They do exist, though you wouldn’t know it reading some of the comments I got here yesterday. John Cole is one of those exceptions, and it was truly refreshing to read his post today blasting Hugh Hewitt for whining that those who report on the crimes of our military are unpatriotic.
Everyone repeat after me:
Reporting on abuses that have been committed by our troops, in our name, is not anti-military. While I am not arrogant enough to attempt to divine the motives of every journalist who reports on such abuses, Hugh appears to be up to the challenge. I find his attack on the reporting of the outrageous abuses detailed at length in the NY Times to be both disturbing and disingenuous.
Apparently in the myopic worldview of Mr. Hewitt, reading and reporting the just-released documents the Army itself created is both ‘anti-military’ and ‘re-hashing’ an old story. Let’s not focus on the fact that few, if any, have been punished for these transgressions. Let’s not focus on credible reports that these incidents continue to occur. Instead, if Hewitt is to have his way, we should all focus on the ‘anti-military’ stance of the media.
What is particularly disturbing is how he and others have artificially conflated the Newsweek error and the NY Times story. This is no accident, but an act of intentional and outright propaganda. The Newsweek story may have been inaccurate, but the NY Times story was not. To read Hugh, you would think both were inconsequential and simply the result of a media hostile to the military. “Nothing here- just the military-hating mainstream media.”
This is a great post. If only more on the right would have the courage to speak out for true conservative values instead of twisitng themselves into pretzels to show how supportive they are of everything Bush says and does and how evil the librul MSM is, it would be a much saner, kinder America.
Cole was a soldier for 10 years. His perspective is priceless, even though I disagree with so much of what he has to say on so many issues. Please read it all. There’s a lot more there.
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By Other Lisa
Some of the comments are pretty scary, though. They cannot bring themselves to say that torture is wrong, no matter who commits it.
May 23, 2005 @ 12:28 pm | Comment
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By tuode
Please change the title of this post to “Intelligent Republicans.” Since the Republican party has little to do with conservatism these days, I think it would be more accurate. Conservatives are a dying breed –without a party these days. Neo-conservatives (i.e., jingoistic ex-liberal empire builders) and religious zealots have hijacked the Republican party and the label “conservative.”
May 25, 2005 @ 12:05 am | Comment
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By ACB
The US has always been a nation that says that it is right for US but wrong for you, and it cannot bring itself to admit that it is using the very same tools as ‘bad guy’ nations in order to get whatit wants.
Piling up naked Iraqi prisoners in a sex pyramid might be called called a stress position in Washington, but where I come from it is called a sexual assault. As with sleep deprevation, in my country it is called torture and is outlawed along with light and heat deprevation, and the removal of a prisioners underpants until such time as he decides to co-operate.
If this was done to US troops captured in Iraq, you can be that it would be seen as torture.
If I see another US soldier saying that they didn’t think that there was anything wrong with sexually abusing a prisoner, I migt just throw up.
May 28, 2005 @ 11:06 pm | Comment