Glenn Greenwald(s), distilled: “I’m the kind of true patriot who dissents first and asks questions later. Just as Thomas Jefferson would have wanted.
— “That, and a New York Times best-selling author whose work has been read into the Congressional record, and whose posts are often cited favorably by the conservative libertarians at Reason.
“Seriously. Just ask Mona.”
All true. Patriotically true.
Unfortunately, though, when you have a reputation for Speaking Truth to Power, sometimes your passions can get the better of you — and you can fall prey to a meta-propaganda campaign designed to discredit you.
Take, for instance, this case, wherein it turns out that Glenn’s unquestioned love of the troops seems to have blinded him to certain key facts that undercut the entirety of his impassioned screed.
— Which, to be fair, is hardly Glenn’s(‘s) fault: after all, if the Military Industrial Complex had been at all honest up until now — even one damn time — the Boy(s) from Brazil wouldn’t be forced to accuse it of lying to the American public so as to justify an illegal war against an enemy that doesn’t even exist.
So you see? Yet another bit of collateral damage from Bush’s war, this blow to Greenwald’s(‘s) heretofore spotless credibility.
Me, I say he petitions the government for a Purple Heart. Because surely having one’s reputation(s) injured while guarding against the spread of democracy to uncultured wogs is worthy of such an honor.
Ooooo, that will leave a mark.
Boy(s) from Brazil! Is that new? Damn clever of youz.
How about Dumb Orpheus?
That Greenwald(s) is a razor wit in a bag of marshmallows, I tells ya.
You know, maybe it’s the beer, but I’m thinking that we should get Iowahawk to write a new version of Gomer Pyle, USMC, starring Gleen(s)–called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
The left loves to point to Iraq as a breeding ground for terrorists. What is so threatening to the left now is not that the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq might legitimize Iraq as "the central front of the Global War on Terror," it’s that what the surge operations have revealed is that Iraq has very much become an ally in that war. In Iraq, Al Qaeda’s ideology and tactics have been rejected and discredited, and thus, there is a very real possibility that Democratic retreat and defeat plans will be starkly seen for what they are: the forsaking of an ally in the heart of the Middle East that is opposed to the Radical Islamists we are fighting in Afghanistan, Somalia, and in the shadows the world over. The Democrats are fond of saying that we need allies in the War on Terror, but it doesn’t take much reflection to realize that in the battle against Islamic Fundamentalism, an allied Iraq is worth many times the value of, say, an allied France.
Thanks for the link, Jeff. I made it a point to leave comments on the lefty blogs who linked Greenwald so unquestioningly, linking to both my debunking and the MNF-I press release database so that they could see the truth for themselves. I fully expect to see my comments ignored, deleted, or ridiculed in unquestioning fealty to the Great and Powerful Oz. Reality-based? No quite.
Purple Heart, eh? If he doesn’t get one, I’ll let him/them have one/several of my medals (sorry, no PH tho’ – they missed)- take your pick(s) – for he/they is/are WORTHY!
If Glen/Rick/Ellers whomever would like, I could let him/them know how to look up the very hard to find CENTCOM site where you can actually read press releases, situation updates, transcripts of interviews, etc. Very difficult to find, so I can see how he/they would have trouble.
Honestly, the glenn(s) is looking more like the feverswamp(s) every moment. He’s just like the mothership – assumption leads to acceptance of questionable material! And, as a bonus, no disclaimer on his part about the possibility that you know, Al Queda actually is there now. Makes you wonder what news he is reading? Wait, no. It doesn’t.
I was thinking something more along the lines of a Senor Gleences: "Is all right? S’okay" "Is okay? S ‘allright!"
The thing with your dedicated lefty goons such as Greenwalds is that they know that they are just as clever as a hatful of weasels, whereas your poor soldier is a dumb meathead who had to join the military because he wasn’t bright enough to get a job deconstructing Derrida.
