Our Butt-Covering Liberal Media

Letter sent to Editorial Page Editor, Herald-Leader, June 18.
Editor of the Editorial Page, Herald Leader
Attn: V. Gallman and R Gatton
“Letters”

Our Butt-Covering Liberal Media

In the recent Downing Street Memo affair, the liberal media proves once again that they are not credible. The memo tells us what many of us have known, that the reasons for the Iraqi war were contrived, that the President misled us into war, and that he knew the intelligence was cooked and, by inference, that his repeatedly affirmed “last resort” being war was a simply a lie.

Now the Washington Post, LA Times and NY Times are telling us that the Memo is not news because they knew all along what Bush was doing. The fact is that none of the supposedly liberal media challenged the run-up to the war at the time. In fact, through Judith Miller (NY Times) and other media leads, our liberal media repeated the White House line that the Iraqi war was justified without critique.

Now these media say the news from British Intelligence Memo that Blair and Bush planned war from 2002 and that intelligence would need to be rigged to justify war is not news. This, excuse me, is simply vast butt-covering.

If the Democrats and progressives want something to be mad about, it should be the continued butt-covering of the mainstream media, who still continue to downplay the Memo which could be first legal proof of the treasonable lying of this President to the American People, costing us thousands of lives and billions of dollars, still with no foreseeable positive outcome.

If this can be proven – others will need to come forth, then what we have is official malfeasance that would make the Clinton and Nixon misbehavior look like kindergarten high-jinks. Where are the genuine journalists of today?

"Potential" terrorists can be held in prison camps for years without trial or proof that they have done anything wrong. Bush lied repeatedly to take us into war– the media agree, “so what?”

When the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica's affections, the US media could print nothing else. “Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it worth a second look.” (quote by Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy)

Joe Conason asks: “Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?” (Salon.com)

Media that fails to serve the public interest cannot be credible, and is no barometer of political success.

Paschal Baute
tel 293-5302
4080 Lofgren Ct.
Lexington, Ky 40509