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Ärende: Truth to power
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Conservative Sycophants Lose Credibility

Paul Craig Roberts | February 16 2005

The conservative media will never recover from its role as Chief Sycophant
for the Bush administration. Journalists who demanded that Clinton be held
accountable for a minor sex scandal (Monica Lewinsky) and a minor
financial scandal (Whitewater) now serve as apologists and propagandists
for the Bush administration's major war scandals.

The Republican House of Representatives saw fit to impeach President
Clinton for lying about sex. The same Republicans defend to the hilt
Bush's lies that launched America into an unjustified war that has killed
and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis and Americans, cost taxpayers
hundreds of billions of dollars, ruined America's reputation, and lost
forever the hearts and minds of Muslims.

No decent or sensible person can have confidence in journalists and
politicians who take partisanship to such extreme lengths.

There is plenty of room in journalism and politics for arguments over
issues and policies. But two solid years of lies is beyond the pale.

Conservative journalists and Republican politicians not only lie through
their teeth, but also seek to destroy everyone who utters a word of
dissent or truth.

For example, Tom Frank of The New Republic (once considered to be part of
the hated "liberal press") recently expressed his thoughts in that
unfortunate magazine. Frank wrote that dissenters from Bush's gratuitous
war should be beaten and even killed. He expressed his wish that Arnold
Schwarzenegger would punch Stan Goff in the face. He wrote that seeing
Arundhati Roy taken out with a "bunker buster" would be a satisfying
experience. As for Sherry Wolf and other dissenters, "I wanted John
Ashcroft to come busting through the wall with a submachine gun to round
everyone up for an immediate trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand
for interrogation."

What have Stan Goff, Arundhati Roy, and Sherry Wolf done to inspire Tom
Frank to reveal his brownshirted inner self?

A former Delta Force soldier, Goff joined up with Military Families Speak
Out. Roy penned a defense of the right of Iraqis to resist military
occupation, and Wolf agreed that Iraqis have a right to resist Bush's
occupation of Iraq. Frank views beatings, arrests, interrogations,
torture, and death as appropriate responses to these peaceful expressions
of dissent.

Conservatives regard dissent as a serious offense, but they think it is
treasonous to give the public real information, as contrasted with Fox
"News" propaganda. Former Newt Gingrich operative and current Washington
Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley believes America's premier
investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, should be arrested for treason
and perhaps shot for warning Americans about the Bush administration's
plans to start a war with Iran.

"Conservative" talk radio hosts and Republican politicians are foaming at
the mouth over Ward Churchill, a University of Colorado professor of
ethics. The professor's crime and the crazed Republicans mean the word
literally is to have stated that the U.S. should apply to itself the
same standards it applies to other countries.

Those conservatives who have not joined the New Brownshirts might ask
themselves why the mighty Bush apparatus and its legions of propagandists
and sycophants feel so threatened by a few expressions of dissent, a few
facts, and a simple ethical statement. Could it be that they know that
their edifice of lies will come crashing down if anyone is allowed to
utter dissent or a word of truth?

The conservative media has blown its great chance to gain credibility by
holding Bush accountable as it did Clinton. Instead, the conservative
media and talk radio have shown themselves to be political partisans who
fight against truth. Justify Bush at all costs is their operative rule.

At least the German press and the Soviet press were forced into these
roles by Hitler and Stalin. The American conservative media willingly
adopted the role on its own.

The function of a journalist is to speak truth to power and to hold
accountable those with power. Abandoning this role, the conservative media
cheers for war, incompetent leaders, and a police state.
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