On a good day you will find Greenwalds making witty jokes about "Military Intelligence". (snicker)
The sad fact (for Greenwalds, but salvation for the rest of us) is that for over two hundred years the military in the West has attracted some of the cleverest and least regimented thinkers in the cleverest and least regimented of societies, the free-market democracies.
The Greenwalds find it very hard to accept this truth, so they don’t. Luckily for us all, Greenwalds cannot reproduce, due to their poor aim.
What do you mean, Furriskey? Is there no form of in-vitro fertilization that would assist Gleen? That’s unfair! I expect Hillary to address this issue immediately.
As I already commented over at CY’s place, Gleen is getting more and more desperate these days to salvage gloom out of daylight from Iraq and Iran. He either doesn’t read much or ignores what he does read to make much of his ignorant statements. He appears to have missed developments over the past six months in Iraq and still takes Iranian protestations of lack of involvement in Iraqi affairs as gospel truth. How could he not love those misogynistic homophobes in Tehran, the rest of us are obviously relying on unconfirmed third-hand reports. Seymour Hersh’s war has only been delayed by a few years now, but Glenn is still sure it’s imminent. Glenn is the Jason Leopold of Iran.
The thing I find so amusing about cases like this is that they’re supposed to be these big internet gurus, and yet it almost seems like they don’t even understand how it works. Like the fact that anybody can research anything you say on the internet. It would seem pretty basic. And yet they continue to make asinine statements that can easily be shot down. It’s almost like they have a virtual death-wish.
Are they going to give away Gleen’s new book for free on Kos like they did the last one? I don’t need any firestarter right now, but others may be interested. Anyone know?
What Gleen(s) posted yet another over generalized, based upon unsubstantiated conjecture piece that has easily been reduced to another steaming pile of 40+ paragraphs of wasted effort? Gee, I thought that that was his job description over at Salon, to produce enough lunacy to draw the heat off the other “serious†columnists (or at least the ones smart enough to Google a subject) before squandering away what little marketable integrity it takes to rally his personal army of howler monkeys to “reaction.â€Â
Of course you almost have to feel sorry for the guy, it can’t be easy facing the fact you’ve become the living embodiment of the “Peter Principle†in 2 careers & humiliatingly being taken down a peg or two by a mysterious, third-world cabana-boy w/ speedy typing skills & can defend Gleen(s), but not himself publicly.
Funny, Pmain, that none of Gleen’s Brazilian live-in fanboys has ever publicly revealed that he (or any of his friends) was Ellison, Ellers, Ellensberg, Wilson, or any of the assorted sockpuppets. Actually, have any of these stalwart Greenwald(s) defenders been seen sticking up for their patriotic hero in anybody’s comment section since the sockpuppetry was revealed?
The thing I find so amusing about cases like this is that they’re
supposed to be these big internet gurus, and yet it almost seems like
they don’t even understand how it works. Like the fact that anybody can research anything you say on the internet. Um, yeah, and that fact is what is making blogging from the right so damn frustrating lately. It’s not possible to actually have an argument with anybody on the other side. Their minds appear to be impenetrable to facts. Were you to go out and scream at a brick wall, you would have a better chance of getting it to accept reality than the Gleens{s}[es] of the world. At least the brick wall doesn’t become more stubbornly resistant to facts the longer you argue with it.
Does anybody really use the term "military industrial complex" any more? It’s, like , so 50s. I mean it’s not like DuPont or whoever just makes napalm. They make some pretty nifty consumer stuff too.
Hey, wait a second. We tried to explain the issues to Glenn(s) but they’re not simple. By definition, they’re complex. Don’t blame us if Glenn’s’s ability to comprehend is not expansive enough to understand the issue.
Blame Mona.
Cheers,
The Military Industrial Complex
makers of military hardware, developers of engineering breakthroughs, providers of useful everyday technology like microwave ovens and Tang. Like Chickenman, we’re everywhere, we’re everywhere.
