If you wonder how the Iraq War was sold, started and continued, the answer is: stupidity.
Those who wanted the war played on people's stupidity and there was a lot of stupidity around.
Especially at the top of our 'left' 'press.'
I'm referring to the Beggar Class, Panhandle Media. Unable to stay in print off of sales, unable to stay on the radio via advertising, they forever sing their own praises and beg for money. Beg, beg, beg. Always insisting they're doing something of value.
Their work isn't worth paying for and their stupidity appalling and, sadly, infectious.
Robert Parry and Katrina vanden Heuvel both felt the need to publish today. Mainly to flaunt their stupidity.
Parry? The man just gets crazier with each passing day. This is how he ends his latest column, "But, even worse, the Post's editors continue to pontificate with an arrogance resistant to the undeiable reality of their own misjudgments, incompetence and immorality. In that sense, the Washington Post has become a threat to the Republic and to the world."
Check out the drama on that queen.
The name of Parry's latest mad ravings is, link goes to OpEdNews, "The WPost's Unbridled Arrogance."
What has him sounding like he's off the thorazine?
He's furious because, two days after the start of the Iraq War, the Post editorial board offered "Iraq, 10 years later, is less threatening but riven by turmoil."
Parry is furious -- and, honestly, unhinged in part because when he worked for the Washington Post Company once, he had a promising career with a bright future in front of him and now he self-publishes online while begging for donations. How dare the Post not admit their own errors!
We'll come back to that outrage.
Never once in the editorial, Parry fumes, was there "some admission of the newspaper's long litany of mistakes or some apology to the war's critics who were routinely maligned in Post editorials and op-eds, you would be sorely disappointed. There was not even a mention of the nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died."
It's an editorial.
He gets that, right?
He does know how to read, right?
Here's the opening paragraph of the editorial:
THE ANNIVERSARY this week of the invasion of Iraq has generated plenty of commentary about the lessons of that war. But relatively little has been said about the current state of U.S. relations with a country that remains one of the world’s largest oil producers and a strategic crossroads of the Middle East. For the first time in decades, contemporary Iraq poses no threat to its neighbors, and parts of the country are flourishing. But violence continues, the central government appears to be crumbling, and the United States, by failing to live up to its promises of partnership, is tipping the country toward deeper trouble.
You caught that, right? "Plenty of commentary about the lessons of that war"? "Relatively little has been saida bout the current state"?
You caught that meant this was about Iraq today, right?
So Parry pulled up at the Burger King drive through and ordered 40 Whoppers with cheese and then became upset that there was no fish on any of the burgers.
Is he unable to grow up?
Do we need to start a fund to provide his mental health care?
His stupidity is dangerous. His stupidity is harmful.
This is the second column 'on' Iraq by Parry that's popped up this week at OpEd News. The other was about the start-up as well.
I really don't think Robert Parry's in any damn place to finger point. He's failed to write about Iraq today. All he's done is proven he's so pathetic that he can attack a former employer over and over while pretending it's about Iraq. Robert Parry has specialized in being pathetic.
When we took on the earlier column, I noted:
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A last word on Robert Parry's nonsense. We stayed with his theme. Had I the time, I'd offer an extensive fact check on his details and examples -- Parry's gotten very loose with the facts. We'll offer one example. Parry writes:
In June 2005, for instance, the Washington Post decided to ignore the release of the "Downing Street Memo" in the British press. The "memo" -- actually minutes of a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his national security team on July 23, 2002 -- recounted the words of MI6 chief Richard Dearlove who had just returned from discussions with his intelligence counterparts in Washington.
The paper ignored the memo until June? That's not accurate. It's also not accurate to suggest that Hiatt, editor of the editorial page, is responsible for the entire paper. March 10th, at Third, we wrote "Editorial: Today we're all Michael Kinsley?:"
In America, the Downing Street Memo was initially and largely ignored.
There were exceptions. We certainly covered it here in this community. Probably more than any other person or outlet, David Swanson covered it. But in terms of the press, there were columnists like Molly Ivins and Helen Thomas and reporters like Walter Pincus (Washington Post). Warren P. Stroble and John Walcott (Knight Ridder Newspapers) summarized the memo, "A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy."
The Walter Pincus link goes to a May 13, 2005 article by Walter Pincus entitled "British intelligence warned of Iraq War." It's hard to claim that "in June 2005, for instance, the Washington Post decided to ignore the release of the 'Downing Street Memo' in the British press" when the Post had reported on it May 13, 2005. There are many other mistakes.
