Deja Vu: The Vast Right Wing "After-Echo"

As I was trying to wake up this morning, Central Oregon's local radio station was broadcasting right-wing extremist Paul Harvey's latest "news segment." Harvey had this to say:

Some of the president's critics are conceding that the [Iraq] War is going better, reflecting changes in attitude on the ground. * * * An opinion piece in the New York Times today says: "We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms," and it was written by two Bush critics from the Brookings Institute -- Michael O'Hanlon and Kevin Pollack.

Now, I knew that O'Hanlon and Pollack had an op/ed piece published a week and a half ago in the New York Times about how great things were in Iraq, but according to Paul Harvey, there was one in this morning's Times as well.

Harvey was wrong, of course -- there is no new piece in the New York Times by these so-called "Bush critics." This is just recycled news that the Extreme Right is re-hashing in order to make it look like there continues to be changes of heart with some war critics.

And by the way, calling O'Hanlon and Pollack "war critics" would be akin to calling John McCain a "war critic." Sure, these guys have been critical of how BushCo has handled the Iraq War, but even staunch war enthusiasts like John McCain and Joe Lieberman have done that.

The truth is that O'Hanlon and Pollack have long been war cheerleaders, both with regard to the invasion itself and The Surge. In fact, the Internets have been buzzing for the last week-and-a-half about how these characters really are not war critics; but in case you missed all that, you can read about it here and here. Glenn Greenwald's excellent expose of these faux war critics can be found here.

But the Corporate Media have done little if anything to get out the truth on O'Hanlon and Pollack's actual status as war supporters, and that means that Bush apologists like Paul Harvey can keep recycling O'Hanlon and Pollack's bullshit and make it sound like something brand new and completely legit.

Is this a great country or what?