Vacation Interruptus

“But fine, Glenn, go for it. I’m going back to my vacation.”
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Well why didn’t you just stay on vacation and kept your month shut.
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And you want to talk about dishonest and intellecutally dishonesty. You are delibertly distorting what Glenn wrote.
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“It should go without saying, but doesn’t: the point here is not that the attack on Iraq is comparable to these above-referenced invasions. It may or may not be, but that’s irrelevant. The point is that every nation which launches even the most brutal, destructive and unprovoked wars of aggression employs moralizing propaganda to claim that their aggression engenders magnanimous and noble ends, and specifically often points to segments of the invaded population which welcome the violence and invaders. Pointing to the happy and rewarded Kurdish minority no more justifies or legalizes the attack on Iraq than similar claims do for any of those other cases.”
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http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/29/war/index.html
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And yes Glenn will come after you. And in this case you will deserve it.

“revelatory of a twisted, deluded soul”

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/talking-head-like-a-hole/

I believe you are distorting Greenwald’s point which is – all invaders have morally justified (one way or another) their invasions and one of the ways is to show the world that the invasion is justified is to showcase (point out) the citizens (of the invaded) country who welcome the invasion. He is not (at least in my opinion) comparing the Kurds to the Sudeten Germans.

Another high comment / high pitched thread again? It looks like another Beer Summit™ is in order, as if Obama doesn’t have enough on his plate already. Maybe Tumulty can host this at her house instead (Karen, buy hard stuff for shots, beer alone ain’t gonna cut thru this old feud). Then again, with Joe defending Goldberg, I can imagine (just a guess) Amy reading this and sighing, “Wow, I wish someone would stick up for me now and then. The commenters keep beating the crap out of me.”

Joe Klein attacks Glenn Greenwald over leaked emails.
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Deja vu, all over again.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/01/joe-klein-glenn-greenwald_n_273702.html

“his patented vile, intellectually dishonest jihads”
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Its almost as if you’re comparing him to Rush Limbaugh. Oh, wait…
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http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/truthseeker77/2009/08/joe-klein-compares-glen-greenw.php

At least you didn’t call him crazy. This time.
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“well, Glenn Greenwald is crazy—he’s a civil liberties absolutist.”
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http://www.nomoremister.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-wait-i-know-this-one-answer-to-who.html

Joe Klein:
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Greenwald–who, so far as I can tell, only regards the United States as a force for evil in the world
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Thank you.
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You know, because of the constant language games you Third Way Democrats play with us liberals, I sometimes have a difficult time communicating how different your philosophy is from ours.
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And then you go and do something like this, and my task becomes so much easier!
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Only a centrist like you would play the rightists’ favorite “liberals hate America” card whenever a subscriber to the Serious Foreign Policy’s consensus is attacked for being wrong on the facts.
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So when our government does bad things –truly unconscionable, immoral and counterproductive things that cost precious human lives and resources– such as invading Iraq, the cost of admitting that we do not resemble our finest selves so much as our foulest enemies in these actions is accusations of treason from centrist Democrats joining with conservative Republicans.
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Liberals know, however, that realist foreign policy demands that we drop these charades, and look at what our government does in our names honestly. Greenwald is doing so when he advocates that the American people be conscious of when the same type of justifications used by state war-mongers throughout history –even fascist Germany– are employed to provide rationales for horrible, stupid foreign policy.
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Only a centrist Democrat “locked in the sterile prison of his ideology” would look to the America-hater card as a refutation of someone so grossly, unrepentantly and knowingly wrong as Jeffery Goldberg being named as so by liberals.
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Only a Third Way advocate could respond to liberals’ charges that fellow elites are practicing corrupting, dishonest journalism by attacking our patriotism.
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As for this
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Goldberg’s work is quite the opposite: rigorously reported, beautifully written and fiercely honest.
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“Fiercely honest?”
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This?

In “The Great Terror”, the article that Goldberg wrote for the New Yorker in 2002 during the run-up to the Iraq war, Goldberg argues that the threat posed to America by Saddam Hussein is significant.
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The article opens with a vivid description of Hussein’s Al-Anfal Campaign, including his regime’s use of poison gas at Halabja.[10] Goldberg goes on to relate detailed allegations of a close relationship between Hussein and Al Qaeda, which Goldberg claims he “later checked with experts on the region.”[10] Goldberg argues that: “If these charges are true, it would mean that the relationship between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda is far closer than previously thought.”[10] Goldberg concludes his article with allegations about Hussein’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction:

Saddam Hussein never gave up his hope of turning Iraq into a nuclear power … There is some debate among arms-control experts about exactly when Saddam will have nuclear capabilities. But there is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them soon … There is little doubt what Saddam might do with an atomic bomb or with his stocks of biological and chemical weapons.[10]

In a late 2002 debate in Slate, Goldberg described Hussein as “uniquely evil” and advocated an invasion on a moral basis:

There is consensus belief now that Saddam could have an atomic bomb within months of acquiring fissile material. … The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.[23]

“Fiercely honest?”
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Jeffery Goldberg?
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The guy who still says that he was right, and his unimpeachable journalism was correct about the Saddam/al Qaeda link, as he does here in the disgracefully spiteful and petulant “Yes, Yes, I Know I Started the Iraq War”

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/06/yes-yes-i-know-i-started-the-iraq-war/58780/
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I realize that Saddam had no relationship at all with al Qaeda (despite the volumes of evidence that suggest the contrary)…

That’s the “rigorously reported, beautifully written and fiercely honest” journalism you’re defending, Joe Klein?
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Only a Third Way Democrat like you could be ideologically dedicated enough to your fellow elites to call criticism of such “reporting” anti-American.
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Only a centrist who was desperate to preserve all of the mythology that’s part and parcel of maintaining the public face of Serious Foreign Policy orthodoxy in the capital would accuse liberals of comparing their fellow Americans to Nazis.
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So thank you, Joe Klein.
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Thank you for once again having a few brief moments of honesty during which you drop the facade of sympathy for the left, and reveal yourself to be the liberal-bashing, centrist demagogue that you are.
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Thanks for attacking Glenn Greenwald’s patriotism. Thanks for defending Jefferey Goldberg’s journalism.
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Thanks for helping me communicate these things about how different what you advocate is from liberals, Joe Klein, it’s greatly appreciated.

Joe -

Sorry, bud, but I’m with gysgt213 & docudrama on this one. It looks to me like you’re going out of your way to misrepresent Greenwald. His point (especially as he continues to provide examples later in his post) is clearly NOT about comparing the Kurds to the SGs but rather that (his quote) “It’s difficult to find an invasion in history that wasn’t supported by at least some faction of the invaded population.”

I also note that you went the extra mile with this: “Greenwald–who, so far as I can tell, only regards the United States as a force for evil in the world.”

(BTW: How any of this relates to Goldberg’s disgusting and all-too-revealing post on the Weigel story is beyond me, except insofar as Goldberg’s trying to change the subject from his own pettiness.)

Lets see, on the one hand we have the establishment turd who is more concerned about his invite to the next water-gun party at some politicos digs and can always be counted on to help the US gov’t get up it’s next war and to just generally be a good stenographer of official news, and on the other hand we have the new media type who actually sticks to his guns and is more interested in getting to the truth and sticking by his principles.

Gee, I wonder where I should place more trust.

Go back to your vacation JokeLine, and when you get back you can continue your slide into irrelevance to all but your fellow villagers…

And, Joe, before you call me a ‘glennbot’ (or a ‘joebot’ (which has a much better ring to it)), I’m dropping these links to demonstrate that you have a long running feud with Mr. Greenwald and I seriously question your objectivity in reporting on this matter, especially when you fail to mention the long running feud.

“a happy byproduct of George W. Bush’s dreadful war in Iraq”

—————————————–

“There’s a picture of the World Trade Center hanging up by my bed and I keep one in my Kevlar [flak jacket]. Every time I feel sorry for these people I look at that. I think, ‘They hit us at home and, now, it’s our turn.’ I don’t want to say payback but, you know, it’s pretty much payback.”

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/payback/

Jesus, Klein, what are you, three years old? “MOM! GREENWALD SAID MEAN THINGS ABOUT JEFFREY!”

Get a grip, dude.

“A commenter–a Glennbot, clearly–notes that Greenwald finagles this caveat:”
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If this was directed at me. Yes. I am. And proud of it. What is your point?

He can’t get a grip, because Greenwald like Hastings of the RS is attacking a member in good standing of his beloved village. Klein is the Lara Logan of this blog. Another so afraid that DFHs like Greewald and Hastings are giving a way the secret handshake.

