Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 155

Justice Stevens' retirement and Elena Kagan

Justice John Paul Stevens, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Gerald Ford in 1975 and then became the leader of its "liberal" wing, told the White House today that he was retiring in the Summer.  I had been planning to write a comprehensive post documenting the reasons why one of the clear front-runners to replace Stevens -- current Solicitor General and former Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan -- would be such a harmful choice (similar to the post I wrote along the same lines...

Olbermann on Obama's assassination program

There are many legitimate criticisms voiced about Keith Olbermann, but he deserves substantial credit for his coverage last night of a story that is as self-evidently significant as it under-covered:   Barack Obama's assassination program aimed at American citizens.  He not only led off his show with this story, but devoted the first two segments to it, and made many of the key observations and asked virtually all of the right questions.  The videos of those two segments, worth watching, are ...

Confirmed: Obama authorizes assassination of U.S. citizen

(updated below - Update II)

In late January, I wrote about the Obama administration's "presidential assassination program," whereby American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the Executive Branch that they're involved in Terrorism.  At the time, The Washington Post's Dana Priest had noted deep in a long article that Obama had continued Bush's policy (which Bush never actually implemented) of having...

Follow-up points on the WikiLeaks video

A few follow-up points to the discussion here over the last couple of days regarding the Iraq/WikiLeaks video:

(1) The more I think about it, the more astounding I find it that there could even be a debate over the fact that incidents like the one depicted on this video are exceedingly common, and not at all rare (let alone that vile "He-Hates-The-Troops!" smears would be directed at those who point out this basic truth).  Aside from the mountains of evidence making it undeniably clear how ...

N.Y. Times, Weekly Standard join in a falsehood

I just have to put this in a separate post from my two prior ones on the WikiLeaks video because it reveals how blatant falsehoods become lodged in our political discourse.  In reporting today on the Iraq video, The New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller strongly implies that WikiLeaks failed to release the full video and instead selectively edited it:

Reuters had long pressed for the release of the video, which consists of 38 minutes of black-and-white aerial video and conversations...

Iraq slaughter not an aberration

I was just on Democracy Now along with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange discussing the Iraq video they released yesterday, and there's one vital point I want to emphasize.  Shining light on what our government and military do is so critical precisely because it forces people to see what is really being done and prevents myth and propaganda from distorting those realities.  That's why the administration fights so hard to keep torture photos suppressed, why the military fought so hard here to keep...

WikiLeaks releases video of slaughter in Iraq

(updated below)

A week ago, I wrote about the war being waged on WikiLeaks by the Pentagon and other governments and corporations around the world, and noted at the time -- as a result of my interview with editor Julian Assange -- that WikiLeaks had obtained classified videos that were highly incriminating of the Pentagon and was planning on releasing them shortly.  Earlier today, I wrote about the cover-up by the U.S. military in Afghanistan of the deaths of five civilians, the P...

Ross Douthat invents a false claim for "balance"

In his New York Times column today, Ross Douthat laments the lack of real political debates on cable news shows, and writes this:

What might work, instead, is a cable news network devoted to actual debate. For all the red-faced shouting, debate isn't really what you get on Fox and MSNBC. Hannity has ditched Colmes, and conservatives are only invited on Rachel Maddow's show when they have something nasty to say about Republicans.

Here we find two of the most common pundit...

How Americans are propagandized about Afghanistan

On February 12 of this year, U.S. forces entered a village in the Paktia Province in Afghanistan and, after surrounding a home where a celebration of a new birth was taking place, shot dead two male civilians (government officials) who exited the house in order to inquire why they had been surrounded, and then shot and killed three female relatives (a pregnant mother of ten, a pregnant mother of six, and a teenager) who sought to help the victims.  The Pentagon then issued a statement...

Things that would not happen today

(updated below - Update II)

From the obituary of Jerald terHorst, who died yesterday:

Jerald terHorst, who resigned as President Gerald Ford's press secretary just 30 days after taking the job because of the pardon Ford granted former President Richard Nixon, has died of congestive heart failure, his son said Thursday. . . .

In 1974, terHorst became press secretary after Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and Ford succeeded him as president on August 9, 1974. 

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