Conservative "New Republic" shows buyer remorse

[JohnnyRingo]

Calls Buxh White House liars and (sort of) apologize for cheerleading the war:

<excerpt>
Suddenly, everybody in Washington is an expert on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the 1982 law making it a crime to knowingly disclose the identity of a clandestine intelligence agent. And everybody in town has a pet theory on exactly who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame and where and how they did it. It was Karl Rove, in the West Wing, with the lead pipe. No, wait-- it was Ari Fleischer, on Air Force One, with the candlestick.

Of course, this is the way the right wing wants it: Their talking points on the Plame scandal are designed to confuse. And the good news is that it won't make a bit of difference in a court of law. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's audience isn't the viewers of "Hardball." It's the people huddled in a federal grand jury room, and they will deliver indictments if he demonstrates that somebody in the administration knowingly revealed Plame's identity (or committed some other crime, such as lying about their statements under oath).

But the court of public opinion is another matter. Here, the GOP's focus on narrow legal definitions and how they may or may not apply to the actions of a few individuals, all of which obscures a broader, more important story--the story of how this administration misled the public in order to make a convincing case for war in Iraq.

<snip>
How can the administration and its allies be so cavalier about the truth? Because that's the way they've operated all along. As numerous press accounts (including in these pages) have shown, when the intelligence bureaucracy questioned arguments that Saddam posed an imminent WMD threat, the White House intimidated would-be dissenters within the intelligence community: Dick Cheney paid personal visits to CIA headquarters at Langley, sending a message to analysts who might buck the party line, while Pentagon officials actually set up their own parallel intelligence office to get around CIA bureaucrats with the temerity to question inflated claims of Saddam's nuclear capability.

Of course, the skeptics turned out to be right; as even most supporters of the war (this magazine included) now acknowledge, the publicly stated rationale for war was false. A prosecutor can't indict the administration for those sorts of transgressions. Only the public can.

Registration Required:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050801&s=editorial080105

[MisterP]

1. dig your spoons into neocon vomit, get sick: any nitwit coulda told

you that, but yer eyes were full of oil and star spangles and blood and crumbling skulls of infants

[opihimoimoi]

3. Too Little TOO LATE: The BushCO is doing Major Damage to America

and its Common Folk.

Bush is NOT FOR THE COMMON GOOD

He is for himself and his SUPPORTERS of the CORP KINE...A selfish SOB

He is of limited intellect due to a revulsion of serious reading. Low input = LOW OUTPUT..... Low output = Shitty decisions = high odds of fuck ups...

which is what we got....

[Swamp Rat]

5. But for we common fish in the ocean, it's dinner time... and I'm hungry!

:9

[opihimoimoi]

8. ROTFLMAO, thanxs for the chuckle/laugh/smile.....

[Skittles]

10. I'm with you, MisterP

these f***wits are starting to realize what we've known for five freaking years? With thousands dead? I cannot feel any joy about these whores finally taking their heads out of the sand.

[FreedomAngel82]

42. Yeah really

Cry me a river. If you voted and publicially supported him too bad. If you want to change it vote and support democratic canidates next year.

[yardwork]

26. Brilliant and succinct rant!

[DanCa]

2. To quote Mike Brady "Caveat Emptor"

Let the buyer beware. Gawd I gotta stop watching nick at night.

[Union Thug]

4. Yeah, your apology is a little too late... ANYONE with a brain...

Could find the evidence against the bush-fascists with GOOGLE. What the hell was wrong with YOU GUYS? You are complicit and all your wimpering apologies will not remove the bloodstains from your clothing.

[Psyop Samurai]

9. Watch them spin and spin...

No one wants to be the last one holding the bag. So they'll simply disavow the monstrous deception that has torn this country (and the world) apart. Heck, they didn't mean nothin' by it.

But we WILL NEVER forget their complicity, EVER. And we have a responsibility to ensure that future generations understand the full, exact nature of it.

A prosecutor can't indict the administration for those sorts of transgressions.

And why not, exactly? That's what I want to know. Sounds like more "received wisdom" to me, i.e., more deceitful, condescending BS.

[theHandpuppet]

11. There's always IMPEACHMENT

BushCo (that includes Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rove, et al) are guilty of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" against the United States of America.

http://www.impeachbush.tv/impeach/offenses.html

[dbt]

6. Off to the Greatest page with this one!

Can I get two amens? Freep sphincters will slam shut when they see this on The DU.

:evilgrin:

[JNelson6563]

7. I hope they get their due

whatever it may be. They suck.

[Lannes]

12. Most conservative magazines wouldnt even admit that they were wrong

They dont deserve a parade but at least they had the balls to come clean unlike that nutjob in the white house.