Gunny is still right, even after the update.
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Greenwald pointed out that Goldberg’s war cheerleading and stream of inaccurate reporting is the issue here; Goldberg responded by talking about the Kurds.
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Greenwald’s point here is that even if some people are happy about the US-led invasion of Iraq, that doesn’t justify the enterprise. The analogy to the Sudetenland is obvious.
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All of this is a distraction from Greenwald’s larger point: that Goldberg is “defending journalism,” when he embodies everything wrong with that zero-accountability, government-subservient profession. Or as Spencer Ackerman put it, “Jeffrey Goldberg is a great example of how you never went broke in journalism by turning in sloppy and tendentious work that served the interests of powerful men.”

“And now, Greenwald–who, so far as I can tell, only regards the United States as a force for evil in the world-”

This line tells me everything I need to know about Joe Klein. He is hack who is yet another reason for the failing of traditional media.

Actually Klein is deliberately obfuscating the point that Glenn is correctly calling out Goldberg for being a liar and fabricator. A rather more significant sin in a journalist than mere bias.

Glenn attacked Goldberg for having been the willing conduit for the Bush administrations fake WMD claims. He wrote many stories on the claims and has never retracted any of them after they were proven to have been false.

When he was challenged on the fabrications, Goldberg did not address the facts, he instead argued that the war his lies helped to start had been a good thing. Which of course it has been for the Kurds and for Iran. But that does not exactly justify the 600,000 people that Goldberg helped to murder.

So now Klein comes in with the old McCarthy act. It is contemptible and cowardly of course. A predictable example of one dishonest journalist coming to the defense of a dishonest and discredited crony.

I have a better idea:
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Joe, how about ‘Vacation Returnus’.
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Get away for a while, and come back refreshed…

Andrew Breitbart is offering $100,000 for the complete “JournoList” archives. http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abreitbart/2010/06/29/reward-100000-for-full-journolist-archive-source-fully-protected/

Breitbart had also offered a $100,000 reward to anyone with a shred of evidence to support the bogus allegations made by Time magazine and other leftist political advocacy groups (e.g., al McClatchy, the Associated (with terrorists) Press, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, A-Mess-NBC, the Dallas Morning News, et al.) that black congressmen were called racial epithets by Tea Pary members in front of the U.S. Capitol building. Predictably, no such evidence existed, so that $100,000 reward remains unclaimed.

I can’t wait to see the names of all of the nut jobs on that “JournoList”. How ’bout you?

A few questions to teh author on the “big stuff”:

1) What does pro-two-state solution mean? Are you for a territorial compromise? Should both side compromise and give up some land? in your supported two-state-solution, will East Jerusalem be a part of Palestine or a Part of Isarel? Do you support splitting water rights to the so called “samaria mountain aquifer”? 50/50? All to Israel? All to palestine? Is Gazza going to be part of your supported Palestinian state? How do plan to have Palestinians and Israelis reaching this two-state-solution? Is this a one year process, 10 years or a generational task?

2) What does anti-Jewish settlements mean? Do you support removing all of the jewish settlements, or you have some exceptions? Which settlements would you keep and why?

The “big stuff” is meaningless in the Middle east.

If Joe Klein is going to accuse someone of going “berserk,” he should make an effort to sound less hysterical.

Notably, Klein doesn’t speak to any of the serious specifics of Greenwald’s essay — most importantly, Goldberg’s unalloyed support for the Iraq war including, crucially, outright _falsehoods_ about Iraqi weapons programs.

Goldberg _lied_. Klein’s silence on this amounts to abetting the crime.

Quite a fan club you have here, Joe. They seem to understand you quite well.

I’ve got a suggestion for you. Those old media smear techniques you employ here don’t work so well on the internet, because Glenn’s column is only a click or two away and we can read it for ourselves. So it’s no longer enough to call him an America-hating lefty and then lie about what he said. That might have worked for you in the past, but now it just makes you look not only dishonest, but stupid.

WELL I TYPICLY DO’NT AGREE WITH LIB’S LIKE JOE KLEIN, BUT IT IS TRUELY SO COURAGIOUS OF HIM TO INTARUPT HIS VACATION TO TAKE A STRONG STAND IN DEFENSE, OF HIS FREIND, JEFF GOLDBERG.

WELL ANY WAYS, THEIR’S ONLY ONE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD CREATED BY GOD – THE UNITED STATES. ALL OTHER COUNTRY’S ARE MAN-MADE CREATION’S MADE BY MEN. SO WHEN THE U.S. INVADES A COUNTRY WE OUR DOING GOD’S WORK. SO I DEFINATELY AGREE WITH KLEIN, IT IS OBSCENE TO COMPARE U.S. INVASION’S TO ANY OTHER INVASION’S. U.S.A. IS NUMBER #1

No one reads all-caps posts, so stop playing on your mother’s computer.

You are either unbelievably stupid or purposefully ignoring the obvious meaning of what Greenwald wrote. The fact that a segment of an invaded population welcomes the invasion is not evidence of the invasion’s merit. Incredibly simple. Just like you.

I’m sure you have neither the time nor the reading comprehension expertise to get to the bottom of what Greenwald wrote. You saw the word “Nazi” in a column he wrote and in your eager stupidity thought you had an opportunity to scalp someone that has publicly embarrassed you God only knows how many times.

Greenwald’s column is smarter, better researched, more meticulous, more relevant and most of all shows a much greater understanding of and respect for the rule of law. You are an irrelevant, unprincipled, confused old man. Go back to your vacation and stay there.

Merkin??

If Glenn doesn’t remind you, I will: Remember when you were for the Iraq War before you were against it?

WELL ‘MOMENT OF MAURY’ MANY LIB’S LIKE YOU ALL WAYS TELL ME ‘DO’NT WRITE IN ALL CAPS WE WO’NT READ IT’ BUT THEN IN THE AMOUNT OF TIME IT TOOK YOU TO WRITE YOU’RE LITTLE COMMENT YOU COUDL OF READ MY COMMENT WITH OUT MAKING A COMMENT SO WHOSE LAUGHING NOW????

Mr. Klein:

I think you’re best off not engaging Glen Greenwald.

You’re out of your depth, because you don’t take words, or rather consecutive thinking (logic) seriously.

Saying that Greenwald was equating the Kurds with Nazi-sympathizers is just silly.

More to the point, it’s wilfull–you deliberately choose to misunderstand, because if you get on to the track of patient thinking, you will be led into some very uncomfortable places.

I can’t measure Greenwald’s value, it’s beyond computing. Many of us read him, and think, aaah, once and for all, it’s out there in the public record: a description of the way things are in the republic’s media.

I wonder why things in that media have changed so little since Bush’s departure, and the best I can do is conclude that you’re all too deeply compromised. You all put your shoulder to Bush’s wheel, often by seeing, hearing, and saying nothing, and brought us the USA today. You can’t afford to visit the scenes of your own crimes. (Last word not used lightly, starting with what decent people agree not to say, which is that the Iraq war was by the Nuremberg protocols that used to be a benchmark a war crime. Ever wondered what that means for your support?)

Stay from Greenwald!

Francis

http://merkinpatriot.blogspot.com/

This is embarrassing, Joe. Greenwald provides a detailed, well-sourced dissection and all you can come back with is a baseless impugnation of his patriotism? You should have sat this one out.

I suppose JK is demonstrating the right-wing half of his centrist nature when he states that Greenwald has mental problems, and hates America. That of course is irrational, no matter how much real reporting you do, assuming of course that reporting, when done well, is done in a rational fashion.

And then I’ll tell Alice, I’M the boss of this family! Not you! And if she doesn’t like it — Bang! Zoom!

Joe, that was disingenuous for you to call attention to Goldberg’s relationship with a Kurdish prisoner when he was in the IDF, alleging that Goldberg has “inside information” that Greenwald cannot possible understand.

Although I am glad the Kurds were liberated from the Iraqi regime of Saddam in a region where the borders have been redrawn countless times by other nations: Our invasion of Iraq was NOT to free the Kurds and taking a “moral high ground” for a preemptive invasion of a country where thousands of US soldiers are maimed and killed and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians are killed in central and southern Iraq is morally reprehensible and intellectually dishonest.

The Bush/Cheney administration knew very well that Saddam’s regime was easy to topple and that was proven fairly quickly. So did we invade Iraq to “liberate” the Kurds? or because Saddam’s regime was a “terrorist hotbed” and a threat to the US and the rest of the world? or was the true purpose of invading Iraq was because it made a good strategic location for the Bush/Cheney agenda for the region?

Also I would like to hear your views on hcohen11′s questions @ 14. Thank you.

“The message has to be sent because if it isn’t sent now, if we don’t do this now, it empowers every would-be Saddam out there and every would-be terrorist out there.”

- Joe Klein, Feb. 2003

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/by-their-fruits/

Is everyone who points out that you are a hack and liar a Glennbot?

“Glenn Greenwald has been conducting one of his patented vile, intellectually dishonest jihads”
“he has now truly gone berserk”
“Greenwald–who, so far as I can tell, only regards the United States as a force for evil in the world”
“revelatory of a twisted, deluded soul”

Joe, sounds like you are nursing an anger that has pushed you over the edge. Did Glenn knock you down and take your lunch money one too many times? Your primary colors are showing.

