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In case you missed it, this morning's New York Times contained a staggering revelation: The Obama administration has been counting every military-aged man it kills as a "militant," unless it can specifically prove that they're not. "That's nothing less than sociopathic, a term I use advisedly," writes Glenn Greenwald for Salon. "They have no idea whether the person killed is really a militant … they just call them one in order to whitewash their behavior and propagandize the citizenry."
Consider the implications for US media outlets. After each attack, these outlets "dutifully trumpet" that the dead were militants, even though they "literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed." But now that the Times itself has exposed how empty that word is, any outlet continuing to do so "is explicitly choosing to be an instrument for state propaganda—not that that's anything new, but this makes this clearer than it's ever been." Click for Greenwald's full column.
