@newtboy
i agree in theory,but disagree in practice.
as i stated in my comment:discernment.

it appears we approach news and journalism differently.

i do not consume the institution,but rather the individual reporter.which is why i will watch a report by shepard smith from FOX,but ignore anything by tucker carlson or bill o'reilly.

the HUGE mistake you make about hedges,is just that,an assumption.

chris hedges mistake.
is the same mistake that other media personalities have made,such as cenk uynger when he was on MSNBC.

hedges criticized power.
in fact,in the run up to the iraq war hedges was pushing out story after story that was highly critical of the bush administration,and..ironically..was using the very intelligence reports that you mentioned.he was challenged by the new york times editorial board to either cease and desist,or face disciplinary action.

he chose to retain his integrity,and honor his father (great story right there,he always chokes up when telling it) and walked away from a successful career,full of adulation and respect,rather than bow at the foot of the kings throne and kiss the feet of the powerful.

the man has guts,in spades,and i admire him very much.

but if you think my opnion is biased,then let us take phil donahue who was hosting the most popular show on the newly founded MSNBC.

he too,was critical of the bush administration and had guests on that were countering the avalanche of white house narratives flooding the cable news networks.

he was fired,while simultaneously hosting the most popular and highest rated shows on MSNBC.

what i am saying,is exactly what hedges is saying:
criticize power and you will be branded,blacklisted and shunned from the "mainstream media".you will be relegated to the fringe for your defiance to power.

/chuckles..i find it interesting that pretty much everybody uses the term "mainstream media" to epitomize:lazy journalism,propaganda,fake news and yet the media THEY choose to consume..well...thats not mainstream at all.the media THEY choose to consume is top notch journalism.

i am not saying my choices are right,but i do choose them carefully.i do not subscribe to institutions but rather individuals who have proven the test of proper journalistic integrity:chris hedges,matt taibbi,bill moyers,henry giroux,laura poitrus,jeremy scahill,amy goodman,paul jay

you may notice that every one of these people are critical of power,and that..my friend..is the basic premise of the fourth estate.

the washington post,along with the new york times and wall street journal have become rags.just my opinion,feel free to disagree.

@asynchronice @Engels
this is opinion that just happens to be on RT.
the opinion is coming from chris hedges,a pulitzer prize winning,war correspondent for 20 years for the NYT.who has been extremely vocal in his criticism of american neoliberal policies.

he also has a show on RT called "on contact".

as always,the answer is discernment,and for that to happen there has to be a basic understanding of what propaganda actually is,and to dismiss hedges analysis simply due to the venue,is intellectually dishonest.

example:
it has been known for years that FOX news is a meme machine,a message of the day producer of misinformation and obfuscation.

does this mean that every story FOX covers is false? or manipulated?

of course not.

conversely,does this mean that every story RT posts should be taken at face value?

again,the same calculus applies.

i find that when RT deals with the russian state,and stories regarding putin,they tend to lean towards state "message of the day",but when they cover stories that are critical of american foreign policy,they tend to source and back their conclusions in a solid journalistic manner.

in regards to the washington post and their latest appeals to power and influence,is just a symptom of a much larger problem.

if you recall back in 2003.when the bush administration was pushing for an invasion of iraq,the washington posts editorial board was possibly the biggest cheerleader.they outshine even the new york times in their desire to please their masters in the white house and pentagon,and because at that time print news still had credibility and washpo was,indeed,considered a beacon of stellar journalism (remember watergate?).they almost single handedly handed the war powers to president bush to execute an illegal war,based on lies.

so in my opinion,the washington post last it's credibility over a decade ago.this is also a main,driving factor why i abandoned corporate news media.

i prefer independent news outlets.the very same outlets that washpo,and their un-sourced propornot,targeted.

lie to me once...shame on you.
lie to me twice..shame on me.

so let me get this straight.

neil cavuto,a pandering,whoremongering demagogue who represents all that is diseased and corrupt from FOX news.is glibly and childishly deriding CNN for now being in the very boat that FOX was for years.

