Pleased to be Shutting the Piehole Now: Charles P. Pierce on the NYT and the anniversary of the war

[WilliamPitt]

Pleased to be Shutting the Piehole Now
By Charles P. Pierce
Esquire

Tuesday 19 March 2013

The "public editor" of The New York Times tells us today that the paper's coverage of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War is likely to be less of a hoot than back in the drum-banging days when Judy Miller was standing atop a great pile of stove-piped bullshit while Bill Keller threw roses at her feet.

I asked Dean Baquet, a managing editor, about the low-key approach. He said that while a few stories are planned, editors did not see a need for a major project or special section, as they did with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The war itself has been dissected to a tremendous degree," he told me. "You have to have something new or fresh to say." He would not provide specifics about the articles that are planned, but said there might be one or two that would make their way onto the front page this week...Is The Times's own role in the run-up to the war a part of this relative reticence, as some readers have suggested to me? Is there reluctance to revisit a painful period in the paper's history? Mr. Baquet said that's not a factor. "The Times has probably acknowledged its own mistakes from that period more than anyone," he said. "We certainly haven't been shy about doing that. We're doing the stories that make sense to us and that offer our readers something worthwhile."

That is, of course, all bollocks. Keller still writes a column. The Times is playing this on the downlow precisely because it never truly has atoned for its role in a fiasco. The op-ed page still welcomes submissions from people whose work on this most grotesque foreign-policy blunder should have been as definitive a career-killer as were Joe Hazlewood's navigational abilities.

(snip)

Shut up, all of you. Go away. You are complicit in one way or another in a giant crime containing many great crimes. Atone in secret. Wash the blood off your hands in private. Because there were people who got it right. Anthony Zinni. David Shiseki. Hans Blix. Mohamed ElBaradei. The McClatchy Washington bureau guys. Dozens of liberal academics who got called fifth-columnists and worse. Professional military men whose careers suffered as a result. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets around the world. The governments of Canada and France. Those people, I will listen to this week. Go to hell, the rest of you, and go there in silence and in shame.

The rest: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Happy_Anniversary

A tour de force. Read it.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Going to have to rec this thread. (nt)

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[tosh]

3. A SHINING example

of why I LOVE Charles P. Pierce.

[bullwinkle428]

4. Charlie Pierce does not suffer anyone's bullshit lightly!

K&R.

[Kolesar]

5. It was Jonathon Landay and Warren Strobel at Knight Ridder who found the colonels at the Pentagon

...who leaked the truth. McClatchy bought K-R after "Wall Street" said that K-R needed to be broken up. The flagship paper, the Akron Beacon Journal was sold to somebody else.

[Hamlette]

6. Thanks for posting this

I don't read Pierce that often, but I should. Thanks for reminding me there are a few in the MSM who tell the truth.

[Vinnie From Indy]

7. This should be on the front page of DU!

A hearty K & R !

[patrice]

8. Never forget! & Tell anyone and everyone you possibly can. 200K+ American-and-Iraqi lives MUST

mean something!

And that's not even to mention the wounded and the maimed on both sides and the Iraqi refugees and orphans.

If ALL of that means nothing, but an "Oooops!", then I don't know what does mean anything.

The New York Times is an accessory to these crimes.

NEVER forget!

[ReRe]

20. Yeah, and add all of the families & friends of the dead & maimed, here and there.

The people affected by what the NYTimes propped up is exponential.

"All that's unfit to print," should be their byline.

Bought and paid for by the MIC and all that the MIC comprises.

[patrice]

22. It's all so very astounding that it's as though NOTHING has happened and yet the size of

the whole things is absolutely gob-stopping dumb-founding.

[HiPointDem]

25. more than 200K. Iraq is about 1 million people short of where the lowest demographic projections

made before the war would have put it.

[Berlum]

9. The Times just merrily published the Republican lies -- even when they were obvious lies

...and even when the Times knew that the Republican liars were intentionally lying.

[Raine1967]

10. Sadly -- I must Kick and Rec.

You, Mr. Pitt, deserve to have a mention in this piece.

Many years ago, it was your writing that drew me to DU. You among others were so poignant. It was something that was so sorely lacking in the media as we knew it then.

