Silence of the New York Times lambs

The grey old lady of America's press, the stately New York Times blows hot and cold on issues. It is famously known for its reporters who spread Herr Bush's lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Saddam Hussein's tie in with Osama bin Ladin; its publisher Salzburger junior met with Herr Bush and agreed to hold off on printing a torture story till after the 2004 elections. On the other hand, it has done some good public service in reporting the US use of torture. And yesterday, it sat on its hands. It hasn't published an article on the Connors committe investing the use of torture by Herr Bush's minions. Dragged reluctantly before the committee were Dick Addington a Cheney staff member and the lawyer now professor at UCLA John Yoo who wrote opinions circumventing the Geneva conventions. The force of a subpoena brought smug and haughty Addington to testify. Slippery, greasy, oily, he tried to wiggle out of questions, but his pride proved too much for him, for he did allow that people like him and Yoo sat on a torture committe figuring out ways to make suspected non combattant Islamists squirm under techniques which would make Spanish Inquistors proud. Yoo who writes with panache and swaggers with arrogance couldn't have been more mealy mouthed. He tries to delay answers, confuse Congressmen and women's questions, a performance at odds with his public pronouncement; he full well know that he was under oath so anything he said which proved a lie is subject to criminal investigation. So the two people among others who brought the black blot of shame of the US, did not look good when the light of public scrutiny shone on them. Which brings us to the complacent US press who may think that they already know what the Connor's Committe will reveal. Wrong! The US press is a mere shadow of the guts and brass it showed during Watergate. It's a tamed and defanged tiger at present. Little wonder and despite the news on line, its readership is continuing to decline...readers have a surfeit of glitz and glamour and of the lives of the rich and mighty, which is not speaking to the hard economic times that they are living. How long will the lambs be silent before they're truly slaughtered?