[LaurenG]

13. My thoughts exactly, at least they aren't so evil

That the truth proved isn't dismissed, denied and covered up. It gives me some hope that all Bush republicans aren't totally evil idiots.




edited for spelling

[FourStarDemocrat]

21. TNR isn't really a conservative mag..

It has a mix of liberal and conservative editors, and has published many hard hitting pieces against the administration in the past couple of years. With that magazine, it all depends on which editor/journalist is writing the article.

[Lannes]

22. Thanks for the clarification

[liberalpragmatist]

25. They're a neo-liberal, Democratic magazine

They rarely endorse Republicans. They openly affiliate with the Democrats. Their writers are mostly a mix of centrists and liberals. That said the editors are very centrist and very hostile to the progressive wing of the party. The editors tend to be very DLC, and the magazine's owner, Martin Peretz (the one who started the magazine's rightward drift) is a MAJOR Neo-con, who still has the indecency to call himself a liberal and try to lecture the left. He openly backed Bush in the last election (though the paper endorsed Kerry), writing a dissent to the editors' endorsement. He said Kerry would be a "dangerously bad president" and is a major Iraq-war hawk and very hardline on Israeli-Palestinian issues. He is a VERY dedicated Likudnik and a big admirer of Ariel Sharon. He wrote op-ed pieces for Jewish magazines during the election urging them to vote for Bush because Kerry was not just bad for Israel but "dangerous."

He's also in the past called Bill Clinton "vile." The only Democrats he seems to like, oddly enough, are Zell Miller and Al Gore. He was a mentor to Al Gore in college and a close friend for years, although I don't know how the two are these days.

IMO, if TNR can ever shake off Peretz it might become a genuinely liberal paper again.

[marions ghost]

29. I was reading New Republic a bit in the run-up to the war--

they were shamelessly pro-war and rah-rah. And now they offer limp acknowledgement of their jingoism?? :( It's no surprise to read here that the magazine's owner is a neo-con who uses the perceived "centrist" platform of the New Republic to his own ends (which I was unaware of). Actually I think The New Republic is one of the most schizoid, most misguided attempt at "balanced," most sold-out to everybody --rag there is. :( If you want to study just HOW this war was sold to the public, going back and looking at TNR's handling of it would be a good place to start. I'd rather see an openly conservative magazine than this opportunistic mish-mash.

I don't use :puke: much but they deserve it.

[Burried News]

32. For Peretz, it's " Mission Accomplished" though, isn't it.

Our troops are in Iraq and there isn't much focus on the IDF, treatment of the Palistinians, the Road Map, the Wall yada yada yada.

[Kickin_Donkey]

40. I think that, while it is nominally liberal ...

The New Republic has always been idiosyncratic. While being generally liberal, didn't it start to drift rightward during the Reagan years, when neoliberalism became a buzzword? I mean by the early 1990s it had appointed Andrew Sullivan -- ANDREW SULLIVAN -- as its editor. Schizophrenic.

I actually think TNR is part of the right-wing media conspiracy. The liberal label gives them cover. When the TV networks have these pundit panels on news programs, they'll trot out a far-right-winger, a conservative, the host (who is conservative or a conservative ass-kisser), and a "liberal" represented by Morton Kondracke (who's not really liberal) or someone from The New Republic (who's actually a centrist or right of center).

Over the years, TNR has gotten a lot of mileage out of the liberal label, but they're really a wolf in sheep's clothing -- posing as the liberal to give the impression of balance in the corporate media's skewed-rightward political spectrum.

I stopped reading TNR and switched to a truly liberal publication, The Nation. But The Nation has its own problematic areas on the other end of the liberal side: Nader boosting, a bizarre defense of that drunken conservative Englishman columnist Christopher Hitchens. <sigh>

Talk about a cirucular firing squad. I don't favor any publications now -- just get my news and commentary pot pourri off the Internet.

[liberalpragmatist]

46. American Prospect is good

I still quite like The Atlantic, although that's more of a general journal, less a "liberal" one.

And I do still read TNR because they do have some very good writers and it's usually a good place to find a good piece by some leading Democrat or liberal. But I ignore their editorial page and have to keep from ripping apart the magazine whenever I read something by Martin Peretz, who IS a wolf-in-sheep's clothing.

[SlowDownFast]

14. kicked and recommended...

I suspect we'll be seeing more of these kinds of articles eventually...


What a shame, what a shame...

[Toots]

15. Not just the Administration but the Republican Congress did also

The Republican Congress acted as enablers for this Administration and need to be included in all "Buyers Remorse" articles. Whenever we talk about this Administration's misdeeds we need to also mention congress as abetters in all crimes committed. America needs to be woken up to the fact that the Republican Party's Leaders are morally bankrupt, not just this Administration.

