You start thinking that reporting in the mainstream has grown old and lost its teeth, has followed the population and completely abandoned anything hinting at effort or thought, simply regurgitating what its masters feed it.

Then you read some of the questions asked of former Secretaries of State William Cohen and Madeline Albright, co-chairs of the Genocide Prevention Task Force (apparently without irony). To wit:

• How do you reconcile your work in trying to build a moral American consensus against genocide when just very recently each of you signed letters urging America not to recognize the Armenian genocide? [Answer: there are American troops in a position that requires help from Turkey.]
• If we are saying that this isn’t the right time to acknowledge this [Armenian] genocide, does that mean that you are arguing that for political expedience purposes, we are not going to be taking action on nor should we take action on future genocides because of what are perceived to be U.S. interests? [Answer: yes, but we don’t want to say it that way.]
• It sounds as if you are both saying — if our friends do it, it is not genocide… And if our enemies do it, it is genocide. A professor at the University of Haifa, Ilan Pappe, has written recently that he believes there is genocide ongoing in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. But you folks wouldn’t agree with that because Israel is our friend and we couldn’t say that about Israel. Secretary Cohen, you say — we can’t say that about Turkey and the Armenian genocide because our boys and girls are in harm’s way. If you are going to define genocide by who does it, not by what it is, your task force is in trouble. [Answer: we’re looking to the future, not the past. “You can have all kinds of emotional arguments why something is wrong and then you never get it off the ground” — Albright.]

I recommend the article, it’s short and pithy. Where were these reporters when we needed honesty about Iraq? Otherwise assigned, no doubt, for obvious reasons.

My opinion: William Cohen’s not a bad guy for a Republican. But the difference between Madeline Albright and Henry Kissinger was only opportunity.