...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, May 17, 2005
      ( 7:28 AM )
 
The More Things Change...

This entire Newsweek issue has brought once again to the forefront this administration's adept manipulation of the mainstream media and the media's likewise willingness to be stomped all over. In fact, of all mainstream media news reports last night, only Keith Olbermann reported that the story of Americans abusing the Quran to intimidate prisoners in our prison camps in Guantanamo Bay is an old and proven one. The Bush administration is once again able to distract people from the actual story (our ongong abuse of people who have never been charged with a crime) by focusing on the source of the story instead.

Speaking of history repeating - I have to teach Iran/Contra today. Though I'm leaving out all the gun runners and spies and CIA operatives just because it gets so incredibly complicated, it will still be a challenge. The whole thing is so twisted. I remember watching the hearings on tv and just feeling this sense of indefinable doom, but not knowing exactly why. Just on a personal note, the thing I still don't get is that the Marines never gave North a dishonorable discharge at the very least. Only months after Iranian-backed terrorists killed 240 Marines in Beirut, North was working to sell weapons to Iran and do back-door deals with the very people who killed his fellow marines. Isn't that treason? Or did I mistake that whole "aiding the enemy" part of the definition? Why do people treat him like such a hero? And why does he get to act like this courageous and proud Marine when he "reports" for Fox News? I don't get it.

Shouldn't we be learning from history how NOT to behave? Then again, with the same people back in charge again, there's not a whole lot of learning going on.

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