John Bolten Can't Handle The Truth

In an interview with the BBC's World Service World Update this morning former US Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton suggested that Europeans do not appreciate the danger of terrorism.

Mr. Bolton was in the studio to respond to a BBC report based on interviews with Iraqis as well as recent polls conducted in Iraq which show that the so-called surge is a failure. Among other far fetched statements Mr. Bolten said:

I don't think Europe has yet fully appreciated the threat we all face from international terrorism. (6:57)

Perhaps Mr. Bolton, despite his service in the State Department, has not heard of the Irish Republican Army and the troubles in Northern Ireland, or ETA and the Basque separatist movement in Spain and France. Perhaps he missed the news coverage concerning the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie and the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. More recently it is possible that Mr. Bolton was unaware of the bombings in London on July 7, 2005 or those in Madrid on March 11, 2004. The list of other less well known, at least to Americans, terrorist attacks against Europeans is literally to long to recreate here. For more on Europe's long and deadly history of terror please see these links:

France, England, Spain, The Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Germany

Mr. Bolton's suggestion that Europe fails to appreciate the threat posed by terrorism is ludicrous in its clear lack of understanding of or appreciation for the history of international terrorism in Europe as well as throughout the world.

While the host of World Update, Dan Damon, rather surprisingly let Mr. Bolton's comment on Europe's relationship with terrorism slide he conducted a much more vigorous interview than any you are likely to hear from an American journalist today.

Bush Lawlessness Grows - Administration Ramps Up Efforts To Surpress Anti-War / Impeachment March

Updated Below

On Thursday September 6 US Park Police disrupted a press conference being held in Lafayette Park by organizers of an Anti-War / Impeachment march planned for September 15 to coincide with General Petraeus' testimony on Capitol Hill.

According to AFP, the only news source to report on the incident, mounted Park Police officers charged the gathering of approximately 20 reporters and the five activists who were answering questions.

As of this writing no American media outlets had picked up the story, according to Google and Yahoo news searches the Times of India is the only publication to pick up the story. That the American media would so completely ignore this story of violent suppression reminiscent of the Civil-Rights and Vietnam War protests is a devastating example of the complacency and failure that defines journalism in America today.

Video of the incident, posted to YouTube can be seen here.


Update:

Apparently the Washington Post did cover this incident, on page three of the Metro section in Friday's paper.

Raw Story has coverage from Friday.

President Bush On Iraq "We're Kicking Ass"

Apparently the American people are not the only ones being lied to by Mr. Bush. Upon his arrival in Australia Mr. Bush was greeted by that nation's Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, who inquired as to the situation in Iraq. "We're kicking ass" was Mr. Bush's response according to the Melbourne newspaper The Age.

Despite all available evidence to the contrary Mr. Bush insists that the war in Iraq is going well, his disconnect from reality is stunning, ever the more so in an elected leader who by all rights should be held accountable for the damage he has done.

The American media must do its job and begin to question Mr. Bush's unsupported and blatantly false assertions.

Keith Olbermann Continues To Tell The Truth

Keith Olbermann, of MSNBC, remains practically the sole member of the main stream media, and certainly the only television commentator, willing to describe President Bush's false rhetoric bluntly and explain to the American people that they are being lied to.

In an impassioned "Special Comment" yesterday evening, Mr. Olbermann confronted Mr. Bush on his misleading and disingenuous trip to an American air base in Iraq, exposed Mr. Bush's latest false statements, and dissected his current stratagem for Iraq as tellingly revealed in a new book by Robert Draper.

If more of the American, and particularly the beltway press corps would even simply ask the fundamental questions that underlie Mr. Olbermann's journalism and editorializing so much of the damage wrought by the current administration could have been forestalled.

Watch Mr. Olbermann here (courtesy of Crooks and Liars)

No Things Are Not Getting Better All The Time

Updated Below

Yesterday, two years since hurricane Katrina swept ashore and destroyed the city of New Orleans as well as much of the rest of the Gulf Coast, was a day of remembrance and of continuing outrage for the people who's lives were shattered by the storm.

President Bush visited New Orleans and made a speech at one of the city's charter schools. In his speech Mr. Bush told the locals, those who lost their homes and livelihoods and who continue to live amid the wreckage of their once proud city, that progress was being made but that they were too close to the situation to see it:

And so it's -- my attitude is this: New Orleans, better days are ahead. It's sometimes hard for people to see progress when you live in a community all the time. Laura and I get to come -- we don't live here, we come on occasion. And it's easy to think about what it was like when we first came here after the hurricane, and what it's like today.

Mr. Bush has sorely missed the point: if you visit New Orleans occasionally you have seen the destruction and you now can see some improvement, these are largely cosmetic changes that can be observed on short, choreographed jaunts through the city. The residents of New Orleans, on the other hand, live day to day with the consequences of the devastation and the ongoing struggle to rebuild a ransacked and discarded community, one largely forgotten and ignored outside of the tourist districts.

