Follow the Leader

Someone needs to tell NPR News that their role is to question, push, probe and investigate those who wield power - not wait those in power investigate themselves, and then go after the story. Then it's too late. The Army report on the Iraq War is a case in point. Where was NPR in 2002 when the Bushists were ramping up the sell job on the war, in 2003 as the illegal invasion announcement was being made by the Aznar, Blair and Bush troika in the fricking Azores, in 2003 as the first ugly stories of US-British torture began leaking out of Iraq, in 2003 when Jay Garner was shown the door, etc....?

So now we get Andrea Seabrook talking to the discredited Ret. General Sanchez and revealing their racist attitudes toward those killed in the war (see below), and on Monday morning Guy Raz talks to - you guessed it - more discredited generals. Amazingly, one of his primary sources is Robert Scales, the same shill for the Pentagon propaganda program and war profiteer that NPR got busted for, and - despite NPR's promise to reveal such connections - no mention is made of Scales' scandalous background. Raz also talks to surgin' Jack Keane (an AEI and Bush right-winger and a big counterinsurgency cheerleader.)

I'm not suggesting that it's not reasonable to talk to some generals about a self-critical Army report, but it's the same closed bubble that was revealed in the NPR Ombudsman's response the Pentagon propaganda scandal: NPR is dominated by military spokespeople, many of whom have been thoroughly discredited. It's especially ironic that compared to these military/security talking heads, we almost never hear from the people who were right all along on the war - not now, but back in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006....