Aiding and Abetting

We've been watching the wretched sight of The New York Times and The Washington Post easily sliding into becoming just a Republican newsletter and White House pulpit. This was never more apparent than in August when both national newspapers saw fit to print Republican griping, a "report" as they called it, about the lack of the proper kind of intelligence regarding Iran's nuclear program. Intelligence, that is, indicating what Republicans eager for more war wanted to hear. These papers both headlined this specious GOP nonsense on page 1.

In response to the leaden attempt denigrating intelligence agencies and the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding Iran, the IAEA felt it necessary to counter the baseless charges produced by the Republican panel. Today, officials from the IAEA issued a letter, addressed to Peter Hoekstra, saying that the "report" contained "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." This is pretty much par on the GOP course of misinformation. It was Hoekstra who, along with fellow GOP numbnut Rick Santorum, had claimed that those two had found the Iraq WMD that no one else had managed to do.

US intelligence officials also indicated that the report, released by the Republicans without being voted on or vetted in any way, contained at least a dozen claims that were "demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate."

But neither the Post nor the Times had any problem with splashing this nonsense all over the front page of their respective papers. The deluded report garnered enormous attention, so much so that the IAEA had to waste its time addressing the fallacious propaganda, as though they don't have better things to do. And the IAEA can thank both the Post and the Times for aiding and abetting the GOP and for wasting the valuable time of the agency.

So where did the IAEA response show up? Was it displayed with big letters on the front page, showing the Republican report for what it was? No. At the Times, it is on A3 and The Washington Post, newly anointed as the White House's latest media outlet, buried it on page A17.

Not only are the media in this country becoming more worthless as sources of actual news, watching them turn into propaganda organs is now simply tiring.