Kindly allow me to be the first in this thread to call the obvious need for clinical treatment down upon Gleen(s)’s stooped shoulders. Because It’s Simply Not a Valid View Anymore.
Yes, the war in Iraq is not going well. But hope is not lost if the puff-adders who promulgatedthis Potemkin War can assuage their shit-stained public opinion by supplementing the original propaganda (AQ in Iraq) with this re-hash of revisionism. The media mea culpa must be postponed until the next sweeps numbers are in and bonuses spent.
Semanticleo. Intellectual heavyweight.
Unfortunately, though, when you have a reputation for Speaking Truth to
Power, sometimes your passions can get the better of you  and you can
fall prey to a meta-propaganda campaign designed to discredit you. —-
So let’s go with that and see where it
leads us. (Myself, I think there’s entirely too little attention
paid to the Drumbeat of War promoted by the entire Clinton
Administration and most of the Democrat herds in Congress to Attack
the Sovereign People of Iraq and break their kites. In other words,
the left is using Iraq politically. Spare me the nuanced, reasoned
approach to any of the thirty popular causes Why Bush is Wrong. They change
with the wind because they are sheer opportunity.)
Let’s go with the McChimpy cartoon:
Drunken cokehead Daddy’s boy election-stealer hasn’t the brains god
gave Gleens. Fine. So 9/11 comes along, and young George realizes
something: If I don’t do something, the left is gonna bbq me. Shit,
I’m President and six thousand died on my watch.
A fair assessment. Added to the fact
that Hussein was in gross violation of a globe’s worth of best
interests and UN sanctions and resolutions and, well, then there’s
those pesky human rights, assuming brown people are humans.
Added to the fact the Democrats wanted
his head.
So George goes in because it’s his job
and to avoid being utterly pilloried by an absolutely mendacious
American Left. The alternative would be, naturally, to literally
fight AQ here, all hell coming down from the pathological liars on
the Left for not fighting them there.
Instead, of course, we have 9/11
conspiracies, yellowcake, aluminum tubes, voting before it before
voting against it, and graves full of thousands of dead people but
since they’re already dead, they don’t count. Anything but politically agreeing to protect against terrorism. Anything.
What we don’t have is Democrat
accountability. What we’ll never have is Democrat accountability.
This entire site, among a few other things, probably exists just to
try and fathom how half the country got so intellectually upside
down, not like that’s never happened before in history.
So the entire Iraq issue – the entire
issue — is perhaps the biggest political fight in the history of
recent American politics. Meaning: spare me the nuance about Iraq, about Bush
policy there, and especially about Democrat solutions to anything
but, literally, what to do about the dual problems of democracy and
capitalism. The left gets itself huge mileage from fitting reality into preconception, and concerning Bush, going so far as to fit common conspiracy to vague appearances used selectively by that same preconception. Yet they fail to consider that had Bush nothing more on his mind than preventing a blast from taking out NYC on his watch and trying to paint an optimistic picture of the challenges of war, he’d look precisely like he does today. He wouldn’t bother addressing the leftist freakshow and he wouldn’t bother correcting the media. I suspect he’s just doing his job. Were Clinton in office for the last two presidential terms, we can just as easily and far more credibly assume what state of affairs things would be in today.
JH; As per usual, you folks ATTEMPT to extract yourself an/or share the billing for the war in Iraq by conflating the WoT with the drive to contrive the overwhelming evidence of Iraq’s native threat. Balderdash. YOU folks MSU then spend the rest of your lives (that is, those with conscience) justifying the diversion of manpower and resources into that fateful clusterfuck. It is a terrible burden for you. I sympathize. You all could just make it go away if you just admitted to the depths of your wrongheadedness. But you won’t because you think mistakes are only for the weak. Thereby, learning from mistakes is an impossiblity and you have the current state of republican/conservative affairs. Pity
semanticleo=projection.
