Sunday, April 26, 2009

2009's Jason Leopold

Spanish prosecutors will seek criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales and five high-ranking Bush administration officials for sanctioning torture at Guantánamo.
Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast.




So began Scott Horton's "The Bush Six to Be Indicted" (The Daily Beast) on Monday, April 13th. He went on to say the charges would come down the next day. It is now April 26th and, Scotty, in the words of Diana Ross, "I'm still waiting . . ."



This wasn't the fish that got away, this was the wolf no one else saw.



But we saw this play out before. In 2006. Jason Leopold stated Karl Rove would be indicted. That never happened. Columbia Journalism Review called him out, Alexander Cockburn called him out (riding a high horse, Alex seemed unaware that CounterPunch had published Jason's stories online many, many times), Crooks & Liars, and the list was endless.



So, the question is, when will this year's Scott Horton be called out?



Are people waiting to see if charges come along? They haven't in the time frame he told us they would.



Translation, Scott Horton's a liar.



He said they'd be charged on April 14th and they weren't. That makes him a liar. Or a weatherman and, while he's packed on the pounds, he's not yet in Willard Scott's division.



We saw the way this played out with Leopold. We're not in the mood to wait around and we don't have to. April 14th was the day Horton said it would happen and April 14th came and went with nothing.



If you read Horton's increasingly disjointed writing at Harper's, you'll grasp why he's become so unmoored. He's going to all the Kool-Aid sites, all the propaganda sites, watching all their programs and he's caught up in their non-stop hate.



He fed on it, he ingested it and now it's in him.



It's why he's become completely unhinged.



And here's the thing.



He's worse than Jason Leopold. Scott Horton's a practicing attorney. He knows how the criminal justice system works and he knows better to say someone's going to be charged before they are. He can say they will supposedly be charged or allegedly but to say that they will be charged? No sane attorney would make such a statement and present it as fact.



Scott Horton, this year's Leopold. Only worse.