Only AFTER the Iraq War became an unpopular clusterfuck did Greenwald begin to back away from Bush

[scarletwoman]

101. Funny, really, you're using a carefully limited excerpt from his book titled,

"How Would A Patriot Act?: Defending American Values from a President Run Amok" (my bold)

So, the guy starts out as an apolitical lawyer who doesn't vote, who wants to believe that his country's leaders are generally honest and have the best interests of the country in mind. This is his unforgivable sin?

How about another excerpt from the same Preface:

What first began to shake my faith in the administration was its conduct in the case of Jose Padilla (my bold), a U.S. citizen arrested in May 2002 on U.S. soil and then publicly labeled "the dirty bomber." The administration claimed it could hold him indefinitely without charging him with any crime and while denying him access to counsel.

I never imagined that such a thing could happen in modern America— that a president would claim the right to order American citizens imprisoned with no charges and without the right to a trial. In China, the former Soviet Union, Iran, and countless other countries, the government can literally abduct its citizens and imprison them without a trial. But that cannot happen in the United States—at least it never could before. If it means anything to be an American citizen, it means that we cannot be locked away by our government unless we are charged with a crime, given due process in court, and then convicted by a jury of our peers.

I realize that your mind is made up, but I urge anyone else who is reading this thread to go to this link and read the entire preface. It eloquently describes his journey from trust to outrage.

In response to the many controversies and scandals concerning its misconduct, the Bush administration has invariably dismissed them, focusing instead on deliberately spreading an all-consuming, highly exploitative fear of terrorists. No matter what the accusation, the administration trots out its favorite tool: manipulative fear-mongering. Public appearances by senior Bush officials over the last four years have rarely missed the opportunity for a calculated and cynical invocation of mushroom clouds, homicidal dictators, and a never-ending parade of new and destructive weapons. The language of fear is the Bush administration's lingo.

Upon drawing these conclusions, I developed, for the first time in my life, a sense of urgency about the need to take a stand for our country and its defining principles. I believe that the concentrated and unlimited power now claimed by President Bush constitutes a true crisis for the United States—that it has the potential to fundamentally change our national character, to irreversibly restrict our individual liberties and to radically alter our core principles. It is not hyperbole to observe that we are moving away from the founding principles of our constitutional republic towards theories of powers that the founders identified as the hallmarks of tyranny.

You and your fellow cohort of Greenwald haters have no more integrity than the republicans frothing over Benghazi.