Miss Cleo – Is it possible for you to be more obtuse? Simply asserting that the war is not going well does not make it so. In fact, there are several indicators that the current strategy is making significant inroads. We realize that does not fit with your narrative.
And, by the way, AQ was, in fact, in Iraq prior to the war. Another inconvenient fact.
Not to mention an incoherent repetition of long debunked bumpersticker talking points.
We can definitely be sure that the "rest of our lives" is not going to be spent debating the foreign policy legacy of the Clinton administration.
Semenlickr exemplifies today’s Left, and is a case study in what JHoward was referencing. They make assertions, impute dastardly motives, and flat out lie in order to service their narrative. They would have been anti-anything, so long as Bush, who stole the election, was in office.
cuz he wuz so fluffeh
H; As per usual, you folks ATTEMPT to extract yourself an/or share the
billing for the war in Iraq by conflating the WoT with the drive to
contrive the overwhelming evidence of Iraq’s native threat.
Balderdash. No. You mean bullshit. And its all yours. Dispite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary you honestly believe that left to his own devices Saddam would have just gone away. Who’s being disingenuous? YOU folks MSU then spend the rest of your lives (that is,
those with conscience) justifying the diversion of manpower and
resources into that fateful clusterfuck. You have the attention span of a gnat. Let me guess. No motor skills. Right?It is a terrible burden for
you. I sympathize. I know. But we put up with your nonsense anyway You all could just make it go away if you just
admitted to the depths of your wrongheadedness. See 2 above. But you won’t because
you think mistakes are only for the weak. Thereby, learning from
mistakes is an impossiblity and you have the current state of
republican/conservative affairs. No. Not making mistakes is for the weak. You’ll find that out as grow older. The WOT isn’t one of them , however. Pity You have mine.
"Semanticleo. Intellectual heavyweight."
Of course he is. He uses alliteration, fer chrissakes.
Have at it, Semanticleo. Suddenly you’re all about establishing original motives and from there, imputing relative morality? Here’s one: Islamofascism is incompatible with civilization. I do believe your Democrats preceded the current Administration in pointing that out, no? How does that rank on your scale of global rights and wrongs? See, your inability to pin down today’s anti-liberation talking point does
not constitute any valid argument against the obvious advantages of having a vast destabilizing force smack in
the middle of the mideast. Call me a neocon. Lastly, try this mental experiment: Once Hilary is elected, how long will it take for the anti-war left to either (1) suddenly decide that saving brown people and establishing democracy where there had been terror is absolutely moral or (2) that fighting them there is indeed a far better option than fighting them here? Given your objectivity, I look forward to your results…
Let me cut it short, Semanticleo: Either you’re protesting Iraq because (1) you aren’t a Republican and have the benefit of being a leftist with the hindsight of a handful of years war experience under your civilian belt, (2) are a moral relativist, incapable of reasoning how fighting certain things is, at times, necessary, or (3) you are a conspiracy theorist. Because your fellows didn’t have a word to say when your masters in Congress went off on Saddam Hussein a decade ago. So before you accuse me of relativism and justifying after the fact what you, you claim, had the prescience to condemn before the fact, and before you avoid my points about the left’s flagrant dishonesty, political opportunity, tyranny and democide, and the Democrat memory hole, and you surely have, perhaps you could present a cogent argument why you oppose(d) liberating Iraq and tacitly claim to have done so from three Administrations ago.
Meanwhile, no retraction or even acknowledgement from the Greenwaldosphere yet.
—Meanwhile, no retraction or even acknowledgement from the Greenwaldosphere yet.–
it’s called oxygen starvation. A Townhouse special.
"your poor soldier is a dumb meathead who had to join the military because he wasn’t bright enough to get a job deconstructing Derrida." Shows what you know. You can’t decontruct Derrida. All lefty means of analysis apply to everyone else except themselves. See also The Historicity of Values, which applies to everything but Marxism.
"You can’t decontruct Derrida"
True. But God did it for me.