[Pepperbelly]

16. Reinart is an arrogant P.O.S.

Everytime I see the weasel-faced son of a bitch representing "our side" on the tube, I cringe. Fucking far worse than Lieberman.

[sellitman]

17. BUG ME NOT Sign in

Account #1
shrub_junio
dumbya

http://www.bugmenot.com/

[charlie]

18. It's still in Google's cache, too

This search will raise it (can't post the link directly, the forum software mungs it):

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Revisiting+Wilson%22+%22new+republic%22

[Minstrel Boy]

19. When you lie down with rabid dogs

what do you expect?

The "New Republic" needs to be put out of its misery.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

20. No matter what people's feeling are about him, Pat Buchanan and

his American Conservative magazine had been against the war from the get go. Buchanan had many articles about American Imperialism and the Neocons.

[LaurenG]

23. I have thought at times he was OK

But then he confuses me because he also defends the idiots blindly in other areas. When he gets on his high horse he makes my skin crawl.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

24. I know what you mean. I had just been so surprised that in regard

to the war, I found that Buchanan was on the same page that I was.

On edit.

Prior to joining DU I used to post extensively on AOL political boards where you had people for every political persuassion debating the war. I used to take delight posting Buchanan's articles for Republicans to read.

[yardwork]

27. Buchanan's an isolationist and an old-time conservative

Buchanan and other isolationists are diametrically opposed to the neo-cons' plans for global imperialism.

Unfortunately, Buchanan's disagreement with the neo-cons stems from a completely different point of view than mine and those of most of us at DU.

Buchanan doesn't want the U.S. to have anything to do with "them furriners." He's racist.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

30. This sociopathic administration's actions seem to throw people of

diametrically opposed ideologies onto common footing. Who would have ever thought that Bob Barr would work for the ACLU against the Patriot act?


BTW... Buchanan's racism and views on abortion totally skeeve me out.

[marions ghost]

28. big Catch-22 there...

Of course, the skeptics turned out to be right; as even most supporters of the war (this magazine included) now acknowledge, the publicly stated rationale for war was false. A prosecutor can't indict the administration for those sorts of transgressions. Only the public can.*

*ONLY THE PUBLIC THAT IS INFORMED BY A RESPONSIBLE MEDIA*

:argh:

[Al-CIAda]

33. Essential point which fingers the complicity. n/t

[Burried News]

31. As poster fooj said on another thread ...

"Ownership. They own this mess. When are THEY going to start cleaning it up?"


Maybe that's what Alberto is here for - to clean up the mess? Uh uhh. Let the guys in the Board Rooms play the janitor. They groomed the monster that ate Washington and Baghdad, they can shovel up the shit he's left behind.

[Hissyspit]

34. Thanks for posting this. Sending it to my conservative friends...

I am SO in "I Told You So" mode.

[scarletwoman]

35. It's NOT a "conservative" magazine. Your conservative friends will laugh.

The title of the OP is rather misleading. The New Republic purports to be a "liberal" magazine. Read the other posts in this thread.

The New Republic is NO friend of ours, but to a right winger, it's a far left rag.

sw

[Hissyspit]

37. I understand that. They all know who Pat Buchanan is. n/t

[scarletwoman]

38. Yes, but Pat Buchanon doesn't write for the New Republic, he writes for

the "American Conservative" magazine.

sw

[Bouncy Ball]

36. They better not start backing away from this mess

muttering "uh yeah, huh, we don't know who did this, it wouldn't flush when we found it, yeah..."

No way. They bought the lies hook, line and sinker.

[charlie]

39. Bought it, washed and waxed it

and proudly put it in the driveway for all to admire.

Beinart wrote last December that it was past time for a purge of the likes of Howard Dean, MoveOn, and Michael Moore from the left because they didn't take the War on Whatever seriously. He said that the so-called antiwar types gave 'decent liberals' (yes, he called them that) a bad name and were to blame for the Democrat's dismal fortunes since 2001.

[Stand and Fight]

41. Kicked, bookmarked, and, of course, recommended. n/t

[Stand and Fight]

43. Kick again.

Excellent article! :kick:

[Tactical Progressive]

44. The New Republicans are having 'buyer's remorse'?

That's so sad. I guess if they apologize then that makes it all better. Good for them.

And, they got their tax cuts to 'stimulate' the economy, so really, it all worked out OK in the end for them.

[Armstead]

45. Yep all those condescending jerks were wrong after all

After patting the heads of anti-war advocates, jerks like the New Republic and NY Times now arerealizing they were wrong.

There's a certain satisfaction in "We Told You So," but it's be a lot more satisfying if these stooges would stop thinking they know something ordinary mortals don't.