And, as for these quotes:

“used the opportunity to launch another of his litigious, ambulance-chasing foray”
“He can’t plead ignorance, can’t get away with a litigator’s trick”

You’re right. Glenn is one of the most qualified legal minds in American journalism, has practiced law at the nation’s most prestigious firm, and has likely forgotten more about law than you’ll ever know. Hence the Rovian mode of attacking his strength?

On the merits of whether Goldberg is mendacious or merely incompetent, I think you’ve already had several of your hats handed to you by previous commenters.

As to the third-grade level “neener neener” quality of this post: carry on; it’s your tattered reputation, not mine.

I don’t read Goldberg or Greenwald, and more often than not, I defend Klein here, but after looking through everything here, I’m chalking this one up to alcohol. I’m just not seeing anything in Greenwalds post to warrant this kind of anger, and so i’m concluding Joe is the angry type of drunk. Maybe next time you should try a dry beach town like Stone Harbor.

It’s a Jekyll/Hyde phenomenon. Greenwald has the ability to bring out a right wing vindictive Klein. The problem is that Greenwald has a huge fan base who take exception, as we see here.

Hmmm. I just searched this blog for references to Greenwald and came up with 44(!) separate posts.

Who knew Joke Line was so obsessed with Greenwald?!

Get a room!

Is it a perfectly apt analogy? Of course not. Are certain portions perfectly accurate? Yes.

The Germans in Czech lands were not being treated as they liked. Churchill was convinced the pro-Nazi Sudeten leader Henlien was being sincere when he negotiated, after Anschluss, to try to get the Czech government to appease the Nazis by granting the concessions to the Sudeten.

I suspect there were, between 1988 and 1991, who were trying to get Saddam to treat the Kurds right without trying to topple him.

Of course, back then, the neo-cons (specifically S. Pelletiere(sp?)) were pushing the idea that the worst attack of the Anfal campaign, Halabjah, was actually the work of the Iranians.

One second, weren’t you told that Churchill never appeased anyone, not to mention the Nazis? You were fed lies. By whom? Are you going to take them to task for filling your head with nonsense? Here is the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/themes/95/95646.html

“…WHOSE LAUGHING NOW????”

Well, I am, with regard to your copious spelling and grammatical errors. Spell Check works when you turn off the caps lock, but I’m not sure I can help you to understand the difference between a plural and a possessive.

Joe.
The next time you want to write about Greenwald,
take a few deep breaths, count to a 100, take a walk – whatever, and DONT write it.

For one thing, you end up sounding very childish.

For another thing, Greenwalds got a reputation of doing a lot of homework and making it available to his readership. You will always be the guy who wrote columns about bills you never read.

If you think that another whinge about America hating crazy Greenwald will add value to your column, youre wrong.

Why did you cut your vacation short for this self mutilation?

The only difference between Judith Miller and Jeff Goldberg is that one is a man and one is a woman.

Joe Klein describing the woman who repeated misinformation about Iraq’s Mythical WMD:

the Iraqi National Congress, provided all sorts of wondrous reports about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (some of which Judith Miller disseminated in the New York Times).

Joe Klein describing the man who repeated misinformation about Iraq’s Mythical WMD, AND still is dishing it out:

But Goldberg’s work is quite the opposite: rigorously reported, beautifully written and fiercely honest.

(Indeed, Jeff Goldberg’s unwillingness to be candid about lessons he learned along the way created the series of posts he wrote that Joe Klein refuses to discuss.)

Does this mean that Joe Klein is sexist or is this just a case of his friendship with a dishonest man coloring his view of reality?

Joe Klein seems to forget that Goldberg served as a camp guard in the IDF, abusing detainees, as well as producing racist and hate-filled fiction about Muslims for the neocon Atlantic. But then intellectual honesty has never appealed much to the author of Primary Colors.

Apparently the only thing Joe hates worse than when the Commentary crowd calls him a self-hating Jew is when Greenwald challenges whatever narrative the Village is using at the moment.

Should have sat this one out, Joe. You’ve only damaged yourself with this post.

Greenwald will probably come after me now, armed with the same three or four quotes he routinely uses as evidence of my moral and professional dishonesty and dissipation.

Just like you’ve gone after him for various comments (that you’ve distorted, like Greenwald’s Sudenten comparison, which was one of many intended to highlight the fact that, by itself, some native support for an invasion – prior or post-invasion – should not be used as a justification for invading another country).

Kinda sorta hypocritical, Joe.

in Greenwald’s case, it is “hits” he’s trying to collect

And you can be charged with the same, Joe, as you have inserted yourself into a debate where you had no place…other than having a feeling of petty spite towards Greenwald.

For Greenwald, it seems, any honest political disagreement always winds up with charges of corruption and decadence. I wonder why that is.

I wonder why as well.

If that’s true about Greenwald and not an exaggeration, is it because Greenwald is only wallowing in vicious opposition to the Establishment Media or, maybe, there’s some failing that is actually happening?

Greenwald eloquently, as usual, responded and linked to SZ and gunny’s comments.

As others have said, this is a total distortion of Greenwald’s post – indeed, an egregious and seemingly dishonest one. I hope Joe Klein doesn’t wait til his vacation is over before he apologizes for it.

The interesting thing here to me is what it says about Goldberg. Goldberg seems to have more friends than almost any one in Washington. If Greenwald comes at him he deflects to the Kurdish Prime Minister. If Greenwald comes again he has Joe Klein. (In between there’s Eli Lake.) The guy doesn’t seem to have any arguments or observations of his own. The idea that there’s a lot of rigor or honesty here is pretty hollow.

Jesus Joe. Every time you take on Glenn, you come off looking like a whiny, petulant idiot.

Here’s a hint. Don’t do that.

Reading Greenwald in the manner you do is ridiculous. To say that Greenwald only sees the U.S. as a source of moral evil in the world is pure cant. If he did, he wouldn’t be attached to the Constitution. But beyond the question of which America one wants to support, is the one you evade which is that Goldberg’s defense of the war in Iraq is just plain bizarre.

Glenn is correct; there will always be those with whom foreign invaders or occupiers will make alliances. Surprise. Just because the Kurds are no longer under Saddam Hussein doesn’t mean that Iraq wasn’t devastated by the invasion and occupation. Because there are Kurds who are liberated, that doesn’t mean the war wasn’t illegal, and it doesn’t mean that the US isn’t responsible for thousands of dead Iraqis. As Colin Powell once said, “you break it. you own it.” We broke Iraq; we did not liberate it.

Is it really to belong to the “uncivilized world” to acknowlege that.

Man, there are a lot of Glennbots here.

I really want to like Glenn Greenwald, and there’s much to admire – his posts are usually serious, well-written, and thoughtful. His thundering moralism leads him to hold no sacred cows, he calls out journalists when they need it, and – most importantly – he’s the head of the liberal opposition to President Obama’s lousy civil liberties record. As Tom Tomorrow’s recent comic inadvertently illustrated, many liberals who were repelled by Bush administration policies explain them away when they’re done by Obama. This is nothing but hypocrisy and partisanship, absconded from moral responsibility and any sense of principles.

But Greenwald has so many flaws and foibles that I find him often intolerable. The worst among them is his hysterical – and often baseless – accusations of evil and vile character attacks. He also repeatedly commits the worst of contemporary liberalism – a criticism of Obama’s domestic policies that is completely divorced from historical and political reality. There’s plenty for the left to take issue with on Obama’s war policies (though I’ve noticed that in all the calls to withdraw from Afghanistan they never mention what the implications for the unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan will be). But there’s really no place for anger and calls for a primary challenge in 2012 when it comes to the stimulus, health care, financial reform, etc – Obama got the most he possibly could out of a Congress with an irrational and unprincipled, fiercely anti-Democrat opposition, and has changed the country for the left more than any president since FDR – and it’s only been 16 months.

So, I think Greenwald is an important voice. But he’s often totally wrong, and could do with a good dose of humility. He should also take up Goldberg’s offer to go to Kurdistan.

I’m sorry, but I’m with Klein on this one. Just on an argumentative level, throwing out Nazi comparison’s is a hack’s trick. It never, ever, ever convinces anyone to change their mind, and it allows the person you’re debating to change the subject to “I can’t believe you just compared me to a Nazi!” Greenwald’s caveat shows that he realizes this, yet he was still unable to restrain himself and choose a better, less imflammatory comparison.

Obama got the most he possibly could out of a Congress with an irrational and unprincipled, fiercely anti-Democrat opposition, and has changed the country for the left more than any president since FDR – and it’s only been 16 months.

H*rsesh*t. LBJ’s domestic legislation was a damn sight more radical than anything Obama has put forward.

