not let this story die." But Rachel Maddow and MSNBC have spent years now killing this story. Rewriting history to make Colin Powell look innocent.
Here's an exchange from the program:
PELLEY: If the secretary took the information that his own intelligence bureau had developed and turned it on its head, which is what you're saying, to what end?
MR. THIELMANN: I can only assume he was doing it to loyally support the president of the United States and build the strongest possible case for arguing that there was no alternative to the use of military force.
Powell lied. Powell knowing lied and it was established in 2003 by 60 Minutes II. Rachel Maddow lied Monday night and she, Consortium News, Democracy Now and all the other outlets that have allowed Lawrence Wilkerson to repeatedly lie to their audiences -- those outlets are guilty of abetting a War Criminal. Think about that before you applaud Rachel's latest garbage. It wasn't just know, it was widely known. And CBS may have vanished the program, but we can thank Jon Corzine right now. The day after it originally aired? October 16, 2003, then-Senator Jon Corzine entered the full transcript of the report into the Congressional record.
It's there, it's part of the record and it refutes every damn lie Lawrence Wilkerson's been telling since 2006. It rebukes the Rachel Maddows, the Amy Goodmans, the Ray McGoverns and all the other sad liars who have shilled for Lawrence Wilkerson in the last seven years. Shame on them all.
And for those who think maybe Greg Thielmann no longer speaks about this topic? It would be a very sudden clamp-down. At the end of last month, Harry Shearer (Le Show -- link is audio and transcript) was interviewing Thielman. Excerpt.
HARRY SHEARER: All right. Let me just review something he said. This is on Meet the Press, January 13th of this year.
COLIN POWELL: We were basing all of our actions on a National Intelligence Estimate that the Congress asked for. It was provided to the Congress by the CIA. And all of us in the Bush administration at that time accepted the judgment of our 16 intelligence communities. I presented it to the UN. We subsequently found out that a lot of that information was not accurate, and that is very unfortunate, but that’s the way it unfolded… The president had more than sufficient basis to believe that there were weapons of mass destruction that were a danger to the world, and the possibility of those weapons going to terrorists, and so he undertook military action. I think that was the correct thing to do and it was well supported by the intelligence.
HARRY SHEARER: Is that an accurate statement?
GREG THIELMANN: I’m very sorry to hear him put it that way, because I had a lot of respect for Colin Powell as Secretary of State. I felt honored working for him as Secretary of State. One of the things that I particularly dislike about what he just said was, in the fall of 2002 there was a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD. On the most important assessment in that estimate concerning the Iraqi nuclear weapons program – and there was a nuclear weapons program prior to the first Gulf war, but 15 agencies in that estimate said that Iraq had reconstituted the nuclear program, which had been dormant and had ended after the first Gulf war. One agency, Colin Powell’s own agency, the intelligence bureau of the State Department, said that the evidence did not support that conclusion. That is, that the evidence showed that Iraq had not reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. And of all the various assessments about chemical weapons, about biological weapons, about missiles, that was the most critical assessment. And the State Department not only dissented, as the State Department would sometimes do, with an asterisk and a one-liner, it was basically a dissent with the entire judgment requiring a lot of words and was on the front page of the executive summary of the estimate. It was on the one-pager that went to the president of the United States. And that should raise alarm bells, not because the State Department intelligence bureau is always right, although I would argue that INR, which is its acronym, INR was more often right than not when we dissented from the majority, but that Colin Powell in particular, who knew or should have known from our memoranda and from his conversations with the head of our bureau the reasons, the detailed reasons why the evidence was not sound behind that conclusion.
Powell lied and Wilkerson been allowed to lie repeatedly over and over. Greg Thielmann is not anti-Powell. Read the transcript or listen to the show. I am anti-Powell because I have a low tolerance for War Criminals.
MSNBC wanted to sanitize Powell. They were more interested in piling on the hate at the feet of Bully Boy Bush and because Lawrence Wilkerson will join in on that, they'll gladly let him lie.
What comes from that? In one instance, a sicko believes he can break the law. Raw Story does a write-up that toes the Maddow line. The result?
To be clear, the "RetiredVet" is the one commenting. He's responding to "David Emghee." The words above are not the words of "David Emghee."
RetiredVet means "dissenters" -- those not feeling Powell was a lovely -- and he explains that he will defend Powell with his dying breath -- get the feeling someone's mainlining MSNBC? -- and then he goes on to say of "TRAITOR bush," "The WAR CRIMINAL and TRAITOR ordered this man to LIE" -- no, silly fool. You're an idiot and someone facing questioning from the feds. Bully Boy Bush could tell someone to do something but he can't order the Cabinet to do a damn thing. Elliot Richardson was the Attorney General of the US when then-President Richard Nixon 'ordered' him to fire Archibald Cox as Special Prosecutor on the Watergate investigation. Did Richardson do it? No. He resigned. As Secretary of State, Powell was a civilian. More importantly for RetiredVet, writing that you will "with GREAT Joy and Jubilation put a BULLET in the head of the COWARD and Traitor bush"? That's a threat and will most like be investigated as such. You aired your ignorance throughout your comment but you also aired a threat.
I can't stand Bully Boy Bush. I have no desire to kill him. He has made his own hell and will live in it.
There's probably no hope for RetiredVet -- look at his other comments which include wishing that "four or five people walk in to Congress both National and Random States with semi automatic weapons and unlimited magazines and a few drums, then OPEN UP and slaughter every Congressional Leader, WOW, what an exciting NOISE Day that would be." You have to wonder about Raw Story -- why in the world would they allow these kind of comments to be posted?
There may be more disturbing (or more threats) from him in the comments, you can click here if you're interested. I don't choose to wallow in his sickness.
But this is the simplistic rage that Maddow's special encourages. Maybe if it had focused even just a little on the Iraqi people, RetiredVet would be obsessing over how to help them and not over his desire to kill Bully Boy Bush? So, to recap, Maddow's special was xenophobic and dishonest.
RECOMMENDED:
- Iraq snapshot
- Violence and confusion continue in Iraq
- Protests, strikes, $300 million and birth defects
- Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Serial Cheater...
- Nouri's Iraq: Hacking, firing and torture
- A tale of two Huffingtons?
- Hejira
- At least 18 people killed in Iraq violence today
- I Hate The War
- Truest statement of the week
- A note to our readers
- Editorial: The crimes against Iraq didn't end in 2...
- TV: First Among All Whiners
- Greed and The Rhino
- Tweets of the Week
- John and Junior: Modern Day Morality Tales
- Explain it to us
- What makes for a romantic movie?
- Expand Health Care for CHAMPVA Children
- CIA confronted for drone attacks (Gene Clancy,WW)
- House and Senate Veterans committees announce hear...
- Highlights
One baby cries another teethes
2 days ago
The whiny toddlers
2 days ago
