Weirded Out By All the Attacks on Glenn Greenwald [View all]

[daredtowork]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by cbayer (a host of the General Discussion forum).

Let me start out by saying I don't feel educated on the topic enough yet to give any sort of opinion about Khorasan. This post isn't about who is right or wrong regarding U.S. involvement in the Middle East. All I'd like to remark on is how all the fraught focus on Glenn Greenwald strikes me.

Greenwald has been working on pieces critical of the government, and he's been using sources unsanctioned for release. He's not a "tame reporter" - he's outside the system. The Obama administration itself positioned him that way by the way they bungled the Snowden situation. I confess I'm a huge admirer of how Greenwald helped Snowden. Any other leaker/whistleblower would have been destroyed by misinformation, propaganda, and all the manipulative tactics the government used to try to regain control of the situation. Yes, authorities in power do lie and deceive and try to make other people look bad to get what they want. The Obama administration didn't limit its maneuvers to Snowden, it attempted to bully Greenwald's family as well.

But beyond the government fully demonstrating what their own malfunction was while they attempted to suppress Snowden, the documents themselves contained materials that were valid basis for reporting. And that's how Greenwald makes his living now. The Intercept is his employer, and Greenwald is doing his job when he writes his articles. Again, if the U.S. government didn't want him to be doing that, they should take note of how they themselves shaped his opportunities.

So now we get to this Khorasan thing. It's news. Greenwald is reporting it. If it's true, others would report it, too. If the GOP twists this news for their own ends - so what? All news is twisted for GOP ends. The only reasons this an "alliance" with Greenwald is Greenwald happened to be a reporter who reported something.

Democrats who worship the ground Obama walks on should recognize that various parts of the government are capable of screwing up all the time and have to be open to criticism. Look at the Secret Service today, for example!

What all these hand-wringing anti-Greenwald screeds have this vague vibe of a COINTELPRO operation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

There is so much emphasis on discrediting Greenwald, that I have to wonder whether I'm being prepped to disbelieve him. Are all these posts from old DU Democrats who genuinely think Greenwald must be stopped for the greater democratic good, or do we have some moles sewing propaganda here?