As for Greenwald, he’s absolutely right to call out Obama and the Democrats for failure to live up to their supposed principles. On Civil Liberties, Obama is no better than Bush, Guantanamo remains a stain on America’s conscience, and the great health care reform is a poorly organized and amazingly badly sold kludge.

except that the nazi argument was not inaccurate. If it is too inflammatory a topic … a scant 60 years later … to use in a discussion, I pity discourse.

Joe’s reply was pretty clearly intended to solely protect Goldberg – a friend, as he admitted. I doubt he actually read Glenzilla’s piece. Of course Klein is dependent on Washington DC’s largesse for his career, his social life, and his basic relevance in what qualifies as “fame” in this country. That he is protecting them when the cage is rattled is merely common sense from his perspective.

Actually, I doubt there are many “Glennbots” here at all. I think Joke Line has simply earned himself a broad swath of readers who are just here to watch the various trainwrecks he gets himself in. Back when the term “The Village” was first coined, it was Joe who truly helped me to understand what it meant. It takes a great deal of soul-selling, disingenuousness and outright falsehoods to so determinedly remain on the DC cocktail circuit; Joe’s entire career seems to be built on maintaining his invites to all the politicians’ bar-b-ques and water pistol fights. Thus, I rarely miss out on Joe’s pronouncements, because I want to know what the DC echo-chamber “conventional wisdom” is. It was only by reading Joe’s writings that I was able to tell my family, by March of 2002, that war with Iraq was absolutely certain. Joe had transparently telegraphed what his cocktail circuit friends had already digested. Really, I find Joe’s brand of bipartisan stenography really useful in that respect.

You are asserting these things as if they were facts:
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there’s really no place for anger and calls for a primary challenge in 2012 when it comes to the stimulus, health care, financial reform, etc – Obama got the most he possibly could out of a Congress with an irrational and unprincipled, fiercely anti-Democrat opposition, and has changed the country for the left more than any president since FDR – and it’s only been 16 months.
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We simply don’t agree that Obama got the most liberal legislation he could have out of Congress. Our rebuttal to this is that Obama got the most Third Way legislation he could out of Congress, because New Democrats –of which Obama is one– are committed to Third Way ideology, and not liberal policy.
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It’s not that he got the most liberal legislation he could, because it was never the Administration’s goal to get liberal legislation out of Congress at all. New Democrats are not in favor of left-wing policy, they think it’s antiquated and impractical. On that point, the Democratic leadership and the White House agree.
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We also disagree that Obama has “changed the country for the left.” Many liberals have reasoned that Obama while has changed the country despite the opposition of the revanchist right, he has changed the country for the center, not the left.
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It’s only if one doesn’t accept that there are genuine ideological and practical differences between the center and the left, and if one rejects that Obama represents the center and not the left that such reasoning makes any sense.
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To claim that the Administration has “has changed the country for the left more than any president since FDR” is basically to reiterate the claims of movement conservatism, albeit with a spin that appeals to movement liberals.
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Obama, to the degree that he could, has moved the country to the center, not “as far left” as was possible. He has done so deliberately, because –as he repeatedly states– he rejects both right and left principles and policy as a means to solve the nation’s problems. It’s not that Obama is a secret conservative with a right-wing agenda, it’s that he’s an open, avowed centrist with a center-wing agenda.
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It appears that you share the view of the popular right that any ideology that rejects movement conservatism must be “left” or “liberal,” which is probably the source of our disagreement.

“Greenwald–who, so far as I can tell, only regards the United States as a force for evil in the world”

Just because he was mean to your friend doesn’t give you license for this kind of McCarthyite nonsense. You should know better than this and should act like a responsible media figure and not Glenn Beck.

Sorry, was interrupted while posting, this should read:
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We also disagree that Obama has “changed the country for the left.” Many liberals have reasoned that Obama, while he has changed the country despite the opposition of the revanchist right, has changed the country for the center, not the left.

I dunno man. There is a lot Obama has done. And Glenzilla has always acknowledged that domestically there are some limitations. But I don’t see how you can defend Obama’s chase to codify Bush’s policies on spying and restricting habeas rights. Sure you can cite the FDR historical precedent – but does that mean that rounding up people with particular last names is OK because someone else did it? And with the amazing percentage of detainees (whose case has been heard) who have been found falsely imprisoned – what does this say about him? I can almost understand his view on the assasination thing – but it’s still weird he says it out loud.

Please go back to your vacation. What is it about the Germans or Nazis that seem to bring out the worse in people like you? Greenwald was merely showing the evidence that in countries that were targets of aggressive wars, there would be part of the population that supported the invaders. How as an established journalist that you managed to twist Greenwald’s piece into him comparing the Kurds with the “Nazis-loving” Sudeten Germans, I have no clue. Unless of course, this is your intention all along. Then instead of taking a vacation, you should consider retiring.

You are seriously embarrassing yourself here.

How as an established journalist that you managed to twist Greenwald’s piece into him comparing the…
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You just reminded me the “Back to Auschwitz” line Joe used when discussing Helen Thomas a while back…
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/06/07/thomas-retires/

According to Klein, it’s clear evidence of America-hatred to point out that Jefferey Goldberg uses the same irredentist defense of military conquest that the Third Reich used.
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Because Greenwald notes that Goldberg is besmirching American honor with a justification for invasion employed –amongst countless others — by Nazis, Greenwald must therefore believe that America is inherently evil.
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See how that works?
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Greenwald says Goldberg uses Nazi rationales for war, so Greenwald hates America.
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Jefferey Goldberg is America, in other words, according to Klein.

Sorry, that’s “Jeffrey Goldberg,” obviously.

Why is it an invalid opinion that the Sudetenland was comparable to Iraq? Keep in mind, back then, most countries trusted Nazi Germany and thought that Hitler was a fairly reasonable guy who was doing great things for his country. This was also before he actually started the holocaust – sure, the racism had started against the Jews, but he hadn’t started the concentration camps. Yes, he was insane (and had been for a good dozen years), and yes the invasion was part of a far grander scheme, but on its own, there are many valid comparisons. We can’t just toss comparisons out just because it is the biggest, baddest Empire of recent history. Yes, there are plenty of other comparisons that could be used but at the end of the day, the important thing to note is that history has a tendency to repeat itself over and over – and the line at the end, the line you so explicitly discard, brings the focus away from claiming that the US is a big bad Empire on the order of the Nazis but rather that and puts the focus squarely on the fact that history repeats itself. His point is that if it’s not justification for Hitler to invade the Sudetenland, it isn’t justification for the US to invade Iraq. How is that not a valid point?

The main thing to remember is that Goldberg is the one essentially using the Sudetenland justification –Greenwald is just pointing out the similarity in the two rationales for invasion.
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Greenwald isn’t making the comparison, Goldberg is by using that defense.

Sorry, that’s “Jeffrey Goldberg,” obviously.
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I thought you misspelled his name because you hate America.

intellectually dishonest jihads against the Minister Farrakhan and he has now truly gone berserk. I should say that Minister Farrakhan is a friend of mine, one with whom I sometimes disagree–although on the big stuff, like the Israel-Palestine dispute

I pretty much stopped reading Joe Klein’s response at this point, as anyone would have stopped reading as response such as that.

I agree with the others, Joe. You should have stayed on vacation.

Feel free to pity discourse, but everyone knows that bringing Nazi Germany into an argument absolutely poisons discourse. Greenwald has better, more relevant examples, and he knows the German comparison is gonna sidetrack the discussion (“anticipating that distortion,” in his words), yet he still can’t stop himself from using it. Very counter-productive argument by Greenwald.

The Iraq War “may or may not be” comparable to Nazi conquest, “but that’s irrelevant” to Greenwald’s point. Still, it would take little effort to quickly concede “IS NOT comparable” if that is what he thinks, though this would lead Greenwald into that gray world he prefers to live beyond.

http://sadredearth.com/greenwald-goldberg-i-the-thrilla-in-vanilla/

No, that would lead one into the black and white world of defending ones’ self from accusations of comparisons one didn’t ever make.
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No one need quickly concede an argument that they did not advance.
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Greenwald made a comparison between Jeff Goldberg’s rationales and the Third Reich’s rationales for war, not between the Iraq invasion and Sudetenland annexation.
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He could “concede” that Saddam Hussein committed genocide, too, and it would be just as irrelevant, since that wasn’t his argument, either.
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Grey has nothing to do with it.

It’s a shame that venerable Time magazine chooses to associate itself with someone as dishonest as Joe Klein. That association turns him from someone who’s merely specious and canted in his argumentation into someone who’s actually dangerous.

indeed it can poison discourse. But whose fault is that? And it is notable that the mode of argument it being cited as faulty and not the argument itself. It is instructive that Klein is being sided with despite not actually addressing any of the basic points.

And he could cite many other human atrocities besides the Nazis – but does that not shortchange those other atrocities? A lot of people were killed in the Pacific theater, in Africa, the Middle East … and those aren’t taboo either? The Nazi comparison was stark – and can smack someone upside the head … mission accomplished.

