Truth or Consequences

Useful Idiots

If you don't read James Walcott, you are missing some of the best writing and most intelligent commentary available to us ordinary folk. Yesterday, Mr. Walcott took on one of the Howard Kaloogian's Truth Tour cheerleaders. It wasn't pretty, but it was real. More real than the crap spewed by the Move America Forward shills working for a California PR firm, which is what the Truth Tour was all about in the first place.

Here is what rightwing radio host Michael Graham perspective of "reality" in Iraq:

"Again and again, from 'white-collar' soldiers working in the relative safety of Camp Victory at the Baghdad airport to the "real" soldiers patrolling Route Irish (a.k.a the 'Highway of Death'), I heard that America and their Iraqi-army allies are winning the war against the insurgents. I was told again and again by the soldiers themselves that their (our) cause is just, the strategy is working, and the enemy they fight represents evil itself.

"In other words, I heard things seldom heard on CBS or read in the pages of the New York Times."

As Walcott points out, here's how the New York Times turns away from the "truth" and reports what the insurgents want printed:

"Despite months of assurances that their forces were on the wane, the guerrillas and terrorists battling the American-backed enterprise here appear to be growing more violent, more resilient and more sophisticated than ever.

"After concentrating their efforts for two and a half years on driving out the 138,000-plus American troops, the insurgents appear to be shifting their focus to the political and sectarian polarization of the country - apparently hoping to ignite a civil war - and to the isolation of the Iraqi government abroad."

Walcott makes the obvious point:

"The Sunday pages of The New York Times must have brought Michael Graham only further confirmation that what he heard over there is the plain truth and what he reads over here is fancy hogwash. Denying the enveloping disaster in Iraq is how he maintains his membership in the marching band of useful idiots." (emphasis mine)

Idiots, indeed. Useful....?