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End of excerpt. If I bold it, the sentences jump around.
So Parry was wrong about the paper ignoring the Downing Street Memo until June 2005. He was also wrong ot pin the news coverage of the paper on the editorial page editor of the paper.
Stupidity can be contagaeous.
Eric Zuesse (OpEdNews) catches the stupidity today:
Parry also provides instances, during the subsequent years, in which that newspaper refused to report the "Downing Street Memo," released by Britain in 2005, which revealed that in the lead-up to the invasion, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet accepted, as MI6 chief Richard Dearlove phrased it in one now-infamous memo in 2002, that, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of preparing the British and American publics to support an invasion of Iraq. Fred Hiatt justified his ignoring to report on these memos, because, as he asserted in the paper's lead editorial on 15 June 2005, "the memos add not a single fact to what was previously known in July 2002."
I'm sorry that whatever teachers you had (including your self) failed you; however, the editorial page editor does not "report." Nor does he or she assign reporters to cover a story. Fred Hiatt was not the editor of the paper.
From 1991 to 2008, Len Downie Jr. was the executive editor of the paper. If you want to call out the paper's editor, that's Downie.
Hiaitt is responsible for the editorial pages. That's known as the op-ed pages for opinions and editorials. Hiatt writes, on behalf of the editorial board, the paper's editorials. The opinons are the various columns -- by regular columnists and guest columnists -- that the paper runs.
I'm sorry that Robert Parry is so unhinged. I'm angry that his stupidity is picked by others because he refuses to do corrections. Eric Zuesse looks like a real fool today and that's because he thought he could trust Robert Parry.
(It's a mistake many on the left have made over the years.)
Then there's Katty van-van Heuvel, a sore sight for any eyes. She shows up with "This Week: Lessons Leanred From the Iraq Invasion." Her crap, like Parry's will probably fool a few people. She's selective in what she covers so she avoids mentioning the editorial that the magazine used -- in text -- to start off one cover, back when they claimed they would support no Democrat who supported the Iraq War -- that was voting for funding, anything.
And they ran from that like the cowards they are.
Instead Katty wants to emphasize other things. Including the garbage that went up this week.
The piece she praises is the one I weighed in on Tuesday night when I filled in for Ann at her site and noted Tom Hayden declared, "In October 2007, old New Leftists like Marilyn Katz and Carl Davidson finally found a respectable speaker for their Chicago peace rally: state Senator Barack Obama. Months later, Obama won all-white Iowas on his pledge to oppose the Iraq War."
Months later? As I noted:
It's not an accident. He says "months later" so clearly he thinks professional losers (and political closet cases) Marilyn Katz (hey, Mary!) and Carl Davidson (who never had a cute phase) really did get Barack to speak at an October 2007 rally and then "months later, Obama won all-white Iowa on his pledge" -- okay, I'm worried about Tom. That's not being a smart ass. I can be a smart ass. There's no "Tom-Tom" or any of that in my comment. I am worried about him.
But I am bothered by The Nation. No one caught that. The speech was in October 2002. Tom may have been having a bad day -- we all do -- and I hope that's all it was. But the magazine should have caught it.
They still haven't corrected it.
Katrina vanden Heuvel writes three long sentences praising the essay that Hayden's mistake appears in -- a mistake that is still not corrected.
I think most Americans know that Barack was not, in 2007, a "state Senator." He had been elected to the US Senate in November 2004. The speech Tom's thinking off did not take place in "October 2007," but in October 2002. He's five years off.
How do you miss this?
I'm leaving Tom out of it (as I did guesting for Ann). He made a mistake. But Katrina's the editor and publisher. I know she used granddad's money to buy her seat at the table because she couldn't earn one but that's really beside the point. She's now editor and publisher of The Nation magazine. And she's praising a really bad essay that's factually incorrect.
Why did she not catch the mistake? She's praising that essay. Did she even read it?
Or was reading it too much actual work
Her stupidity leads to errors in the magazine never being corrected. They have a ton of dollars to spend on promoting Barack Obama but they don't have enough integrity to correct the errors.
Maybe Zuess can write another piece for OpEd News, this time about the amazing Barack Obama who, in October 2007, was a state Senator and, one year and one month later, this state Senator was elected to be the President of the United States. What an amazing -- if untruthful -- story that will make.
Again, it's the stupidity.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
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