Glenn Greenwald Praises Russia Today Anchor Who Spoke Out Against Invasion Of Ukraine

[frazzled]

25. An odd question ...

from someone who, demonstrably, and by his own admission, supported the run-up to the war and defended its early execution ... despite the fact that many of us were able to muster opposition to both the Iraq War Resolution, the UN negotiations, and the steps that led up to Shock and Awe.

We weren't getting our information from nowhere. There was Knight-Ridder's excellent reporting from Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, there was the Baltimore Sun's publication of Scott Ridder's arms inspection insights. And these were indeed brought up by certain hosts on MSNBC, which in addition had on "guests" such as Michael Moore or Tim Robbins or Janeane Garolfalo to spread the word. And then there were the well-publicized remarks by the UN inspector Hans Blix just before the war, which contradicted the Bush administrations claims about the existence of WMDs.

There was enough reporting and information out there that hundreds of thousands of us participated in anti-war marches before the bombs dropped. There was enough for a young state senator from Illinois named Barack Obama to give a speech to a large crowd proclaiming that while he wasn't against all wars, he was against "stupid wars," and who went on to enumerate the reasons why the invasion of Iraq was unjustified.

What's different between Iraq and Ukraine is that there were months of discussion that preceded the IWR, and months after that in which we could voice our opinions about initiating military action. For better or worse, it was debated in the UN: it was controversial well before it happened. Russia responded with immediate action and no warning after Yanukovych fled. So the media reporting is very different here: in this case, we are still trying to figure out what the facts are and to react to a sudden and ongoing situation.

So if what GG is trying to say is that he was duped by the general bad reporting of the US media (in comparison to one minor reporter on RT making one statement here, which nobody much will know about), he wasn't reading very much or watching very far. We knew: a huge number of us knew.