Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Where's Our Next War?

CBS News is still frantically campaigning for a war with Syria. Every night they run a highly melodramatic piece about the "desperate fight for freedom" and the "struggle to live free" of the "unbelievably brave freedom fighters," describing the latest "massacre" and complete with the same film clips every night in "an exclusive report from CBS staffer Clarissa [Whatever] reporting independently in Syria."

I haven’t yet figured out how a CBS staffer providing exclusive reports is “reporting independently” precisely. Perhaps it just means they aren’t paying her expenses, or won’t bury her if she gets killed.

Last night they also provided a self aggrandizing narrative of how Clarissa got into and out of Syria, creeping through mud drenched fields in the dead of night with no trees under which they could "take cover" and "literally wading through canals" risking death or worse. She was very impressed with herself.

Scott Pelley then asked Clarissa, "Last year President Obama led NATO to launch an air campaign to support the rebels in Libya and overthrow Ghadaffi. Is there any chance of anything like that in Syria?"

As if she would have better sources inside the rebel camp for that information than he would have in Washington, making it the silliest question asked so far this week. But he has to keep finding different ways to inject the suggestion that we go to war in Syria, which he does about two nights out of three.

And note the "to support the rebels in Libya and overthrow Ghadaffi" part. He seems to forget, or be ignoring, that the UN mandate under which we were operating expressly forbade assisting either side, and prohibited any attempt at regime change. I guess that's okay, since our government also ignored those two provisions.

Meanwhile, as Glenn Greenwald points out today, NBC News is agitating that we go to war with Iran. Personally, I think we are going to push Pakistan too hard and will accidentally wind up at war with Pakistan. Although it could be Somalia.

1 comment:

  1. Clarissa will probably be shot as a spy. Or shot "accidentally" as a rebel, since she is embedded with them. Or shot in the crossfire.

    Pakistan. Somalia. Yemen. I don't think hardly anyone over there likes us amymore. Bummer. We used to stand as the white hats.

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