Joe, do you have it in you to get some counseling on this to try to get to grips with your unbalanced and semi-hysterical outbursts against Greenwald? It’s pretty clear that you are reacting strongly to internal stimuli, and it’s not pretty to see. I think you’d be much better off if you could discover why you are reacting so strongly—and getting practically everything wrong.

Take a deep breath, calm down, and see a good therapist soon.

Sure, it’s notable that I’m criticizing his mode of argument, cause I actually agree with the point he’s making. That’s why I’m annoyed that he created this distraction to the good point he was making by bringing Nazi Germany into the issue (especially since he recognized beforehand that it would be used as a distraction).

Remarkable. One wonders if Joe actually read Glenn’s post, or if he just went blind with rage (this has happened before http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-wait-i-know-this-one-answer-to-who.html) and literally wasn’t able to read all the OTHER comparisons Glenn cited of aggressor nations citing the freeing of oppressed minorities as justification for their policies. He didn’t even see the little throwaway Godwin joke that preceded Glenn citing other instance of invaders using minority populations as justification for aggression.
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Also interesting that Joe doesn’t produce the requisite journolist membership disclaimer when mentioning Weigel, nor his own little publishing of private email episode (see link above).
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The other remarkable thing is that Joe, once again, doesn’t seem to realize (as Jon Stewart pointed out last night wrt to the GOP and videotape) that what he and his colleagues write doesn’t go to the landfill after a few weeks anymore. And that people curious about what Joe is saying will go back and read both the argument he intends to summarize, and whatever interesting material is part of the history leading to the post.
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This is, of course, aimai’s central point about Joe’s behavior at a garden party–that Joe now completely assumes that things he (and Goldberg) said in the past don’t count, even though they are readily available for review without the need of resorting to your local library’s microfiche.

The fear that generates this kind of ridiculous response from Klein is so painfully obvious that it appears that the end of the road is near. Establishment media organs are being killed by the internet. Glenn Greenwald is very frightening for people like Joe. While much that is printed on the internet is not worth reading, Glenn’s articles are well researched and written. Glenn is the most violently attacked because he among the best of the internet writers. You know when an insider like Joe is so desperate that he attacks Glenn in a way that is so obviously refutable, he hasn’t gotten into the 21st century. Glenn will answer and refute Joe’s nonsense within minutes. The garbage Joe wrote will be saved forever. You want to know what is going on in the world, read Glenn and those like him. You want propaganda, read any newspaper or watch any cable news channel or read Joe Klein. Joe’s and Rupert’s time is coming to an end.

Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc. and a media mogul, wasn’t that honest, back in the day, either.

I learned a little about it in “Five Days in Philadelphia,” a surprisingly good book about the 1940 GOP convention, considering you already know who wins.

Luce decided Willkie should win and he pushed his media empire to get the result he wanted.

Not that I disagree with his choice. With hindsight it is pretty clear that we wanted Lend Lease and Wendell was working with FDR selling the plan to Congress and publicly backing it, all three other major Republicans were against getting involved.

Rumor has it he came up with the idea for the magazine as a Skull & Bonesman.

I thought you misspelled his name because you hate America.
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Even though I specifically stated

It should go without saying, but doesn’t: the point here is not that the attack on Iraq is comparable to these above-referenced invasions.

, so that it would be perfectly clear to even the most ideologically- or personally-disposed to creating false arguments out of thin air to rebut, you’re absolutely right:
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I really did misspell Goldberg’s name because I believe, deep down, that America is the Great Satan.
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There’s just no other reasonable way to interpret my remarks.

rose, I was amused.

That was really funny, Rose.
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I probably should have said “LOL,” because that’s exactly what I did upon reading your response.

Gosh, when did the Church of the Left anoint Glenn Greenwald? I mean, is he some kind of Saint? Does he alone have some kind super human grasp of the truth? For Pete’s sake, get a grip everyone.

That is the best part of all of this. The violent nature of the attacks on Joe are a barometer of the dishonesty of his position. Still trying to defend his own support of the Iraq invasion. Your position is at best saying that your totally ignorant of what has been written and perhaps suggesting we all go read an article about Brittany Spears and chill out. Maybe you ought to confine yourself to the entertainment section.

in all the calls to withdraw from Afghanistan they never mention what the implications for the unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan will be

Good to bring it up. But I think you make an incorrect assumption.

Why would withdrawal make Pakistan less stable? -our actions in Afghanistan are sending Taliban warlords into Pakistan, -the Pakistan and Afghanistan Taliban are allies, -collateral damage from drone attacks is making Pakistanis more aggressive toward the US (see bombing of FOB Chapman, claimed in response to drone attacks in Pakistan- 7 CIA dead; and attempted NYC car bombing.)

I’ve said before: the Afghanistan war makes Pakistan less stable which, in turn, makes her nuclear arms less secure.

Homeland Security is charged with keeping dangerous materials from entering this country, not the military.

Indeed. Joe coulda played the reporter in “The Green Zone.”

I’m sorry, this has to be a parody. Especially given the follow-up comment.

If not, then Joe should worry more about his defenders than his retractors.

Oh, and BTW, I love how Glenn makes you absolutely CRAZY. ROFLMAO

I’m confused. You say you agree with the point that Greenwald is making, and that the Nazi reference is just a “distraction.”
How does that lead you to say “I’m with Klein on this one”? Quoting Klein: “Glenn Greenwald has been conducting one of his patented vile, intellectually dishonest jihads against the Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg.” You agree with that? How is that consistent with your agreeing with Greenwald’s point but preferring he made it in a different way?

Weird.

I’d guess Joe has carted his oafish, inebriated rump back to the beach by now. Didn’t I read about a Great White Shark in New England the other day? Here’s hoping it smells journolistic lechery like chum in the water.
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I just saw Pixar’s Up and I think Joe’s simply yelling “squirrel!” Like a roomful of trained doggies, we run like mad. I can see that f@cker smirking on his sagging beach-chair. Thinking “those DFHs must be up in arms.” He’ll be compelled to check back in later. Perhaps he’s sporting American-flag swimtrunks?

I got a better idea. Why don’t YOU get a grip and actually read what Greenwald writes. When you can offer a well-thought, fact-based critique, then you should post again. Until then, STFU.

stuart and ivy, you two can pretend to be reasonable people who have a sense of humor, but I know who you really are: Glennbots.
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You probably spend your weekends watching soccer while calling it “football”, and talking in French about how much you love the bill of rights.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I’m with Joe on this point:

“No, it’s not irrelevant. If he’s going to compare the U.S. in Kurdistan with Nazi Germany in Sudetenland, Greenwald can’t just slink away by saying those actions “may or may not be comparable.” He can’t plead ignorance, can’t get away with a litigator’s trick.”

I agree that you can’t throw something like that into the conversation and then claim it doesn’t matter.

Sorry, but I can’t let this pass. I signed up for wordpress (and got the awesome screen name I wanted to honor Wesley Willis) just to add to the chorus of readers who don’t think you know what you are talking about. I hope you don’t know what you’ve done – again – because otherwise you are simply dishonest. How does our propaganda differ from the Nazis? I agree we are not the Nazis. So why do idiots like you and Goldblog insist on defending the United States with the same rhetoric of the Nazis? Answer one part of the substance of Greenwald’s (and apparently all your readers’) criticism of war-justification and I will consider that maybe you have a point to make other than that you don’t like Glenn Greenwald (who has his faults – primarily that he does have a prosecutorial tone instead of one intent on learning from others work). Just saying that comparing the rhetoric of the US and the Nazis is obscene is not an argument. Why are the situations indescribably different? Both were aggressive wars started without provocation and similarly justified by pointing to the ‘liberated’. Just because Hitler was the greatest douchebag of all time doesn’t make us incapable of repeating his mistakes. And just because Greenwald can be unforgiving (even unnecessarily so) and prosecutorial in his posts doesn’t mean Goldblog isn’t a hack who runs to idiots like you and Eli Lake when he puts his foot in his mouth over and over and over and over and over and over… and over again.

For a change, it’s nice to see a lot of new users here who haven’t navigated via the Beck or NRO channels. Unfortunately, for Joe Klein, this will merely reinforce his daft notion that DFHs = rightist loons.

Make no mistake, Joe Klein is accusing Glenn Greenwald of being an unpatriotic and anti-american writer. This is a direct attack on Glenn’s character and is tantamount to blacklisting him with the powers that view Joe as a “loyal American.”

This kind of political thuggery is something Americans thought they had left behind in the 1950s, but it is a measure of Joe Kleins ugly character that he resorts to it in defense of a fellow Iraq war supporter.

Joe Klein is a consistent backer of the American power elite and the wars they launch. To oppose them is to incur his wrath. He has spent decades building a strong franchise, and he is very worried that Internet journalism is going to knock him off his cozy perch.