Today -- this time of year in general -- is such a sad remembrance.

None of this had to happen. None of it should have happened. So many people tried to stop it.

So many.

[Faygo Kid]

11. And take The Washington Post with you

Editor Bill Keller has learned nothing and is cheerleading for more war, this time in Iran.

[LoisB]

12. Isn't it strange how those who yell loudest for war never served a day in uniform?

[malaise]

13. MUST READ

Rec

[winter is coming]

14. Sounds more like a tour de farce, except the results have been so tragic. n/t

[WilliamPitt]

15. Eh?

[winter is coming]

16. The article itself is first-rate, but the events described

would be farcical if they weren't so awful. Total clusterfuck, and amazing that so many journalists aided and abetted that horrific mess.

[WilliamPitt]

17. Ah.

[tanyev]

18. "Show me the butcher's bill for the Perle household, you vampire son of a bitch."

Wow.

[Raster]

31. I'd say that about says it all.

[kayakjohnny]

19. David Shiseki? Does he mean Eric Shinseki instead?

That's a big ball-drop.

There is no David Shiseki anywhere on the internet except this in this article.

Otherwise, awesome piece.

[Hekate]

28. I noticed that too. Generals Shinseki and Taguba (both sons of Hawai'i) are my heroes

Two men short in stature but towering in courage and ethics.

[Blue_Tires]

21. This needs to be repeated

And precisely what risk did you "manage" ? What chance did you take? You gambled with other people's children in a game you'd helped rig. What cost was exacted from you, sitting your fat ass in a swivel chair at a wingnut intellectual chop-shop while kids are still staggering around the wards without legs and arms, or the cognitive functions to get them through the day? What price did you pay? You have to send out for lunch one day? Show me the butcher's bill for the Perle household, you vampire son of a bitch.

[ReRe]

23. K&R

Bullocks exactly. What the NYTimes should have done was devote the entire front page to apologize to this country for doing what they did. Allow all those columnists and reporters to opportunity to apologize to all the families and friends of the dead, all of the people of this country and the world, for their miserable complicity in the war crime they propped up 10 years+ ago. To the millions who marched all over this world in protest. History tells a story and it's not going to be kind to the NYTimes. The shame of the world sits on their shoulders.

[xxqqqzme]

26. The first apology

should be written by judith miller.. Didn't we learn, during libby's trial, lies were being fed to her by darth & his minions for her columns?

[ReRe]

33. Yeah, Judith Miller...

...they should have LEFT her in jail. I define those who do misdeeds for hire or for compensation as prostitutes. Blackmail prostitutes. Prostitutes who sell out our priceless Democracy. These kind of prostitutes make the oldest profession's employees look like innocent angels.
Judith Miller makes me sick

[Festivito]

24. How about a 10th anniversary OF STORIES leading to the war.

Might be informative.

[Hekate]

27. Not everyone has amnesia in this country

Shut up, all of you. Go away. You are complicit in one way or another in a giant crime containing many great crimes. Atone in secret. Wash the blood off your hands in private. Because there were people who got it right. Anthony Zinni. David Shiseki. Hans Blix. Mohamed ElBaradei. The McClatchy Washington bureau guys. Dozens of liberal academics who got called fifth-columnists and worse. Professional military men whose careers suffered as a result. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets around the world. The governments of Canada and France. Those people, I will listen to this week. Go to hell, the rest of you, and go there in silence and in shame.

[marions ghost]

29. 10 years later

...truth trickles...

[colsohlibgal]

30. Love Me Some Charlie Pierce

He tells it like it really is and is so funny, he's one of my favorites.

Faux News, MSNBC, The NY Times and other newspapers, all quite guilty as collaborators. All except the clown car that is Fox are either playing it low key or trying to downplay their cheerleading

All this hubris will cost us trillions in the end, has snuffed the life of men and women here and in Iraq, killed untold number of innocent children, has sentenced countless others to a life severely compromised physically and/or mentally.

The media pom pomers were collaborators, but the neocon gang who started it belong in prison. We don't have the nerve but others do, which is why there are countries Bush, Cheney and others don't dare enter.