Editor & Publisher absolutely DESTROYS WaPo's Richard Cohen

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003410810

Richard Cohen on Iraq: A 'Sorry' Case

The Washington Post columnist -- who once declared that the U.S. had "no choice" but to invade Iraq, partly for "therapeutic" reasons -- now admits things have gone wrong, and says that soldiers have a right to feel "duped" because of the "exaggerations" that led to war. But, please, don't blame him.

By Greg Mitchell

(November 21, 2006) -- For Richard Cohen, the longtime Washington Post columnist sometimes accused of being a "liberal," being fatally wrong on the Iraq war means never having to say you're sorry.

Today he took the occasion of President Bush's visit to Vietnam to offer his thoughts on the parallels between America's two most disastrous foreign adventures. In doing so, he admits -- as John Kerry might have put it -- that he was for them before he was against them. But here's the twist: He argues that in each case he was right to push for war (even if they turned out badly) -- so don't look for any apology.

This from the man who, on Feb. 6, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell's deeply-flawed testimony in New York, famously wrote: "The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise."

Now consider his statement from today's column on why he backed the Iraq invasion: "In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic." Ponder that statement as you consider the tens of thousands of lives lost, on all sides, since then.

But the new column is one appalling rationalization after another.

(snip)

It gets worse. Referring to his willing "volunteers," Cohen writes: "If they thought they were going to rid the region of weapons of mass destruction and sever the link between al-Qaeda and Hussein, they now are entitled to feel duped by Bush, Vice President Cheney and others." I love that "others." Who could those unnamed others be? Certain influential pundits who once declared that there was "no choice" but to invade Iraq?

He goes on to say the "exaggerations" that led to war were "particularly repellent. To fool someone into sacrificing his life to battle a chimera is a hideous abuse of the public trust."

Exactly.

...more...

It makes me very happy to see this, given my stated opinion on the man:

An Open Letter to Richard Cohen
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 09 May 2006

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050906R.shtml

[Journeyman]

1. Maybe we can all get in on that therapeutic use of violence. . .

Richard Cohen willing, of course.

[mom cat]

4. Killing 650,000 Iraqis is "theraputic"?

:puke:

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I read his column this morning and noticed there was rationalizations

for his 'pro-war' stance, but no apologies to those of us that he belittled early into this invasion.

[greenman3610]

3. disgusted with Cohen

disgusted that he's been a guest on
Al Franken with Al sucking up to him.

Cohen is exemplary of everything wrong with the media.

[bluerum]

5. Now that the hypnotic high of nationalistic group think is wearing off

many of these media shills are "apologizing". Their chants are morphing into something like "right war, badly executed", or "bad intelligence".

Prudent use of violence? Therapeutic? What world class fools.

on edit punctuation.

[gratuitous]

6. Nobody here but us fools and Frenchmen, M. Cohen

Sorry excuse for saying "sorry." But now that all the blood, mayhem, gore, and chaos that we knew was going to come to pass has happened, Richard Cohen finally admits that, yeah, maybe invading Iraq wasn't the greatest idea ever thought up.

For those of us who spent months warning the cognoscenti that this was going to happen, that it was as unavoidable as the sickening thump when someone jumps down onto the subway tracks, we get no consideration for being right, no acknowledgement that the colossal fuck-up was coming our way. Not that I and millions of others were relishing the empty triumph of "I told you so," when so much money would be squandered and so many lives would be wasted; but it would be nice if Mr. Cohen had the integrity to recognize that a lot of people he insulted were right when he was so very wrong.

But that's not something today's bulldogs of the Fourth Estate are taught anymore. Perhaps a fitting punishment would be for Mr. Cohen to follow a hundred casualties from the knock on the door of the next of kin to the arrival of the casket at Dover to the funeral and its aftermath.

[Peace Patriot]

7. I think there needs to be ritual burnings of the Washington Post...

...to remove the stench. I wish somebody had thought to keep 2002-2003 copies of this craprag and a few others, for this purpose, in some big future demo, where we purge our country of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies and the vile smell they are their puppetmasters have created in our capitol city.