If you want to know what Joe Klein’s future holds, just tally the number of responses in this comment thread supporting Glenn vs those supporting Joe. The era of the Joe Kleins is finished, and Joe knows it.

JK,
You need to get back on your meds. Seriously. GG is totally on point and you’re incoherent rambling is more indicative of a man requiring a longer laster vacation from work…thought retirement, lately???

Except Glenzilla did NOT compare the two cases. He dismissed comparing them – which is what Joe Klein all excited. Joe was the one doing the comparing – and I suspect that if Glen stayed away from the Nazi’s Klein would have slandered Glen in some other way. After all, it’s not like Klein actually read the piece. Unfortunate souls like you and me actually don’t have people to read on our behalf.

Joe Klein vs Glen Greenwald:

One guy has links to all commentary on his posts, good and bad (like the one that got me here). One guy copiously cites his sources, links that support (and some that don’t) his theses.

The other cites his friendship and how awesome individual x is.

And who is the one with credibility here??

Thank you Joe for making the world more stupid as a result of your ridiculous post. I think most people lost a few brain cells reading this one.

Joe Klein is the poster boy of Lara Loganism – defending the Village’s lack of serious journalism every time someone points it out. He’s part of the reason American mainstream media has become a joke, and people need to (cautiously) resort to blogs to get actual facts about what’s going on in the world. Regardless of what you think of Glenn Greenwald – he argues solely on facts and logic. This is probably too much for a pea brain like Joe’s to comprehend or argue with, so instead he resorts to typical name calling and smear strategies usually employed by the right wing media machine. “He’s not patriotic!” etc. Makes me want to puke.

I don’t understand why you think you’ve convinced us of anything. Look what you said:

“This is obscene.”

Okay, I’m listening. Why?

“Comparing the Kurds, who had been historically orphaned and then slaughtered with poison gas by Saddam Hussein, with Nazi-l0ving Sudeten Germans is outrageous.”

Not so fast. You’re going to have to explain to me why “comparing” things is bad, because as a student of history that isn’t obvious to me. We should be able to agree that “comparing things” is not the same act as “saying things are equivalent.” In fact, you are implicitly comparing the Kurds and the Sudetan Germans in the sentence yourself! What you are saying is that the Sudetan Germans and the Kurds are not at all alike. (Which you’re going to have to back up with evidence if you want to convince people, which is a step you skipped, but I’ll overlook that part.) But even if you did go to the trouble of doing this rather than waving your hands and saying that it’s true, that is, in fact, “comparing” them. Right?

“Comparing the United States to Nazi Germany is not merely disgraceful, but revelatory of a twisted, deluded soul.”

Can we agree that we don’t want to repeat the world’s terrible experience with Nazi Germany? I think so. Reasonable people can all agree that Nazi Germany was a terrible mark on the face of humanity, and that we don’t want to go through that again.

What’s the best way to avoid repeating a terrible moment in history? Is it (1) to never compare anything to that moment ever, and instead to regard the mere mention of that time period to be “revelatory of a twisted, deluded soul”? Or is it (2) to ACTIVELY engage in vigilant comparisons to identify and guard against even the hint of similarity?

I think most people would agree that (2) is more effective, but for some reason you are advocating that (1) is the better method. Well, you’re going to have to explain why you want Nazi Germany to be swept under the rug like that, rather than slinking away with what looks to me to be a litigator’s trick rather than an honest counterargument.

One additional comment – Joe hasn’t realized this yet, but on the internet it’s pretty easy to refer to facts, have detailed references backing up what you’re saying etc. I don’t think this concept has caught on with Joe, who thinks that he can get away with just posting his opinion with no basis on time.com. This is what Glenn does, and that’s why Joe’s post above can’t and won’t be taken seriously by most intelligent people. This isn’t a magazine or TV Joe – so you can’t just spew out garbage and expect people to believe it just because you’re Joe Klein with TIme Magazine.

LBJ was able to get through the liberal measures he did mainly because he was pushing his and Kennedy’s agenda after the assasination. Also, there were liberal and moderate Republicans still in the House and Senate. The times they have changed.

Alan Brinkley wrote an excellent biography of Luce. He did support Wilkie who was one of those Republicans who would be purged from the party now.
Luce was rather moderate until he came under the spell of Chaing Kai Shek and the Madame.

Jokeline writes,

“Comparing the Kurds, who had been historically orphaned and then slaughtered with poison gas by Saddam Hussein, with Nazi-loving Sudeten Germans is outrageous.”
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I agree completely, and the wonderful thing about Glenn’s article about the universality of war propaganda proferred by sham “journalists” a la Jokeline is that Greenwald’s article made no such comparison. The comment about Sudeten Germans was simply an historical anecdote that was used to make a broader point about the media furthering state war propaganda. Perhaps this simple argument is too difficult for cowardly, diminutive Jokeline, the author of the furtive, shameless book Primary Colors, to understand, or perhaps he hoped to demonstrate his masterful ability to construct straw men using kindergarten concision.
———-
Jokeline further writes,

“And now, Greenwald–who, so far as I can tell, only regards the United States as a force for evil in the world.”
———-
Could you tell us what empirically verifiable facts you’re using to make this assertion? “So far as I can tell”, Mr. Greenwald tenaciously defends Constitutional civil liberties multiple times every week at Salon.com, which amply demonstrates his fealty to the U.S. What specifically has Greenwald written that would lead you to “tell” that he “regards the U.S. as a force for evil”?

The difference in the depth and breadth of citations is shocking. Greenwald repeatedly justifies his assertions with empirically verifiable facts, the Jeffrey Goldbergs and Jokelines of the world seem to have absolutely zero respect for facts and logical argumentation.

Agree pma1. The sad thing is that this sorry state of U.S. journalism represented by people like Jokeline truly has an impact on the country’s progress. How can an uninformed public have true, real freedom that we as Americans value so much? The lack of genuine checks and balances in our society / government, that at least partly should be enforced by our media and journalists, is just tragic.

This spat between Greenwald and Klein is symbolic of a much bigger problem that is eating away at the core of our democracy. Greenwald is clearly on the right side of this fight.

Oop, sorry, I meant to say: Joe, you are being disingenuous for calling attention to Goldberg’s memoirs “Prisoners” and a relationship he had with a “Palestinian” prisoner when he was in the IDF. Are you inferring that Goldberg has more “insight” into the plight of oppressed peoples when you state: “This is the sort of work that Greenwald, locked in the sterile world of his ideology is completely incompetent to understand”?

Are you implying that only “certain” journalists can have deep understanding of the complexities of the situation in the Middle East? or are you just schlepping Jeff’s book?

“Greenwald–who, so far as I can tell, only regards the United States as a force for evil in the world”

He also spat on American GIs returning from Vietnam.

“You probably spend your weekends watching soccer while calling it ‘football’, and talking in French about how much you love the bill of rights.”
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Rose, your intelligence has always been manifest–adding such wit to the mix = wow!

In today’s US, devotion to civil liberties and the Constitution is the realm of unserious liberals, as is disdain for the wars. It makes no sense to me, but that’s what our press says.
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Oh well, overall I’m happy with this article/response- it makes me optimistic that blogs like GG’s will blow up the Village.

JK, this is embarassing (although it’s only fitting that it’d be that in defense of Jeff Goldberg). It’s paint by the numbers Faux News propaganda.

Ow Joe, you really embarrassed yourself here. I’m not just jumping on the pile here merely to mock you (although I’m doing that as well *points and laughs*), I’m posting to see if I can explain this in a way that might penetrate your wall of stupidity.

Let me try to explain this to you more simply. Greenwald was noting the UNIVERSALITY of a certain kind of war propraganda. That is:the UNIVERSALITY of war propagandists pointing to populations of invaded nations that welcome(d) the invasion as justification for war and that these populations that are UNIVERSALLY locatable. When one is arguing a UNIVERSAL, it is perfectly valid to point to ANY AND ALL examples as evidence. And the German Sudetenlanders are a member of that sadly large set (which you helped add to, I might note). Ergo, the German Sudetenlanders and all the other examples Greenwald cited in anticipation of your sort of weasel-dom count as evidence.

A valid objection to this point would be to find some examples where this is clearly not the case. What you did was pick one of Greenwald’s examples, out of his mulitple examples from a UNIVERSAL set, and falsely cry that Greenwald is equating the US with the Nazis. Now, I would be overjoyed if the United States did not go around invading other countries (and I don’t think that makes me an America-hater), but the fact is, Joe, that the US does, w/ your aid, sadly. So, that means that both Nazi Germany and the United States are both members of the UNIVERSAL set of countries that have invaded other countries. If you want that to change, than work towards making the United States a country that doesn’t invade other countries. Unfortunately, I see little evidence that you’re inc-Kleined in that direction.

