Righwing Pimps "Syrian Chalabi" To Smear Pelosi

Glenn Greenwald is in fine form today, helping his colleague Gary Kamiya expose the depth of denial that the corporate media has about acting as stenographers for Bush's various narratives for war against the "axis of evil".

But there may be some shills so radioactive even the MSM won't touch them.

Clifford May at NRO today:

Farid Ghadry, head of the Reform Party of Syria (a liberal democratic political party in exile) is writing that Nancy Pelosi's visit with the dictator Assad has damaged the dissident movement in Syria. But the elite media appear to be uninterested in that aspect of the story.

Nor are they intrigued by Farid's charge that Assad "has built four different bases in Syria that we know of to train terrorists to send them to Iraq."

And the stalwarts at Pajamas Media soon picked up the hint:

“Five years of investment by the US State Department and the Bush administration in organizations and people who have committed their lives to helping their oppressed countries is being flushed away by the Democrats in Congress who, with the visit of Pelosi to Syria, have shown that they favor the stability of dictatorships to freedom even if they had a direct hand in killing American troops in Iraq.” (Reform Party of Syria, via Cliff May @ NRO)

It looks too good to be true - the head of a "liberal democratic" Syrian opposition party in exile denouncing Pelosi for enabling terrorism. Why wouldn't the MSM love it?

Maybe because it is too good to be true, as a quick read at Ghadry's SourceWatch file will reveal. It's too long to go into detail but I can hit the high points. Shared an office with Jack Abramoff. Member of AIPAC and the Committee on the Present danger. Speaker at JINSA. Met Chalabi in Richard Perle's living room. Friend of Elizabeth Cheney who is currently the administration's appointee for Near East affairs at the State Department. And as one Syrian observer wrote "Unknown in Syria, hated by Syria's liberals, won't work with anyone but himself, hasn't seen Syria since he was in short pants, loved by the State Department - does the name Ahmed Chalabi come to mind?" In other words, the guy's a neocon stooge quite possibly incited to his op-ed by Cheney's daughter.

Nor is the man the only problem. The message - entirely made up of GOP talking points - is just as bogus.

Some lessons, it seems, can even be learned even by mainstream journalists, if not by the rightwing noise machine.