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. Maybe Richard Cohen

should experience a dose of his own therapy.

[AliceWonderland]

9. "In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic."

I am generally polite, but fuck this bozo.

Ugh.

[irislake]

10. How did the U.S. MSM

get it so wrong when so many others --- including most countries in the rest of the world got it right? I never for a moment believed there were WMDs and I'm just an interested surfer. And if I had believed that there were I would still have been against attacking Iraq. It was laughable to think Iraq was a danger to America even if it had had the bomb.
I won't comment on the "therapeutic" bit other than to say that it puts him on a par with Barbara Bush. And now his beautiful mind weeps for the dead? Awww.
I am sick and bloody tired of pundits and politicians affecting great disdain and scorn for those crass and ignorant souls who thought oil and corporate plunder might have been a motive for invading Iraq (other than the merely therapeutic benefits). Well silly me. What were the maps in Cheney's office all about? Ask Judicial Watch. It sure DID have plenty to do with energy. Don't these men who get paid to be pundits have access to the same information that is available to us all? How can they be so astoundingly naive? He deserves those angry emails --- every one and more. So it wasn't for the oil and stuff? Does he still sincerely think it was for the noble goal of giving democracy to the Iraqi people? And he thinks WE are deluded?
And what in the hell did Iraq have to do with Bin Laden?

[pretzel4gore]

16. the stole the 2k election, 911 helped cover it up...iraq distracted from 911

they've been buying time since nov7/00, and the american people pay the bill

[Dr Fate]

11. Cohen endorsed Bush as "the less divisive candidate" in 2000. That is all you need to know. n/t

n/t

[irislake]

12. Oh and one more thing

Didn't he get around to reading The Programme for A New American Century? It was about dominance not democracy. No noble goal at all just a programme to maintain dominance by military force. Michael Ledeen of the AEI said this: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small, crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
Well that's "therapy" for you. People who think like that need to be locked up in a padded cell. No wonder America has lost all it's friends. How many Americans have read PNAC? You can bet folks in the rest of the world are familiar with it's aims. America's MEIN KAMPH. (sp?)

[irislake]

17. Sorry about that

"The Neocon's MEIN KAMPF". Most Americans would be horrified by PNAC. If they knew about it.

[williesgirl]

13. Cohen is a dick - everyone at WP hates him. His ego won't fit in many mansions.

And, he is ANYTHING but liberal.

[Casablanca]

14. Yes, don't blame him. He's got a paycheck to defend.

Think of how his political mojo/credibility/readership would be affected if he reversed himself.

Cohen cashed in the long-term politically expedient move (to condemn an immoral and tactically stupid invasion of a nation that didn't attack us) with a short-term politically expedient move (to support "our" tyrants and "our" superior position in the world, while getting payoffs from doing both), and now he's trying to pretend it never happened. It's all par for the course in the realpolitik game, and too damn bad for him.

[EVDebs]

15. A fate worse than death; loss of credibility. Bush, now Cohen...

Boychick needs to ask for our forgiveness and maybe, just maybe, he'll get it. Beating the drum for this war and now look...pathetic.

[Oilwellian]

18. Hello Will

How far we have fallen since we met at the first DU gathering in D.C. to protest against this war, 5 months before it all began. We ALL knew a sectarian war would occur if our military toppled Saddam's regime. How dare this so-called journalist feign ignorance now when there were millions of us from around the world who protested months before it started. I doubt we would find anything this asshole has written, that would explain the possible pitfalls of an invasion.

I knew the war was lost when it was reported Saddam's conventional weapons sites, monitored by the IAEA, were raided by Iraqis and 320 TONS of plastic explosives were taken. That really had to be an "oh shit" moment for our military leaders and it's interesting there's not a word said today about the ramifications of tons of explosives in the hands of the insurgency and who knows what other blackmarket buyer wanting in on the action. We will see the use of these explosives for the rest of our lives, and I won't be surprised if some of it makes its way here.

[LynnTheDem]

19. So is cohen a "fool"... or a "Frenchman"?

We already know he's a MFing idiot.