The New York Times' "littlest Judy Miller" is back at again. Juan Forero, a name that causes alternate shudders and gails of laughter, is taking on Venezuela yet again. The slambook (that's what it reads like, a high school slam book) is entitled "Venezuelan Thrives on Seeing Threats From 'Mr. Danger.'"
Juan's not a full blown Miller, he lacks the moxie (though not the ego). Would Miller let US Embassy officials monitor her interviews as little Juan's rumored to have done? Not a chance in hell. While Miller was perfectly believable commanding a troop in Iraq, little Juan would be more comfortable on latrine duty (and deserving of such duty).
Tag team reporting (or "reporting") with T. Christian Miller only brought him embarrassment but Little Juan has the blood lust for Hugo Chavez. Probably, that's what blinded him to his own inconsistency?
He sneers, he spits, he blows!
Little Juan today:
After all, as Venezuelan officials frequently point out, it was not all that long ago that the Bush administration gave tacit support to a coup that briefly toppled Mr. Chávez.
Little Juan almost a year ago (December 4, 2004):
The documents do not show that the United States backed the coup, as Mr. Chávez has charged. Instead, the documents show that American officials issued "repeated warnings that the United States will not support any extraconstitutional moves to oust Chávez."
He got himself so worked up, he forgot the line he's been pushing. Would Judy?
No. She'd probably just crow, "I was proved f**king right" and chortle while everyone scratched their heads and wondered, "Right about what?"
Little Juan's so busy mocking and ridiculing in his State Dept. pleasing "report" that he gets nervous or overconfident and forgets the party line.
The littlest Judy Miller tries so hard to ape his hero but he keeps coming up short. So let's give him a song. What best suits Little Juan? How about Madonna's "Promise to Try" (written by Madonna and Patrick Leonard, off the Like A Prayer album)? Slightly revised, here are few stanzas. To really enjoy it, you need to picture a dramatic Juan Scarlett-O'Hara-ing it up.
Little Juan, don't you forget the metro desk
Laughing away your ni-nis
When you were the the one who felt all the pain
Little Juan, Clifford Krauss is off the beat
You've made it your own
Blended in -- but it's not the same
Never forget your lies -- facts they can bend
Never miss your chance, market share
That's what you said, so I try not to care
. . .
Don't let facts play games with your mind
Keep the spin frozen in time
You're still hanging on -- but you're doing it wrong
Can't kiss enough ass -- but you promise to try
Francisco dubbed Juan "the littlest Judy Middler" in either November of December 2004
and Forero has certainly lived up to it.
For cleansing breaths of truth, we'll note Robert Parry's "Bush's Terrifying Terror Speech" (Consortium News):
George W. Bush's Oct. 6 speech demanding "complete victory" in the "war on terror" unnerved some Americans who saw a president who looked and sounded like an obsessed sea captain charting the ship of state into an endless storm.
To allay some of those worries, we are offering the White House a draft for a follow-up speech in which Bush can speak straight to the concerns of his doubters. Like another draft that we proposed last summer, we don't expect this one will get very far.
"My fellow Americans, I hear that many of you who watched my speech the other day came away a little spooked. Some of you thought I sounded crazy because I made it seem like we’d be at war in the Middle East forever.
"Some even wondered what it means to win a 'complete victory' over 'terror?' After all, 'terror' is an emotion or a tactic, so how do you defeat an emotion or a tactic?
"Some historians also note that terror has been part of war for eons. It's even in the Bible, with one tribe’s army slaughtering the civilians of another tribe. So how do you completely win a 'war on terror' even if you fight for decades?
Civilian Dead
"Some of you also wondered how I could be so self-righteous, condemning some people who kill civilians to achieve a political goal when I did the same in invading Iraq. Some of you remembered those Iraqi men, women and children who died during my ‘shock and awe’ bombing campaign at the start of the Iraq War.
"Like that Baghdad restaurant I had bombed because I thought Saddam might be eating there. It turned out Saddam wasn't around, but we did kill 14 civilians, including seven children. 'Isn't that a form of terrorism?’ some of you ask.
"There were a lot of those stories during the invasion -- and later, too, like when I ordered the Marines to retake Fallujah with the help of 500-pound bombs and other heavy ordnance. No matter how careful our troops are it's just inevitable that kids and civilians are going to die. That's why a lot of you think that war should be a last resort, never waged for frivolous or made-up reasons.
"Maybe that's why you shook your heads when I said, 'When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing, … this is murder, pure and simple.' Some of you thought it was a bit hypocritical to condemn evildoers for killing kids with bombs when I’ve done the same.
"The problem with that kind of thinking is what we call 'moral equivalence,' which means holding me to the same standards as my enemies. That's a mistake because I represent what’s good and my enemies stand for what's bad, what I like to call 'evil.' Remember, after the Sept. 11 attacks, I told you my goal was to 'rid the world of evil.'
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
juan forero
[Note: Post corrected for "littlest" repeating twice in a row in Francisco's quote.]
