It's not censorship if we do it

Guest post by Capt. Fogg

If the truth offend thee, damn the media

-- The Gospel according to the GOP

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According to The New York Times, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized shrinking Russian press freedoms in Moscow today.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee asked the Pentagon to remove CNN reporters embedded with U.S. combat troops. CNN, it seems, showed real footage of the war, not fake footage, full of glory and cavalry charges, but the real thing where a real American soldier gets killed for no reason.

That's propaganda for the "enemy," says Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), in a letter to Rumsfeld also signed by Republican congressmen Darrell Issa and Brian Bilbray: "CNN has now served as the publicist for an enemy propaganda film featuring the killing of an American soldier."

"This is nothing short of a terrorist snuff film," Bilbray said.

I suppose the same could be said about the years of repetitive photos and film clips of the World Trade Center collapse or those films of Pearl Harbor that play every December 7th, but this protest by the Republican goon squad won't affect anyone but other Republicans desperate to keep you from dwelling on the horror they have created and maintained in Iraq, even if they have to censor the news.

It's getting very hard to refrain from using language that rubs up against the riot act, but at this point these Republicans represent everything that a free society needs to reject in the name of liberty. The kindest thing that I can wish for without breaking the law is that these gentlemen will immediately enlist and when sent to the streets of Baghdad meet with the same fate as the subject of the film they are trying to hide. It would be only fitting that their grisly and gruesome demises be hidden from view as well, heroes and patriots that they are.