I gave up on watching TV news years ago, I read pretty much everything now. I watched some of the debates, and I watched O'reilly's interview of Clinton, outside of that I've never seen his show except for some clips on youtube. I've never seen Olbermann either.
I read the Washington Post everyday on my lunch break, and online I scan the AP headlines and the BBC for some international perspective. My wife subscribes to Salon, which I read for Glen Greenwald and the cartoons
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TV news is awful these days, the bias on both sides just seems to get worse and worse. It's well on it's way to becoming talk radio with graphics. I hear people rooting for their favorite news channel like it's a sports team, as if the news is a game that "they" have to win so the "other side" can lose, and I wonder if anyone realizes that the loss of objectivity that occurs when the news just becomes one more piece of spinnable propaganda means that we all lose. Except for people like O'reilly and Olbermann, who are making millions off this whole pathetic spectacle. You can have it.
I'm kinda like you Jones as working nights just doesn't find me watching a lot of TV to begin with. Outside of C-Span, History
Channel and likeminded channels I find most TV mind numbing. Like yourself I also enjoy Greenwald of Salon and the internet has proven a vast resource of alternative information that is putting the traditional sources out of business.
To the general group,
I knew who Keith Oberman was but until this thread I had never watched him and after today I doubt that will change. However, his self grandizing tirade aside, he had numerous valid points and as of yet, his adversaries here have yet to dispute many of those points. Hats off to D for having the ballz to post the youtube vid. and take the heat for it.
Had the MSM (Main Street Media) done their jobs as guardians of the gate in the aftermath of 9/11 and inspite of the threat of looking bad initially as Oberman is so painted by many here, the real truth whereever it may lay might have come out and then at the very least the direction taken would have been one based not on a one sided viewpoint but rather one based a direction after all points of view and facts had been publically vetted. Instead the media remained silent with the party line out of fear of losing access which is the only thing left that they hold over the alternative media and that is losing it's luster as well.
Saddam Hussien has IMO as much as admitted his WMD program was a calculated rouse, a smoke screen if you will in which he played a game of Russian Roulette with the Americans to keep the Iranians at bay and from knowing and exploiting his real weakness. A paper military tiger. I have no problem of a President after the fact coming before the nation and admitting that Hussien had conned him and his adminstration as well on WMD but that at the time they were not willing to risk American lives based on what they believed. Everyone makes mistakes and even honest ones and had Bush at the time come forth and admitted the truth, I'd be his biggest fan for his honesty alone.
Instead, the reasons changed from bringing democracy to the Mideast to saving a savaged people to stopping islamo-terorist. First, it was WMD and that proved wrong as Hussien and the FBI most recently revealed to the American people among numerous other things. Then is was Iraq was the seat of power for Al Qaeda and that has proven overstated to say the least. Sure, they are there but it was after the fact and their presence and power not near to the scale as some in the adminstration tired to sell us on.
As for his savage brutality of his people, now that is true but when has brutal gov't been a cause for us to enter and unseat a sitting gov't and then make that nation a protectorate of our own country? Be very careful of what precedence you set as Obama's ideas in this area may not be the same as your own and then it's either you or your children at arms in these far off lands on a mission that has no bearing to national security at all if he becomes President. Darfur seems a constaint mention from his lips.
Lastly, to advance democracy. This again becomes a very dangerous game as to how far we will go around the world in the name of democracy. Who will we invade or who will we push to advance that cause? That is Trokskite Internationalism now known as Neo-Conservativism and it's scope of internationalism. Again it comes to precedence and once the genie is out of the bottle, it never goes back in without a fight and lots of pain and suffering. What republicans set as precedence today, a democrat world tomorrow will use just as many democrats learned the hard way about Bosnia and Kosovo of the 1990's and the Bush world of today. Many see now that Clinton wasn't the Nirvana they thought he was.
Bush can't admit the WMD issue was a mistake nor can he divest himself of the other issues because to do so would then require our gov't and western European powers to give up their protectorate of Iraq and turn it over either to the international community (and yes they would screw it up most likely) or just everyone walk away and let the chips fall in Iraq where they may. But we won't do that for 2 simple reasons and everyone knows it but refuse to say it and thus we get down to really what the war was all about in the first place.
Saddam once stated that there will come a day when reality will show the best course for Iraq was for him to remain as President. As of now and not knowing the future, his words have ironically and saddly shown to be true.
jmho
....LOL