“Oh well, overall I’m happy with this article/response- it makes me optimistic that blogs like GG’s will blow up the Village.”
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Would it were so Pint, though all the C-4 has been provided by our “Faux-4th Estate.” GG/the netroots merely contributed the triggering mechanism.
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I’d also like to feel optimistic. But the # of us defending GG (most directed via Salon/his triple shout-out to us resident kick-arse hippies) … are we really that many compared to those who’ll praise Joe to the skies the next time he hojos our generals or el presidente?

Greenwald: “The principle behind A is like the principle behind B”

Klein (and the other nitwit) ” Greenwald said A is B. Hahahahaha!”

A few years ago you jokers would have gotten away with this, but it isn’t a few years ago any more: media loci of control are dispersing, and you can no longer dominate discussions by getting a few of your Washington pals to keep repeating a big lie. What’s amazing is that you’re still too stupid to realize it, after all these years. You guys are destroying yourselves and what’s left of your credibility, slowly but surely, because you’re too stupid to do anything else. The real tragedy is that, in your self destruction, you’re dragging the country down with you because you refuse to address grownup problems in a grownup way. Now that i think on it, “refuse to,” gives you too much credit — you can’t.

Methinks Klein protests too much. Why such an extraordinary interest in the affair?

One might think that the man who got fired for lying about his authorship of Primary Colors might have different angle on this issue, or at least try to leave his high horse in the barn.

But instead he is out there immediately and swinging. Only then he suddenly goes seems to be trying to divert attention from the leaking and anonymous sourcing to calling Greenwald names.

Isn’t accusing someone of hating America just another form of Godwin’s law?

Now why on earth would Joe Klein want to change the subject so desperately that he comes back from holiday to engage in a bit of slander?

Oh and, looking at Ezra’s piece on Journolist, he states it was started after a conversation with Joe Klein. Would it be too much of a stretch to assume that Joe Klein was therefore a member? If so, wouldn’t it behove him to mention the fact when entering into this dispute?

This is obscene. Comparing the Kurds, who had been historically orphaned and then slaughtered with poison gas by Saddam Hussein, with Nazi-l0ving Sudeten Germans is outrageous.

=====================================

Hey Joe!

/hendrix

Could either you or prison guard Goldberg remind us of the country that supplied Saddam with the helicopters to carry out this terrible deed?

After that, explain how referencing our good friend Saddam’s poisoning of the Kurds is supposed to provide ideological support for America’s constant crusade against the non-Jewish brown people of the Middle East.

Thanks in advance!
~

This is the main reason I frequent this blog.With all due respect to others who blog and comment here from whom I have learned so much, the reactionary Stuart Z. expresses himself so clearly and convincingly that it is a pure pleasure to read and ponder.

Do Klein’s editors ever read these threads? Does it occur to them that their star columnist is routinely pelted with the equivalent of rotten fruit and vegetables in response to his blog posts?

Dozens of people have pointed out obviously stupid and erroneous arguments made by Klein in his gratuitous attack on GG, yet Bozo Klein continues to belch his establishment propaganda out of Swampland. After all, Klein is a patriotic American!

Klein, Friedman, Brooks and the other resident buffoons of Washington’s village of tame journalists have been consistently, demonstrably, and outrageously wrong on numerous matters of life and death, yet their status remains undiminished as “trusted” voices in the press.

This kind of gross dysfunction, the presistent distribution of fatuous sophistries in service to a corrupt regime, cannot last much longer. The whole rotten edifice of Government-friendly “professional” journalism is about to be dragged into the trash bin of history. Good riddance!

I know it doesn’t add a lot but I’d like to second this comment.

neddyseagoon wrote:

“I think Joke Line has simply earned himself a broad swath of readers who are just here to watch the various trainwrecks he gets himself in. …I rarely miss out on Joe’s pronouncements, because I want to know what the DC echo-chamber “conventional wisdom” is. It was only by reading Joe’s writings that I was able to tell my family, by March of 2002, that war with Iraq was absolutely certain. Joe had transparently telegraphed what his cocktail circuit friends had already digested. Really, I find Joe’s brand of bipartisan stenography really useful in that respect.”

Ouch! Great comment!

APR2563 everything you say is perfectly correct, and perfectly beside the point.

No, you get a grip.

Wow, that was a lucid comment! Thanks!
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Will Joe be able to integrate it or not? That is the question.
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Now if I could only manage to correctly spell “Jeffrey Goldberg” once whilst composing commentary in between solving complex technical problems for work, and gulping coffee, I might be credible as a writer some day.
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…more credible as a writer than as a reactionary, at least.

“cozy perch…” I registered for an account just to compliment you for that phraseology. Made my whole month.

what happened to the post-70 comments? a website glitch disappeared them? they must have registered as posting or how does the counter keep track? will I be able to see this post, presumably the 125th?

oh my, I’m only the 71st. does this mean there were only 70 comments and the counter is wrong?

In one of the many wonders of WordPress, the comments that are posted as Reply to are numbered decimally i.e., 71.1, 71.2, etc. rather than serially. However they are counted as individual comments in the total number posted at the top of the page. Hope that makes sense.

But, now and then there is a genuine glitch and some comments disappear although the numbering goes on.

That is the question, JC, that is the question.

Whoever the editor was that stuck [flak jacket] in to define Kevlar obviously has never even gone to basic training. Your Kevlar is not your ‘flak jacket’.

Ivy: yes, it does make sense and thank you for explaining the apparent discrepancy.

Ah yes, Klein, Goldberg. Why don’t CNN directly employ the Israeli FM? It would be at least more honest journalism, rather than the lies, propaganda and cheap demagoguery on display in this article.

As anyone who knows how to read can see, Grrenwald did no such thing, which is a pity, really because the US attack and invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, just as Hitler’s.

Klein is one of the new US fascist propagandists, trying to convince themselves that they are moral when the rest of the world can see the pure evil that really lies there.

What a disgusting show.

Good lord, Joe, get a grip — he’s making a useful analogy about the power of war propaganda by selecting an extreme example — one fairly recent, and Western in origin.

You should apologize and move on, rather than lamely blame a “litigator’s trick” — ie, a simple declarative sentence.

“War may well be the right decision at this point. In fact, I think it–it’s–it-it probably is.”

- Joe Klein, Feb. 2003

Mr. Klein, before you “slink” back to the beach, perhaps you could “take the time to study up on” the findings of Niels Harrit et al and explain to your readers why they do not merit the attentions of respectable journalists like yourself..

“But then, that would involve…reporting, wouldn’t it?”

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/payback/

Joe Klein, Greenwald’s premise was very easy to understand.

Even easier to understand is that your reaction to GG is based on pure emotion – you clearly hate Greenwald’s guts – rather than logic or reason.

I recall that some time in the recent past, you got pretty upset over some ugly things said about you by the Israel uber alles neoconservatives.

Not only are you climbing into bed with one of them now… you’re aping their tactics.

Are you suffering from Stockholm syndrome?

P.S. In the future, if you’d like to keep from looking like a fool… don’t even bother engaging with Greenwald.

On the road so missed out on the Mauling of Joe until now. I read GG and JG and Joe. Whatever possessed Joe, who is on vacation, to enter this fray in high dudgeon rendering his piece to be the silly twitterings of someone who allowed Village protection to overcome the need for sober reflection?

By all means engage with GG on the issues and be as fact based as possible. One would have thought that the recent drubbing received by JG at the hands of GG and others would encourage his defenders to be cautious.

Lately it seems that GG and Commentary trigger an explosive response from Joe. What lies at the root of this malady?

are we really that many compared to those who’ll praise Joe to the skies the next time he hojos our generals or el presidente?
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I hear you JC. Or are we that many compared to those who’ll accept and defend whatever higher-up-approved-tale is repeated (with anonymity and reverence) by ALL the other Village Idiots. You’d think someone like Joe, who is well-informed and diligent, would know better especially after he, admittedly, was played like a flute prior to the Iraq invasion– mostly by the same people he listens to (and grants immunity to) now.

someone who allowed Village protection to overcome the need for sober reflection
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Well said sevenoaks. It would apply to most mainstream purveyors of Media today.
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Per GG and Commentary, notice how Joe used roughly the same language and technique when responding to GG as Commentary-types use against his criticisms:
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intellectually dishonest jihads
berserk
locked in… ideology
regards the United States as… evil
__bot
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, plus a pretty clear distortion of his accuser’s argument.

Thanks, pint. I am in Ottawa, Canada – their national day – so everything is closed and the Queen is in town. So I will get a little bit of the old home country today.

I am puzzled by the various permutations of JK. How long did he spend actually reading and absorbing GG? There is something chameleon like about his various stances and responses.

I am not locked into any ideology and I support Greenwald. Mr. Klein, you are using a nasty debater’s trick, saying that people who agree with Greenwald on this issue are “bots” of his. I had a long distinguished career in law, and am well versed in history, including Middle East history and that of WWII. I can think for myself, and had enough persuasion power in my career to have had U.S. Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court agree with things I wrote.

