Neocons want to start killing journalists through military attacks

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, recently published a report written by a retired American Army Colonel who says:

“Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts, and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

“The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win.

The article from which I am getting this information, here, at Anti-War.com, written by Jeremy Scahill, says the following about JINSA:

The organization has long boasted an all-star cast of criminal “advisers,” among them Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, John Bolton, and Douglas Feith. JINSA, along with the Project for a New American Century, was one of the premiere groups in shaping U.S. policy during the Bush years and remains a formidable force with Obama in the White House.

I found the story here at www.roguegovernment.com, a site which I really like for its constantly updated compilation of stories that you just don’t see anywhere else.  

I find Peters’ report disturbing on many levels, not the least of which is he talks of the IDF’s recent atrocities, in both Lebanon and Gaza, as if they were performed by, well, his own country.   He equates them with operations of the United States military, blaming the media for the failure of both of them.   And he says some really bizarre things about Islam and Muslims, such as:

Islam today is composed of over a billion essentially powerless human beings, many of them humiliated and furiously jealous.

And he calls journalists The killers without guns.  I am not making this up.

Reading his report, it’s clear the man is a freak.  And a dangerous freak.  

But that notwithstanding, he’s not the first military man to bitch and moan about “the media” and how, well, the truth hampers the “winning” part of the equation, especially the “dirty” winning that Peters seems to enjoy.

But for them to come out and admit that they feel the media is an “enemy”?   That deserves to be attacked by the military?   They’re saying that out loud now.   This is especially creepy in light of Bush’s, and now Obama’s, desire to simply throw-away-without-a-key anyone they deem an “enemy” of the state.    Are journalists the next victims of “Preemptive Detention?”   I mean, why not?   The logic here is clear.

Maybe that’s why there are so few real journalists now.  

Most of us have probably forgotten that Bush did, indeed, want to do exactly this and attack Al Jazeera’s international headquarters in Qatar:

“Britain’s Daily Mirror reported that during an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing al-Jazeera’s international headquarters in Qatar. This allegation was based on leaked ‘Top Secret’ minutes of the Bush-Blair summit. British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has activated the Official Secrets Act, threatening any publication that publishes any portion of the memo (he has already brought charges against a former Cabinet staffer and a former parliamentary aide). So while we don’t yet know the contents of the memo, we do know that at the time of Bush’s meeting with Blair, the administration was in the throes of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against al-Jazeera. The meeting took place on April 16, at the peak of the first U.S. siege of Fallujah, and al-Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from inside the city. Its exclusive footage was being broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC.

“The Fallujah offensive, one of the bloodiest assaults of the U.S. occupation, was a turning point. In two weeks that April, 30 Marines were killed as local guerrillas resisted U.S. attempts to capture the city. Some 600 Iraqis died, many of them women and children. Al-Jazeera broadcast from inside the besieged city, beaming images to the world. On live TV the network gave graphic documentary evidence disproving U.S. denials that it was killing civilians. It was a public relations disaster, and the United States responded by attacking the messenger.

So there it is, the journalists kept the military from hiding the “dirty” part of their “winning”.   The military wanted to lie about the slaughter of civilians in Fallujah, and they couldn’t get away with it because of the journalists.    But hey, what are they complaining about?  They “won”, didn’t they?   They shot people sleeping in their beds, leaving their bodies behind to be eaten by dogs, and they even shot civilians trying to escape the city by swimming across the river.  

So next time?   Just kill the damn journalists already!   Military strikes on journalists!

As Col. Peters puts it so eloquently in his report:

The most troubling aspect of international security for the United States is not the killing power of our immediate enemies, which remains modest in historical terms, but our increasingly effete view of warfare.

Now there’s a man’s man!  

Because there’s nothing manlier than shooting a Dad running down the street with his daughter clinging to his back!  

Here’s how Jeremy Scahill ended his piece, and I will quote him because this is the most important part, really:

Lest people think that the views of people like Ralph Peters and the JINSA/PNAC neocons are relics of the past, remember that the Obama administration includes heavy hitters from this world among its ranks, as well as fierce neocon supporters. While they may no longer be literally calling the shots, as they did under Bush/Cheney, their disproportionate influence on U.S. policy endures.

And let’s not forget that just today, Obama decided that the only thing wrong with Bush’s illegal detentions and usurping of the Constitution and trashing of Habeus Corpus is that he didn’t make it legal first.