For a change the media has not fallen in to lockstep with the Administrations pronouncements regarding hurricane Katrina and the storm's aftermath: The Washington Post, New York Times, and especially NPR have all offered actual in depth reporting from New Orleans instead of letting Mr. Bush and his associates tell them how it is. Independent groups have also been reporting on the condition and progress of the Gulf Coast region, of particular note is a new report from the Institute for Southern Studies.

Mr. Bush has also spent much of the past month traveling the country making speeches in support of the war in Iraq, he has taken advantage of the congressional recess to make rosy pronouncements about the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the state of the so-called surge that Mr. Bush ordered this past spring. On August 28 he told the American Legion National Convention:

[T]here are unmistakable signs that our strategy is achieving the objectives we set out. Our new strategy is showing results in terms of security...Sectarian violence has sharply decreased in Baghdad. The momentum is now on our side. The surge is seizing the initiative from the enemy -- and handing it to the Iraqi people.

Mr. Bush's claims of success not withstanding most independent reporting from Iraq tells a much different story. As Media Matters notes, McClatchy and the AP have both recently contradicted Mr. Bush's descriptions of progress. On August 25 the AP reported:

This year’s U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.

And on August 15 the McClatchy Washington Bureau reported:

U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim...

One bright spot has been the reduction in the number of bodies found on the streets, considered a sign of sectarian violence. That number was 44 percent lower in July, compared to December. In July, the average body count per day was 18.6, compared with 33.2 in December, two months before the surge.

But the reason for that decline isn't clear. Some military officers believe that it may be an indication that ethnic cleansing has been completed in many neighborhoods and that there aren’t as many people to kill.

There was also the August 19 op-ed in the New York Times "The War As We Saw It" by service members finishing a current deployment in Iraq. Among other points the soldiers attest that:

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework.

Kevin Drum, of the Washington Monthly, compared and analyzed statistics on the success of the surge provided by the Brookings Institute and found that none of the measurable statistics are encouraging in the least.

Coupled with the gloomy outlooks and forecasts of continuing mayhem and violence ensconced in the latest National Intelligence Estimate, whose warnings were apparently diluted, and the new Terrorism Index released by the journal Foreign Policy, these reports make it clear that the situation in Iraq is not improving.

Mr. Bush has told the American people for years now, that progress was being made in Iraq, that a corner was being turned: He will continue to abuse and mislead the public until he leaves office.

No Mr. Bush, sadly things are not getting better all the time.

Update:

The Washington Post reported today on a draft of the upcoming Government Accountability Office report on the situation in Iraq which is said to be "at odds with the White House".

Ana Marie Cox Can't Handle Reality

During coverage of the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the August 27 edition of MSNBC Live Ana Marie Cox, of Time Magazine, compared the tough questioning of Mr Gonzales by United States Senators to torture.

Well, it's tempting to go with what John Edwards said, which is, "Better late than never." I think a lot of people in Washington, no matter what political affiliation they had, had been sort of watching this and shuddering for the guy. I mean, the last time he went in front of Congress, I felt sorry for him. It was like -- it was legislative waterboarding. You know, they just kept going after him and kept going after him.
(from Media Matters w/ video)

Ms. Cox's analogy is horribly inappropriate and demonstrates a shocking lack of understanding and divorce from reality. To compare the efforts of elected public representatives to undertake their Constitutional responsibility and perform the oversight duties required of them with the immoral and illegal act of simulated drowning known as waterboarding is to disrespect the Constitution, the Senate and Senators as well as the American public that they represent, and the countless individuals who have been subjected to actual torture in America's name. Unfortunately this is just another daily example of the dismal state of journalism in America today.

Actual Reporting - Soldiers Serving In Iraq Provide Accurate And Truthful Information

It is an exceedingly rare occurrence these days when unfettered and legitimate information makes it through the grinder of politics and fear, the zoo of public relations and media ratings that has supplanted most journalism in America.

In an age when most people have been rendered voiceless and only a privileged few have the wealth and power necessary to dictate to the public, a beacon of truth emerged on the op-ed pages of Sunday's New York Times.

Free of spin and rhetoric seven members of the 82nd Airborne Division, currently serving in Iraq, found their voices and were afforded the opportunity to speak to the American public and to describe their experience of the situation in Iraq.

The great experiment in democracy that is the United States was made possible, at least in part, by the belief that all ideas and viewpoints would be afforded a voice in the public sphere. And that upon reflection and consideration of all the notions thus proffered Americans would exercise their right and elect representatives who would in turn lead the nation in the desired direction.

Dissent is not treasonous it is patriotic, ever the more so when it speaks the truth.

Few voices are heard in the public sphere today and they are all but indistinguishable at times. The noise and vitriol with which differing views and even unwanted truths are shouted down is frightening.

Take this opportunity to be patriotic, hear the voices of your fellow Americans, consider their words and act upon them as you see fit, fulfill your duty as a citizen and read The War As We Saw It.