1. It’s hard to believe any human being could say this with a straight face:
“German General: Air Strike ‘Appropriate’ Despite Massive Civilian Toll“
2. “The U.S. government has now extended its assassination program to the drug war. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon now has an assassination list for suspected drug dealers in Afghanistan.
No arrests. No hearings. No attorneys. No judges. No trials. Just kill them.
Great! So now the occupation of Afghanistan has expanded not only to CIA drone assassinations but also now to Pentagon’s drug-war assassinations.
U.S. officials are justifying the drug-war assassinations as part of their counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. They say that they’re only going to be assassinating those drug dealers whose drug trafficking is benefiting the terrorists.”
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-10-28.asp
3. “Pentagon officials won’t confirm Bush propaganda program ended
Veteran foreign correspondent Reese Erlich, who is currently independently covering the Afghanistan war, believes that “to some extent, the Obama administration is just simply replicating all the same mistakes of the Bush administration – particularly the war in Afghanistan.”
“And if you’re going to do that,” he explained in an interview with Raw Story, “then you need propagandists who can make stuff up to make the war seem more popular in the short run.”
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/pentagon-officials-confirm-bush-propaganda-program-ended/
4. ““What journalists are supposed to do”
David Brooks passes on the claims of his invisible friends and insists this is the crux of journalistic virtue.
As he describes it, Brooks “called around to several of the smartest military experts [he] know[s] to get their views on these controversies.” These are people “who follow the war for a living.” He wrote down (at least some of) what they said. He then passed it on without quoting — or even identifying — a single one of these experts. That’s his whole column.
…
He just faithfully serves as a mindless stenographer for hidden people whose credibility you’re told to accept even as they do nothing but spout manipulative, vapid idiocies about Churchillian Resolve designed to promote endless war. In that regard, Brooks has certainly accomplished — as he usually does — the typical establishment journalist’s conception of ”what journalists are supposed to.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
