Your Daily Dose of the SCLM

Via Eric Alterman:

The editors of the Wall Street Journal appear to have reached a new nadir in the morality—or lack thereof—of media criticism. In light of reports of the United States military torturing innocent Iraqis at Abu Ghraib and innocents of all stripes in Guantanamo, they are upset not about the torture—there’s nary a word about that—but at the International Red Cross because reporters found out about it. Red Cross operations are supposed to be confidential, and no large bureaucracy has ever been known to leak before and so that makes the Red Cross particularly evil. But here is what might be called the beauty part: The Journal editors accuse the ICRC of having “thrown confidentiality aside to attack the U.S., of all countries.” Too bad, for their “logic” that, as they admit, “The original leaker in this case may have been in the U.S. government. Officials at ICRC headquarters were only too happy to confirm the document's authenticity.” What about that inconvenient little fact? The editors say, “It matters little.”

Got that? The U.S. government does the torturing. The U.S. government does the leaking. And the Journal blames the Red Cross for its “double-cross.” Perhaps one of these Journal editors might wish to spend their holiday vacation at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, to see just what a dastardly organization the Red Cross really is; and just how beneficent is the Bush administration, and the topsy-turvy morality it has spawned.