Disingenuous: Yet Another Practical Instance

President Bush's spokesman said Thursday "we're very concerned" about reports that the U.S. military is paying Iraqi newspapers and journalists to plant favorable stories about the war and the rebuilding effort.

"We are seeking more information from the Pentagon," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

What a ridiculous line to take at this point. The white house is going to look into it, just like all the other scandals they initiated? That should resolve all ethics questions surrounding the issue of suborning the media. This is the same white house which paid American journalists to promote their elitist projects, and apparently feels laws and ethics do not operate outside our borders. So long as the neocon's handlers and special interests are slaked any depredation, from jay walking to killing a hundred thousand non-combatants is justified. Like I said, the white house will surely resolve ethics questions. The white house now has a well established adversarial relationship with ethics, and we can expect to see more of the same.

Can't you just see Cheney trying to push exceptions for perjury and corruption for GOP administrations? After all they are crucial and effective tools for conservative social reform (an oxymoron if ever there was one), which should not be overlooked just because the peons they are ruling can't use them without lengthy prison terms.

Why the Hell are they saying still saying such patently ridiculous things to the press? There can't be a person in this country with an IQ of two or more digits who believes the white house is going to look into it with any more effort or focus than is needed to try to sweep it under the rug with everything else, or that the white house had nothing to do with it in the first place.

There are still enough bubbas who will say with pride, "George is doin somethin aybout it, cuz he has intaygerty and fordaytude!" Then elbowing their buddies, "Nudge, nudge, wink wink, nod, nod. Say no more! Say no more! Cough, cough, hack hack, sputter sputter. Gimme my tall fucking Bud! Glug glug, puke, puke. Love that dubya! Love that dubya!"

So our leaders are still playing the monster truck crowd, figuring we'll resonate to the lowest uncommon denominator. Kind of forgot about the rest of America, and the rest of the world.

Remember when the Shah of Iran was deposed? His US trained (and equipped?) secret police and similar dirty dealings were not the reason the fundamentalists were able to grab power. People were uncomfortable with the responsibilities which went along with the personal freedoms. It wasn't the shah's dirty tricks which made them uncomfortable, after all the same depredations had been going on for hundreds of years. It was the responsibilities of the slowly growing liberties which they reacted against.

I had trouble accepting this analysis, and had read basically the same thing many times. Then I saw our own population which should embrace liberty, rebel against freedom. And we have had great degrees of freedom for over two hundred years. The obvious rebellion against liberty involves the conservative initiatives which revoke freedom for other people in the name of wholesome tradition and family values, be they poor, gay, female, of color, non-christian, and all others they feel undeserving. Subtler and perhaps more insidious is the wholesale forfeiture of freedom.

The scary terrorists, whom we keep training and creating to drive future hysterics of fear, are nothing when compared to the previous nuclear threat of the Soviet Union, or the fight against the axis in the world war. We are enthusiastically falling over ourselve to surrender freedom to make us feel temporarily safer. The price of liberty, eternal vigilance", requires too much work and courage for the modern american to deal with. We are disintegrating as a democracy, showing the world a phenomenal level of mass cowardice and it's companion trait viciousness, which should be utterly antithetical to true Americans.