that somehow the criticism and sly accusations of FOX being biased and slanted were not warranted.that the REAL focus should be on the reactions of the executive branch,and not on the content of cable news.

when we consider that even as late as 2010,33% of FOX viewers STILL thought that iraq had connections to al qeada,and that they were hiding WMD's.this alone is enough to condemn FOX as a rapacious propaganda machine.

i am not letting CNN off the hook.who have also been caught fabricating conflict based on questionable sources to formulate political crisis when there was none.

but that is not even something cavuto is addressing.he is literally beaming with a smug condescension in this piece,self-righteously admonishing an entire network as if those networks are not populated by individuals.

as if they of one mind.
one message.
and the message is:"poor CNN is no longer the favorite and now has to sit in the back of the bus like we did for 8 years".

do you know what this is?
and i am POSITIVE cavuto is totally unaware of this comparison.

this is the new house negro ridiculing the OLD house negro.
who were lovingly called "house niggers" *dedicated to @gorillaman*and "uncle tom's" back in the day.

so house negro neil cavuto is just gushing with pride that his new master prefers his network to that old rust bucket CNN.

the new pimp in chief likes his cable news to bow and prostrate itself upon his moist loins,and no other network can whore itself quite like FOX news.

so good for you mr neil cavuto!
you are the presidents new,favorite whore.
so pucker up you precious little slut,trump has something for you,and say goodbye to your last vestige of moral integrity.

now go be a good house negro and go make a trump a sandwich.

this is too delicious not to *promote

They actually used this during the iraq war to coat buildings in certain locations. Bet it's still being used for all sorts of military uses. Look forward when they can make it clear.

You're kidding, right?
Do I have to make a list? On every continent white people visited (if you can call showing up and not really leaving a visit) we fucked up the lives of a good portion of the people living there.
Sure, mankind has always been cruel, in every corner of the earth. However, white people are to murder, theft and slavery what Coca Cola is to refreshing diabeeetus (yes, that's how it's spelled). A fucking international enterprise whose traces can be found everywhere. On every fucking continent.
I hope we can agree on that. Otherwise, here's a short list: Gippsland Massacres, Nagasaki, Opium Wars, My Lai Massacre, fucking Iraq, Crusades, Apartheid, Herero and Namaqua genocide, that whole Columbus mess, Trail Of Tears and transatlantic slave trade (because why the fuck not?). Oh, my bad, I forgot the freaking Holocaust and starting 2 World Wars.
Who does this? Who? White people, that's who. Europeans and their descendants.
Would you like to argue that level of evil is genetic? I won't.
It's cultural. We europeans (and later our emigrated offspring) always thought we're better than everybody else, we had god on our side (and the Pope agreed!). Probably a leftover from the Roman Empire. And that's why everywhere we go, we steal, murder or occupy the shit out of every place. No other collection of ethnic groups has so much blood on their hands and it's not because we're worse DNA constructs than the others. All humans are capable of evil, it just takes a certain way of thinking to go that far.
Thankfully, we wrecked our own continent so badly during WW2, that we finally started to improve our ways. But here's the problem: we just started. We're far from being done.
Orban, LePen, Farage, Putin, Petry and last but not least Trump.

Assuming he wasn't just pulling that ten billion dollar gamble number out of his ass then that would be a bargain. The United States has spent upwards of 4 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ten bil is chump change compared to that.

"Really, Hillary is evil?"

Well, Bill, I suppose it depends on your definition of evil, doesn't it.

To me, voting for both the invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act (twice!) is an absolute disqualifier. Like it used to be in '08 when HRC ran against Obama. Remember that one, Bill?

Now, looking at it from a country that had its leaders punished for waging a war of aggression, and rightfully so, Hillary meets my definition of evil. Her push for war in Libya, her immoral comments on the ghastly death of Gaddafi, her militaristic calls for a more robust foreign policy (aka war), her calls for a no-fly zone in Syria (aka war with Syria & Russia)... Bill, that shit is evil. And it's only the lesser of two evils because her opposition is Trump.

