CNN host Michael Smerconish (Huffington Post, 11/23/15) brought onto his November 21 show former CIA officer Michael Scheuer, who said that if the US is going to go after ISIS, it should
take out every piece of infrastructure—hospitals, universities, irrigation systems—that make it impossible [sic] for the Islamic State to raise money, to provide electricity, sanitation, potable water. Do exactly what we did to the Germans.
Asked by the CNN host whether the US public would tolerate the “so-called innocent civilian death count,” Scheuer replied:
They should. What’s the difference? They’re not Americans.
Scheuer’s proudly sociopathic views should come as no surprise. In December 2013, he called for the assassination of President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, approvingly citing 17th century political theorist Algernon Sidney’s assertion that
by an established law among the most virtuous nations, every man might kill a tyrant; and no names are recorded in history with more honor, than of those who did it.
Of course, Scheuer’s enthusiasm for murdering world leaders didn’t keep him from being a guest on Lou Dobbs’ Fox News show the very next month (FAIR Blog, 1/7/14).
As far back as 2009, Scheuer (News Corpse, 7/1/09; FAIR Blog, 7/2/09) was hoping for a weapon of mass destruction to be used against the US, as he told Fox‘s Glenn Beck:
The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States…. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary.
As a news producer, you can take two approaches: You can view news as a form of entertainment whose only goal is to maximize ratings, in which case bringing on an obvious kook to rant like a James Bond villain makes perfect sense. Or you can consider that you live in a real world with real people, many of whom are likely to die when you give fanatics a prominent platform to advocate for war crimes. It’s quite clear which approach they’ve decided to go for at CNN.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
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