My apologies for this rush post on this video. I've experienced some computer problems today and didn't have time to put together a real good analysis of this video. But because I promised someone that I would get something posted about it today here is my quick take on this video.
Last week Peggy Noonan was on the Morning Joe show. I saved this video because I think it's important for people to see how our establishment media not only enable these political operatives to manipulate the facts but they actively assist them in doing so. Our establishment media is very much against holding anyone in the Bush administration accountable for torture and it's obvious from watching this video that they are willing to distort facts in order to make sure no one is held accountable.
In the beginning of the segment Noonan actively twists the facts about
Nancy Pelosi and the CIA log that was released last week when
Pelosi was out of the country.
Mika Brezinski, rather than correcting her, jumps right in by shaking her head as if to tell viewers how sad it is that Pelosi is just not truthful. Both of them then go on to say how Pelosi should be out there answering questions when they know full well or at least they should know that Pelosi was not even in the country when the CIA released their log. They also don't mention that even the
CIA Director doesn't claim the log is 100% accurate.
Noonan then tries to eliminate calls for an investigation by trying to claim that it's really the Republicans who want the truth to come out on torture and it's lying Democrats like Pelosi who better stop calling for investigations or they may be sorry. Mika then assists Noonan by jumping into the conversation to talk about how bad it's going to be for Democrats.
Noonan: I kinda think, I’m getting the impression that the Bush people are starting to think - while a few weeks ago they were saying you know don’t do this don’t be looking into this so hard, don’t do this..they’re now feeling you know what…we can totally defend ourselves and we are eager to do it we want to come forward and say this is what we did, this is why we did it, this was the context, this is the legality ---
Mika: we shared it with top Democrats and they did not make any noise.
Noonan: Exactly…also they’ll will be arguing that it kept us safer and they’ll be attempting to document that…
Mika: There is nothing good for the Democrats here. I don’t see a win here for them at all…
Mika pathetically acts as if calls for an investigation into torture are nothing but some political game where there are winners and losers.
Mark Halperin of Time Magazine doesn't even bother to ask basic questions when Noonan makes the extraordinary claim that Republicans welcome an investigation into torture.
Halperin: You talked about the Bush administration people being more willing to now engage on this (yeah, go ahead ask her who?)
Noonan: That’s kind of what I’m picking up (Oh yeah, from where?)
Halperin: One of the people who doesn’t seem at all reluctant to engage is V.P. Cheney (That's it, that's all you're going to ask about is Cheney and whether Cheney is good for the Republican Party and the country?...what a journalist!).
After being asked about Cheney, Noonan then goes on to give "noble" motives to what Cheney has been doing. She is never confronted with the obvious reason for Cheney to be out there defending torture - namely that he authorized torture and it's in his interest to defend it. Nope, no questions about that because that doesn't fit in with the narrative they want to convey.
After Noonan says that she's been against having investigations into torture from the beginning she gives the whole reason for this TV segment:
Noonan: Someone has raised the idea of a 911 type commission that literally - that does not make value judgements that literaly does not use adjectives - that will gather info and report in a data rich but not pejorative way exactly what happened. That may be the best that can come of this
Mika: I don't disagree with that.
Well of course you don't disagree, Mika. We can't possibly have a Commission that actually places the blame for torture where it belongs because in our establishment media's view we just can't have any accountability for torture. That's a no, no.
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