So spare me the horseshit. I don't even have to judge her economic policies which basically are the same flavour of neoliberalism as always, her hawkishness is enough evil for several lifetimes.

I'm basically done with defending WikiLeaks as well, after the shit they pulled with the leaks of Turkish data. Completely irresponsible, that one.

However, WikiLeaks doesn't need credibility -- the data does. And the data they published vis-á-vis Clinton/Podesta/DNC is, as of now, solid. There was one fake document, but that was shown to have been injected by someone other than WL.

"Strong bias" -- oh, I do have a strong bias. Plural, as in biases, actually. For instance, I'm disinclined to take anything the US intelligence agencies say at face value, given how they manufactured more than one casus belli. I don't put much weight into (un-)official statements in general, but especially since all the misinformation they spread about issues like the coup in Honduras or the actions of Nazi militias in Ukraine.

In this particular case, however, my argument is much simpler: Occam's razor seems much more likely than malicious intent. Propaganda outlets on both sides are run by people. Maybe the propaganda outlet Sputnik intentionally twisted the content of email, or maybe they just fucked up, like people are wont to do. Maybe someone intentionally fed Trump this bad info, maybe his people are just as incompetent as he is.

There are too many parts in this that include people who have more than once proven themselves to be utterly incompetent, or in complete ignorance of even the concept of truth. I don't think Trump gives a shit about truth or facts, he strikes me as the typical blowhard who spouts whatever shit comes to mind, and spins stories on the fly like a 4-year-old when caught red-handing.

No need for a conspiracy there, with all this incompetence, naiveté and plain disregard for facts.

So when they keep on pushing the Russian angle in this, it just seems like a desperate attempt to conjure up the old unifying enemy. Why worry about Russian propaganda when there's plenty on FOX and MSNBC/CNN? Why worry about Russian hackers when you accept the unbelievably insecure method of eletronic votes, partly without paper trails, and completely controlled by private companies?

It's just very strange to an outsider like me to see them focus on perceived external influences when the internals are a complete clusterfuck. And this presidential election is the biggest clusterfuck I've seen in 30 years, which doesn't mean much, admittedly.

That said, we can't just be looking at it from the outside with binoculars, not when people are back to full-blown Cold War rhetoric. When the ruling class in the US and/or the ruling class in Russia start their pissing contests and other forms of grandstanding, it's usually brown people who pay the price, like they have been in Syria for the last couple of years. And Libya. And Yemen. And Somalia. And Afghanistan, And Iraq. And Pakistan.

Personally, all the rhetoric about "standing up to Russian aggression" and similar nonsense makes me keenly aware that the bridge just outside my hometown was constructed with a shaft to place explosives in, to slow down advancing Soviet troops... so yes, I would very much like to bitch-slap all these warmongerers on both sides, but particularly the ones in the US since they are currently the ones racking up the highest death toll.

Edit: I should have made it clearer. Yes, WL is absolutely biased against Clinton and they do seem to act in support of Trump. Assange in particular. Which bums me out to no end, since I actually met the guy in person when they presented WL at the 26C3.

The notion that guns and mercenaries from the west are flooding in is simply untrue. You have the curious responsibility of explaining how the US has been incapable of removing Assad if it has provided such overwhelming support as you claim. What is true, is that Assad overreacted to the Arab Spring protests, unlike say Jordan decided to fire on protests almost immediately and brought a civil war on his hands.

Meanwhile, we also know the origin of the trajectory of the Sarin rockets fired were from areas of government control. We know Assad had a chemical weapons program. We know the volume of the attacks was almost certainly unattainable by anyone other than a state actor. We know that most of the victims were either civilians or the opposition. It's also a curious that these attacks only seemed to occur in Syria.

Again your idea that oil is still a motivation for US involvement in the Middle East is an outdated concept. The US surpassed Saudi Arabia as the largest global producer in the world thank to shale oil. The price of oil has crashed as a result and will likely remain low for a prolonged time as a result. The only beneficiary who stands to gains from revisiting the conflict between the US and Russia is Putin because it boosts his domestic popularity to be locked in a struggle with the US.

