War On TV

The armor-piercing Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake posts about a whole new level of wartime journalism. What's that, you say? Well, instead of the journalists taking pictures of bombs falling all around them, they get to take pictures of bombs streaking directly towards them!!! What fun!

Al-Qaida supposedly hates all freedom. Good thing our president limits his hatred to freedom of the press. Perhaps that's a bit over the top, but seriously here. If we take the president at his word and, his inability to execute said word into action notwithstanding, buy into the idea that we are "democratizing" not just Iraq, but indeed the ENTIRE MIDDLE EAST, don't you think that, at the very least, tolerating institutions like al-Jazeera would be towards the top of the to-do list? Even if they are an organization that mainly produces propaganda, doesn't this still apply? In a free and democratic country, one is free to produce propaganda, right? How else to explain Fox News? One might go so far as to say that to stay true to the democratization program, we would be committed even to defending al-Jazeera from attack. Perhaps even host some of their reporters in our battalions. Then, if they did anything stupid like give away troop positions, we could have them arrested. That way, we could weed out all the agenda-driven reporters, if any. Why didn't we think of this earlier?!?!

But no, easier to just fire a missle and shut them up. Just more evidence that however simple Bush tries to make this, his policies toward Iraq are incoherent.