You need to apologize to Mr. Greenwald’s supporters. Seriously, you do. A knee jerk response that someone is a bot is condemnation by class, and ant-intellectual in the extreme. And may I say that there is a great amount of erudition among the commenters on his blog.

Is it just me or would it appear to be intentional bait thrown out by Greenwald to see if someone like Klein would respond? If so, terrific for readership and further amplification of Joe Klein’s irrelevance. Joe was like a doggy on a porkchop with this one.

Greenwald’s next post contained this (link):
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We don’t need a state-run media because our media outlets volunteer for the task

Hmmmm – I’ll take “not” for $800, Alex.

Precisely. Joe still thinks he’s on Meet the Press or some Sunday roundtable or the print version of Time, where he has learned that you can spew whatever completely unsubstantiated horsecr@p you want, and by the time anyone figures out that you don’t know what the heck you’re babbling about, two news cycles have passed and it doesn’t matter anymore.

The times they are a-changin’, Joe, and readers expect you to do more than spill out a paragraph of uninformed personal invective masquerading as a useful impartation of knowledge.

Blogs – there’s an accountability factor that you’ve never had to deal with before. Better get used to it, or you’re going down with the ship.

“Do Klein’s editors ever read these threads?”

I’ve wondered that as well. Joe can’t be good for the Time brand.

Par for the course for Joe. It’s merely an extension of the fact that he lacks the capacity to engage an argument on the merits, and so has to resort to personal invective.

Perhaps, from now on, every time Joe tries to make a point on his blog, the first commenter should say “but, you’re ugly!”

and then hopefully quoted this:

“From the early 1930′s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002-2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.”

In my view, precisely the sort of media prostitution engaged in by Villagers like Joe. Pass the saugignon blanc please, Mimi.

“intellectually dishonest jihads”
Hmmm… “Intellectually dishonest” is not something I would associate with Greenwald, but then I actually read what he writes and go to the links and sources he cites. And I love the word “jihad” when used by Villagers… used as a throwaway line but more of a dogwhistle to your buddies in the club. F.U.

Joe Klein: You’re better off not picking fights with people who are much, much smarter than you are. Stick to accumulating gossip, transcribing government press releases, and trying to pretend that you opposed the Iraq invasion.

Aside from the sheer comedy value of watching the man who lied repeatedly about authoring Primary Colors vouching for the integrity of a former prison guard at Ketziot, one of Israel’s more infamous torture chambers, I can’t help but laugh at Joe Klein’s acute case of the vapors for other reasons.

Jeffrey Goldberg tried to rationalize the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis by mentioning that some Iraqis greeted the invaders as liberators -something almost every invading army has been treated to in all of recorded history, including the Nazis, who made sure everyone saw the newsreel footage of those European crowds waving and throwing flowers at the German troops. In short, Goldberg used the same argument Goebbels did:

“See? We’re the good guys! Look at all these locals who came to greet us as heroes!”

There is usually a direct correlation between how much a person or institution clutches the pearls and gets its panties in a bunch over being compared to (or contrasted with, or likened to) the Nazis, and how much they in fact resemble the minions of the Third Reich in their actions, ideas and overall mentality.

Gore Vidal noted this as well by pointing out that just as the Nazis claimed the Czechs and Poles were an imminent threat to the Germans, the Bush regime claimed that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. (at the 5:18 mark)

In other words, if the jackboot fits, wear it.

Klein’s tantrum is an example of the cretinous thinking pervasive in establishment circles of which he is irretrievably embedded. When confronted with thinkers who question their dogma of extreme violence being always and everywhere right and unavoidable when the US/Israel National Security State are the ones doling it out they have fits and hurl the dreaded epithet “ideologue.”

GG’s point that there are always those citizens of a country being invaded who for various reasons might welcome invaders is not an exercise in moral equivalency between the Nazis and US policy in Iraq and this should be plain to any literate person of average intelligence. Klein’s blind subservience to his pal’s moronic and dangerous musings on the noble nature of our slaughters is, I’m sure, beyond a cure or correction but I’ll toss out another Nazi analogy just to raise his blood pressure further: there were good things that came out of WWII one of which had a positive impact on millions of people namely the termination of 500 years of European colonialism. Should we be thankful Hitler invaded Poland?

Sorry Joe. Hope I’m not ruining your vacation any further. BTW, how many hundreds of thousands of (non-Kurd) Iraqis will never feel the sun on their faces as you are at the moment on your lovely vacation Greenwald dares to almost ruin with his principled dismantling of your smug half-wit friend? How many thousands are dead as a result of our savage attack on a defenseless country which was so clearly right and just in your demented world view?
You are a shameful, sad and idiotic man.

no more updates, Joe? I’m anxiously awaiting your reply. GG regularly engages his comments section, esp those that dissent, and I would expect no less from a very serious, established journalist like yourself. Oh, right…the facts aren’t debatable. I’m trying not to laugh but this whole situation is sad in that it shows the cowardice of traditional media to speak truth to power (as GG regularly does). Because of your deference, you expect bloggers like GG to do the same. HILARIOUS!

Are There Still People Out There Who Take Joe Klein Seriously?

I’m being genuine in asking the question.

Does anyone out there find his opinion worthy of consideration?

I assumed that people consulted his work only to acquaint themselves with the power establishment’s propaganda efforts at any particular moment.

Your intellectual dishonesty stands head and shoulders above the rest. No, I don’t see the need to describe, chapter and verse or enumerate your lies and deceptions; others here have already done it. Besides that, unlike you, I am not being paid to write informed and insightful posts here. Sadly, you aren’t even performing that basic function.

Having been shown to be a fraud over and over, your rage at Greenwald and anyone else who points out your pathological dishonesty gets the better of you every time. Even as you desperately flail around, trying to strike out at your intellectual betters, you only end up wounding your self more and more.

You are truly sad.

I assumed that people consulted his work only to acquaint themselves with the power establishment’s propaganda efforts at any particular moment.

Speaking just for myself, I only come here once in a while to laugh at him when one of these dust-ups happen. I don’t think I could stand a regular diet.

The NYT ran a series not long ago called “The anosognosic’s dilemma: something’s wrong, but you’ll never know what it is”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/?scp=6&sq=lemon%20juice&st=cse

Perhaps there is some application to Mr. Klein’s case. The vast majority of the comments here seem to indicate that something is very wrong, both with the post under discussion, and with Mr. Klein’s work in general. Is he at all capable of recognizing it?

To quote a section:
“If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.”

Substitute “Klein” for “Wheeler”, “columnist” for “bank robber”, and there you go.

Joe,

Please stop it. I, like many others who spent vast amounts of money on a journalism degree only to learn that ethics and morals have changed under the new corporate media paradigm, am so sick of you and the Jeff Goldbergs of this world.

There was once a time when professional ethics mattered and pure ideologues of your type would have been forced into the margins. Times have changed, and the corporate powers allow little information to trickle out, in any sort of timely manner, to make any real difference – which is either why you were hired in the first place, or you so chose to comply. I applaud you for making a lucrative living in this system. But do NOT pretend to be a journalist. You are not.

To distort the point that Greenwald makes – that any aggressive invasion will have supporters among a particular segment of the invaded populace – is true. You know it. To gush over a propagandist like Goldberg is pitiful, but perfectly in line with what you are. What America is doing currently IS a war crime under International law, and only the most anti-truth ideologues and propagandists can see it, but I doubt you have ever read them.

“I assumed that people consulted his work only to acquaint themselves with the power establishment’s propaganda efforts at any particular moment.”
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hmm, I think you figured us out.

Actually, its more likely that its a CNN corporate-directed focus group, testing the opinions of people. I bet they are trying to find out if they should make an offer to Glenn, fire Klein, neither or both, or whatever number shows up in support of whatever.

Does Joe Klein and the others who have caused so much suffering and death with diseminations of ignorance, ever wonder, or care, how they will be remembered when they’re gone? In most high profile professions that consideration guides one’s actions. We have an entire news media culture dedicated to propagating government and corporate interests in pursuit of wealth for the few at the destruction of many. How can this man think he has earned a vacation when his work has been so flawed and wrong (easily proven so)? The answer is simple: it is what he is paid handsomely to do.

I think, at this point, that the comments section is unanimously pro-Greenwald and after 160, that’s really saying something. One hopes Klein can stick around from his drive-by long enough to learn something.

The sad thing is, when Klein restricts himself to writing about Republican idiocy, he’s actually pretty good. He’s just got this horrific blind spot about Greenwald–who’s right a hell of a lot more often than he’s wrong–his fellow journalists, and the horrific legacy the pro-war journalists (him included) have. He needs to own up to his errors and their consequences the way Andrew Sullivan & John Cole have. Until then, he’s always going to be blindly lashing out.

It be nice if Time let us vote you off the island, Mr. Klein. Off the island and out of a job. Have no doubt that your readers would do so. We don’t have much tolerance right now for cheerleaders to those in power and protectors of the dishonest.