Many governments in the Middle East regularly throw out the excuse that anything that goes wrong (and is usually their fault) is a result of a US conspiracy. Egypt has regularly done it, Turkey has just recently blamed the attempted coup on the US even though the incentives for the US are clearly for a stable government there to provide a base from which to attack ISIS in Iraq. You should not be so gullible as to believe this is always the case just because the US has intervened covertly in the past.

They're not both terrible to the same degree, though.

Your country's right-wing media have had it out for the Clintons for over 20 years now. Ever since one of them became President.

And all they've been able to come up with is some controversy about the Benghazi embassy bombing. There were many 'Benghazi's' during Bush's tenure. And the problem with the e-mail servers. And again, the Cheney-Bush presidency sucessfully deleted over 30,000 e-mails pertaining to their conspiracy to send America to war in Iraq. Why doesn't the news cover that? Because their deletion of e-mails was wholly successful.

So despite all of that fear, uncertainty, and doubt being spread by the right-wing media in the past 20 years the Clinton Foundation has done incredible humanitarian work throughout the world. Apparently it's possible that Melinda Gates and a sultan of Brunei may have been able to speak to Hillary because of their sizable donations, but it's also possible that those people are already of necessary stature to speak to Hillary.

So, that's 3 things over 20 years that stuck. Hillary has fought her entire life to be where she is, even having to endure heckling by men when she was writing her Harvard Law acceptance test. To say that she's in the same basket as Trump is, at best, intellectually dishonest. You're just parroting your media's narrative.

If you think Hillary is bad then you must believe Trump to be truly deplorable. Then why would you equate the two?

You do realise it was Russia and China who were against causing the clusterfuck in Syria in the first place? At least in Iraq we bothered to come up with an excuse to go to war, even if there turned out to be no WMD. In Syria we didn't even bother to do that, we just said Assad is a bad person and sent in mercenaries and lots of guns and called them rebels and freedom fighters and watched the whole place blow up. Assad is such a bad person? Compared to the Saudi's? The Russians are the only ones who have stopped the place become an ISIS state by now.

Except the Iraq war wasn't started by Hillary or Obama: https://www.britannica.com/event/Iraq-War the war was started by a republican president who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Moreover, he was FOR the war when we first invaded, in spite of what he says now. http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/18/trump-accidentally-admits-lying-opposing-iraq-war.html

The greedy elite he's referring to are people like himself.

And he does little more than spew *lies. The guy is dishonest, plain and simple.

I understand and agree that asking anyone to fact-check in real-time is a tall order. Sure, we might expect it of properly prepared professionals, but even then knowing every possible relevant citation is nigh impossible.

But if you're a major news network running a debate, with a horde of staff at your disposal, I would love to see a debate that at least calls out the bullshit in near-real-time.

"We're going to fact check that within the next 5 minutes, are you sure that's your answer?"
(5 minutes later)
"It turns out your statements on your attitude toward the Iraq war were rather inaccurate according to these specific citations: ..."

Securing a suicide bomber, Iraq has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo on that post.

Gary Breecher, better know as The War Nerd, "Saddam Died Beautiful: A Special Eulogy":

"Blaming Saddam for being what he was is like blaming a rattlesnake for killing. That's how it lives, and it's what that Crocodile Hunter guy would've called "a bee-YOO-tiful ambush predator." Saddam was right for Iraq the way a Sidewinder is right for the Mojave. The NeoCons scared us by shaking his fangs in our faces, as if Saddam planned to bite every single commuter in LA, when all he wanted to do was stay alive and in power -- because those were the same thing for him -- in the Iraqi desert, where everything stings, sticks or bites. We may as well have gone on a crusade to wipe out all the snakes and spiders in the desert for being what they are. Only difference is, we wouldn't have lost 3000 soldiers that way."

---

Saddam was a rat-fuck bastard of the lowest order, but the world ISN'T a better place now that he's gone. In fact, for the amount of chaos his removal has sown, he might as well have been named Franz Ferdinand