Looks Like a Bloodbath To Me

Melissa Block talked to Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) yesterday on ATC. I think Melissa thinks she's George Bush because she kept repeating his arguments (which is pretty scary if you think about it).

The delusional thinking begins right at the get-go: "You could look at the preliminary report on Iraq, mandated by Congress and released today by the White House and say, ‘Progress has been made. The proverbial glass is half full.’ You could also say, ‘No the glass is half empty. Things aren’t getting better.'" Block is right, you can certainly say these things if you are uninformed or dishonest, but if you are a journalist your job is to show how not only is the glass empty, it's on the floor in about a hundred pieces and there's not even any frigging water to boot.

Next Block takes advantage of NPR's shameful history of minimizing the civilian slaughter in Iraq by a factor of ten. Considering that about a million civilians have been slaughtered in the Iraq War since 2003, what is one to make of these comments by Block?

• "President Bush today warned of the risk of mass killings in Iraq on a horrific scale. If that were to come to pass, what would you do then? Would you send troops back in then?"
• "But you’re talking about just thousands of US troops left by next April, what would happen if there were a bloodbath?"

Guess what Melissa? Over two million refugees, two million internally displaced, and one million dead out of 26 million people counts as a bloodbath. The glass may be empty, but the tub is full.