I think we have the winner in the "If a Republican or conservative had said it" media bias category this year, if not this decade.
In the book "Double Down" by liberal journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (reviewed by Peter Hamby at the Washington Post on Friday), President Barack Obama, while discussing drone strikes in 2012, reportedly told aides that he's "really good at killing people." This would have been headline news three seconds after Hamby's review, and Hamby would have headlined it himself instead of casually mentioning it in Paragraph 11. A Google News search on an obvious search string ("really good at Killing people" obama; sorted by date) at 6:45 p.m. returns only 11 items, none of which are establishment press outlets. Michael Kelley at Business Insider, which did not show up among the search items returned, had some interesting thoughts on Obama's alleged remark Saturday evening (bolds are mine throughout this post; Update: important links relating to CIA practices which can only be considered barbaric are in the original):
Last Year President Obama Reportedly Told His Aides That He's 'Really Good At Killing People'
... The reported claim by the commander-in-chief is as indisputable as it is grim.
Obama oversaw the 2009 surge in Afghanistan, 145 Predator drone strikes in NATO’s 2011 Libya operations, the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and drone strikes that killed the Pakistani Taliban leader and a senior member of the Somali-based militant group al-Shabab this week.
His administration also expanded the drone war: There have been 326 drone strikes in Pakistan, 93 in Yemen, and several in Somalia under Obama, compared to a total of 52 under George Bush.
... Under Obama U.S. drone operators began practicing “signature strikes,” a tactic in which targets are chosen based on patterns of suspicious behavior and the identities of those to be killed aren't necessarily known. (The administration counts all “military-age males” in a strike zone as combatants.)
Furthermore, the disturbing trend of the “double tap” — bombing the same place in quick succession and often hitting first responders — has become common practice.
... a lot of innocent people have been killed along with combatants.
... although President Obama has proven to be “really good at killing people,” the demonstration has not necessarily been noble.
Though there's apparently no direct endorsement of or opposition to drone strikes in Obama's 2008 campaign history, his current use of military tactics — and certainly his just-reported attitude — run completely against the peacemaker the image he portrayed in that year's presidential race:
... on the whole, the Obama administration has sought to scrap traditional domestic war powers, instead adopting a law-enforcement approach to dealing with America’s enemies. From promising to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facilities to threatening to prosecute Bush administration lawyers to seeking a civilian trial for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to granting terrorists Miranda protections, the Obama administration has largely rejected the Bush administration’s war on terror in favor of a law-enforcement paradigm.
Yet overseas, President Obama has expanded the CIA’s drone program, making it the centerpiece of his administration’s counterterrorism policy. The program is generally effective and, even with its costs, an important element of U.S. efforts against Islamic terrorism. But the CIA’s drone program runs counter to nearly every argument that President Obama has made against his predecessor’s anti-terrorism policies. President Obama and his allies claim that Bush-era policies like waterboarding and Gitmo undermined our security, were illegal, and were immoral — but the same criticisms can and have been leveled against Obama’s expanded drone program. In implementing his vision to “restor[e] the adherence to rule of law,” President Obama has, judged by his own standards, compensated abroad — strategically, legally, and morally.
How many hundreds of times was George W. Bush accused by far-left protest groups, the establishment press, and even Democratic Party officeholders of being a warmonger who delighted in inflicting casualties on the enemy?
Here's just one, from NewsBusters posts (here and here) in 2007 (bolds are mine):
The Republicans are worried that we can`t pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding 200 billion dollars to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war?
You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement.
[...]
But the President Bush's statements about children's health shouldn't be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress.
Stark had to be virtually forced by his party's leadership to render an apology for what he said — and he did so tearfully. In my opinion, those tears came from being forced to do what every fiber in his being told him not to.
At the time, Keith Olbermann at already far-left MSNBC called Stark's four-day refusal to apologize "refreshing." MSNBC's Craig Crawford tried to downplay Stark's outburst by referring to it as the actions of a "court jester." MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked, "Who should apologize, Rep. Stark or Pres. Bush?"
Now we have a U.S. President reportedly priding himself at how he's "really good at killing people."
Is this really only going to generate crickets on the left, no meaningful mention in the establishment press, and utter silence from the Democratic Party?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
