Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Who's right about Gen. Petraeus - Juan Cole or Glenn Greenwald?

Today’s post from Juan Cole, Can Gen. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker Save the Next Democratic President?: Excerpt: “I'm a severe skeptic on the likelihood of anything that looks like success in Iraq. But I don't think career public servants such as Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus are acting as partisan Republicans in their Iraq efforts. I think they both are sincere, experienced men attempting to retrieve what they can for America from Bush's catastrophe. [bolding mine]. They may as well try, since the Democrats can't over-rule Bush and get the troops out, anyway. If the troops are there, they may as well at least be deployed intelligently, which is what Gen. Petraeus is doing. I wish them well in their Herculean labors. Because if they fail, I have a sinking feeling that we are all going down with them, including the next Democratic president. And their success is a long shot."

Today’s post from Glenn Greenwald, Brit Hume and the Bush administration take propaganda to a new level - Gen. Petraeus gives an exclusive "interview" that was scripted by the U.S. military and designed to bolster every claim of the Bush administration. Excerpt: “Just as George Bush and Dick Cheney have done on politically important occasions, Gen. David Petraeus (along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker) last night selected Fox News' Brit Hume as the ‘journalist’ rewarded with an exclusive ‘interview.’ Whereas Hume, in the past, at least has pretended to play the role of journalist when interviewing high Bush officials -- doing things like asking (extremely respectful) questions about sensitive areas (with no follow up) -- he dispensed entirely with the pretense here. This ‘interview’ took government propaganda to a whole new level, and really has to be seen to be believed (the full video is here).

“The whole production was such transparent propaganda that one doubts that Pravda would have been shameless enough to present it. Even the title of the program was creepy. Fox did not even bother to call it an ‘interview,’ but rather hailed it as a ‘Briefing for America.’”

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