[cross posted at NPR Check]

Last Saturday Scott Sermon made this claim about the US war in Afghanistan:

"There is honest debate now about whether the United States should commit more troops to Afghanistan, or withdraw them."

I'm not sure where Simon was hearing "an honest debate" - definitely not on NPR. A case in point was this Friday's ATC which featured a report from Don Gonyea on Obama's coming decision about troop levels in Afghanistan. Following the Thursday feature on Iran (see earlier post) where NPR opted for a thoroughly discredited former UN inspector over one whom history has vindicated - NPR turns to the same playbook, aiming as low as possible in seeking an "expert" to weigh in on whether President Obama will, as Robert Siegel says, "approve a huge troop buildup there."

Most of the piece features über-Neocon Eliot Cohen attacking the possibility that Obama might not follow the advice of General McChrystal to send 40,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan. The most unbelievable statement from Cohen was the following:

"If people come away from this thinking, well, the reason why he cut down the request from 40,000 to 25,000 is to make this more palatable for Nancy Pelosi, he has just created another set of problems for himself. And what's worse, he's created problems for our soldiers in the field."

Gonyea doesn't question or challenge this slur from a man who, in an homage to aggression, wrote in the WSJ in November of 2001, "the U.S. should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism. Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda...." In April of 2002, Cohen also signed on to this kind of rubbish that contributed to the death of over 1,000,000 Iraqis and 4000 US soldiers:

Furthermore, Mr. President, we urge you to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As you have said, every day that Saddam Hussein remains in power brings closer the day when terrorists will have not just airplanes with which to attack us, but chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, as well. It is now common knowledge that Saddam, along with Iran, is a funder and supporter of terrorism against Israel. Iraq has harbored terrorists...and it maintains links to the Al Qaeda network.

It is truly mind-blowing how NPR and the corporate media operates. No matter how dishonest, inaccurate, corrupt and servile history has proven certain characters to be - there is not only no accountability for previous behavior, but these figures are featured again and again as objective and disinterested experts. All Gonyea felt necessary to tell us about Cohen was this innocuous introduction: "Eliot Cohen is a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington." How charming...