Antiwar.com Blog

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw071307helenthomas.mp3]

Helen Thomas, dean of the White House press corps talks about her frustrations with the war in Iraq and trying to get a straight answer out of the boy emperor.

MP3 here.

Commonly referred to as “The First Lady of the Press,” former White House Bureau Chief Helen Thomas is a trailblazer, breaking through barriers for women reporters while covering every President since John F. Kennedy. For 57 years, Helen also served as White House correspondent for United Press International. She recently left this post and joined Hearst Newspapers as a syndicated columnist.

Born in Winchester, Kentucky, Helen Thomas was raised in Detroit, Michigan where she attended public schools and later graduated from Wayne State University. Upon leaving college, Helen served as a copy girl on the old, now defunct Washington Daily News. In 1943, Ms. Thomas joined United Press International and the Washington Press Corps.

For 12 years, Helen wrote radio news for UPI, her work day beginning at 5:30am. Eventually she covered the news of the Federal government, including the FBI and Capitol Hill.

In November, 1960, Helen Thomas began covering then President elect John F. Kennedy, following him to the White House in January, 1961 as a member of the UPI team. It was during this first White House assignment that Thomas began closing presidential press conferences with “Thank you, Mr. President.”

In September, 1971, Pat Nixon scooped Helen by announcing her engagement to Associated Press’ retiring White House correspondent, Douglas B. Cornell at a White house party hosted by then President Nixon in honor of Cornell.

Thomaswas the only woman print journalist traveling with then President Nixon to China during his breakthrough trip in January, 1972. She has the distinction of having traveled around the world several times with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, during the course of which she covered every Economic Summit. The World Almanac has cited her as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in America.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw071307glenngreenwald.mp3]

Glenn Greenwald, author of A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Versus Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency discusses the president’s psychopathic religiosity, black and white world view and the consequenses .

MP3 here. (38:15)

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book How Would a Patriot Act?, a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006. His brand new book is A Tragic Legacy.

Sometimes you don’t get the real picture without seeing the big picture. But you don’t always get such a good example.

An Associated Press news photo from today in Pakistan: Droves of people carrying banners, the front one reading “MODERATE EXTREMISTS!“ (What could that mean?)

But I happened across another photo in the same collection. This gave some clarity, and allowed me to find the real story behind the banner.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_07_16_billbrown.mp3]

Bill Brown, of the Surveillance Camera Players, and author of We Know You Are Watching: Surveillance Camera Players 1996-2006 discusses the rise of the American surveillance state.

MP3 here. (35:09)

Bill Brown co-founded the Surveillance Camera Players in 1996 and is the brain behind NotBored.org.

Another week, another dreadful column from Anne Applebaum, this time about why we can never ever ever ever leave Iraq. Applebaum, along with Cathy Young and a few others, occupies a weird niche in establishment punditry: as yawn-inducing in her analysis as David Broder and as neocon in her foreign policy as anyone at The Weekly Standard, she nonetheless manages to double-dip as a libertarian sage, at least in some quarters. Fortunately, some libertarians aren’t letting her get away with it.

Jim Henley shreds her latest:

This is the stupidest column anyone has ever written for any venue. I sure am glad Anne Applebaum returned to Washington in time to let us all know that, like Madeleine Albright’s America, she sees farther than others. I know just where “a dose of humility” is missing: Applebaum’s column.

There’s an implication lurking underneath the self-regard – that since all the Iraq options have downsides, what we happened to be doing at the exact moment Anne Applebaum started paying attention again is the sensible course. Needless to say, there’s no argument in favor of, to coin a phrase, staying the course. …

IOZ:

Rarely are all the miserable aspects of the sunk costs fallacy so energetically invoked at a columnist’s Ouija. The author reviews briefly a series of bogus politicians’ bogus plans for Iraq, finds them all lacking, and prescribes that since we’re already soldiering, we must therefore soldier on. …

Applebaum lists a series of mighty disasters proceeding from an American departure, then says:

Perhaps these things would never have happened if we hadn’t gone there in the first place–but if we leave, we’ll be morally responsible.

We’re already morally responsible. We did something wrongly, and we don’t have the power to put it right. It cannot be rectified, remediated, or forgiven. The practical, tactical, strategic, ethical, and moral failures are ours already. We can’t take them back, but we can leave and stop implicating ourselves ever further in their unwinding.

Henley and IOZ have been monitoring Applebaum’s abortions for some time now, and nary a word needs to be added to their collective verdict. As a columnist at the Washington Post, Applebaum has all the exposure a person of her talents could possibly ask for – there’s no need, and no reason, for libertarians to expand her platform by treating her as a kindred spirit, much less calling her “outstanding,” “one of America’s most insightful journalists,” “a fine journalist, an excellent writer, and a judicious historical researcher,” and “a fantastic writer, a careful scholar, and possessed of a moral sensibility that is judicious, practical, and finely tuned.”* There are already enough lips stuck to the backside of this bien-pensant bore.

*Obviously, I invented these clumsy, fawning quotations, and hastily, I might add. No one would really write such things.

Maybe this is why they’re supporting a candidate that promises to bring them home?

American soldiers describe the constant stress of living in a war zone, voice their frustrations over the politics with the war strategy in Washington, and are seen as they watch an armored vehicle burn with six of their fellow troops trapped inside, in a rare and raw look at what American troops are experiencing on the front lines in Baghdad.

[…]

“I challenge anybody in Congress to do my rotation,” said Spc. Michael Vassell of Apache Company. “They don’t have to do anything, they just come hang out with me and go home at the times I go home, and come stay here 15 months with me.”

Apache Company was sent to Iraq in June 2006 for a 12-month rotation which has since been extended to a 15-month tour.

“It’s a joke. We will have spent 14 months in contact, basically fighting all 14 months,” said Cpl. Joshua Lake. “Our battalion got right to Baghdad … first week we were in Baghdad we lost two guys in our battalion … it hasn’t stopped since.”

[…]

“Because we have people up there in Congress with the brain of a 2-year-old who don’t know what they are doing — they don’t experience it. I challenge the president or anyone who has us for 15 months to ride alongside me,” Vassell said. “I [would] do another 15 months if he comes out here and rides along with me every day for 15 months. I’ll do 15 more months. They don’t even have to pay me extra.”

In this photo, six American soldiers and an Iraqi translator are burning to death inside the armored vehicle. Cpl. Joshua Lake from Apache Company told Sean Smith, “It’s a joke. We will have spent 14 months in contact, basically fighting all 14 months…first week in Baghdad we lost two guys in our battalion, and it hasn’t stopped since.”

(Sean Smith/Guardian)

This is an unusually hard-hitting article. Also, see the video on the upper right of the linked page and the rest of the photos here.