THE NY TIMES PUBLIC EDITOR
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html
The NY Times coverage of the withdrawal,
allegedly of the last troops from Iraq
and, presumptively forthcoming, from Afghanistan, elicits in me the most succinct of comments on coverages of both events.
Looking at the current coverage,
http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=withdrawal+from+iraq&srchst=cse
you will note a lack of mention of
the State Department's [!] "contractor troops"
[I have read mention of anywhere from 5 to 15,000. See the invaluable Tom Englehardt's TomDispatch
http://www.tomdispatch.com/
at the One Billion Dollar [!] Embassy in the "Green Zone" that ghoulishly designated, scabrous establishment. Not only are these accounts by the various NY Times reporters devoid of such mention, but
also, in their briefest of mention of
reasons for the war ["french fries anyone?"]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_and_the_Iraq_War
none ever cites the UN or Atomic Energy commission's opposition [Hans Blix anyone or Donner & Blitzen in a One Horse Sleigh?
No Baraidis allowed!] allude to the fact that
there were no weapons of mass destruction.
At any event, even if there had been, it would
have been another instance of the 19th century
call: "That Indian has a gun." That Indian mucked with my woman, that Indian mucked with me cow! That you, the frontiersmen with your overwhelming force had thousands of guns went unmentioned. Preventive war is nothing new, that gun or in this case that that
Indian might somewhere down the line have a gun
salves whatever if any qualms you may have
about your impulse to conquer and control, to assuage that paranoia that, dammit, that little agenbite, that continues to trouble you into continuing to attack whatever vengeance you fear your actions have provoked.
Long live the imperialist impulse!
BLOWBACK, o me Gawd!
Ditto for the Afghanistan Adventure: no mention everof its destabilization under Carter/ Brzezinski, to involve the Russian in throwing a nation of 25 million to the dogs
of war; or of Reagan/ Casey's creation of the Mujahedim [Osama bin Laden any one?]. Thus if you were reaching reading comprehension
age in 2011 and depended on the NY Times for a modicum you will be left seriously uninformed,
possibly puzzled.
One reason I write is that I have no idea to what extent you have apprised yourself of the controversy occasioned by the
then NY Times reporter Judith Miller
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_(journalist)
A number of stories she wrote while working for The New York Times later turned out to be inaccurate or completely false; and of how well assi the first NY Times Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, and his successor took up that issue. Jack Schaefer covered the Miller affair amusingly at his then slate.pressbox column.
Relievedly, at least, we may be spared further installments of CIA updates in the NY Times OP-Ed pages, courtesy of that ex-choir boy, Michael O'Hanlon, of the Brookings Institute.
A presidency that started with the bankruptcy of Enronended with, for all intents and purposes, with the bankruptcy
of the US!
Sincerely,
Michael Roloff [as "Summa.Politico"]http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/ http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html This LYNX will LEAP you to my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html "Degustibus disputandum est" {Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno} "May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplug of filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James Joyce} "Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." {von Alvensleben} "Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." {Dante} "Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg of experience." {Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.} http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/ http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/
