Here is an excellent interview with Tom Engelhardt, the creator and editor of Tomdispatch.com, as conducted by another contributing writer, Nick Turse.

“I’ve always claimed that, when you read articles in the imperial press, the best way - and I’m only half-kidding - is back to front. Your basic front-page stories, as on the TV news, usually don’t differ that much from paper to paper. It’s when you get toward the ends of pieces that they really get interesting. Maybe because reporters and editors sense that nobody’s paying attention but the news junkies, so things get much looser. You find tidbits the reporter’s slipped in that just fall outside the frame of the expectable.”

This actually would be just as appropriate to place within the section on “What Is Patriotism?”, but either or, it is well worth the read.

I’ve been following the Iraq news intimately for at least four years now and the American imagery has told such a story: There were the first upbeat images after the invasion when we were teaching the Iraqi child - as the likes of Rumsfeld and Bush put it - how to take the “training wheels” off that bike of democracy. So fabulously patronizing. Then, as things got worse, you got your “turning points.” (The President’s the only one left mentioning those these days.) And with them went the “milestones” of progress, after each of which there would be a worse set of disasters until they kind of faded away and you got images instead of the invasion having opened a Pandora’s Box in Iraq.

Then, maybe six months ago, Americans officials made it to the metaphoric “precipice” and soon after looked into the “abyss” of civil war before “taking a step back.” You saw such imagery quoted in the press all the time, usually from the mouths of the anonymous officials who swarm through such stories.

Now, Burns, today, has the newest Bush administration image. I first noticed it when Condi Rice went to Baghdad at the end of April to twist arms and get the prime minister we wanted. Officials in her party were quoted as saying that this was “a last chance,” which was, of course, absurd. I mean, this situation has been devolving for four years.

A month of sectarian catastrophe later, Burns’ piece quotes yet more anonymous American “military and civilian officials” who feel they are “witnessing what might be the last chance to save the American enterprise in Iraq from a descent into chaos and civil war.” If you keep reading, you find that we’re now at a “critical juncture,” kind of a turning point without the optimism; then, that the Americans “played a muscular role in vetting and negotiating over the new cabinet.” Now that’s a wonderful phrase, like we’re at the gym.

NT: It’s the strong arm.

TE: Yes, but so much more polite. Then you discover that our ambassador, Kalmay Khalilzad, “acted as a tireless midwife in the birthing of the new government.” Now, if this were, say, the Russians and some Central Asian autocracy, it would be strong-arming the locals and creating a puppet government. And then, part way in, those “milestones” arrive. The piece is a compendium of images from the Bush experience in Iraq - with some new gems thrown in. This is just the automatic writing of the press in a hurry. But for me, it would be a jumping off place for a piece.

Reading newspapers, I’m often aware of what an imperial planet we’re on. Things only work in one direction. Sometimes, just for the hell of it, I imagine flipping the directional signs.

For instance, a recent front-page New York Times piece about the CIA went essentially like this: Good news! Despite all its well-known problems, the Agency has bolstered its corps of spies, ramped up its on-the-ground capabilities, and we’re finally on the verge of breaking operatives into closed societies like, say, Iran. I’m thinking: Whoa, it doesn’t even faze us to proclaim to all and sundry that we have the right to mobilize vast numbers of covert operatives and put them in any other society of our choosing, for any kind of mayhem we might desire. We broadcast that fact on the front pages of our major papers.

So flip this story. Blazing headlines, the Tehran Times. The Iranians announce that, despite years of problems, their intelligence agencies have just bolstered their spy corps significantly and proudly expect to be capable soon of seeding the closed society of Washington with covert teams of operatives. We would be outraged. We’d be bombing them tomorrow! The fact is we’re allowed to talk and write in a way permitted to no other people on Earth. It’s imperial freedom of speech.

There is also a second follow up article to this interview. Here is just one of the money shot points made in it…

When I interviewed Ann Wright, one of three State Department diplomats who resigned in protest as the invasion of Iraq rushed toward us - a brave act - I asked her what she thought her military and State Department careers and her anti-war activism had in common. “Service to America,” she said. And here was the thing, I had written the word “service” next to the question beforehand. So I replied, “Hey, I knew you were going to say that,” and I showed her. I’ve come to feel particular sympathy for many of the people you write about, Nick, in your Fallen Legion series, people in government or the military who thought they were serving their country and find themselves serving officials they can’t bear, who have betrayed them and the country. In that sense, Tomdispatch has come to feel like my version of service to country.

Of all the things that people write me when they’re angry, the one that most gets my goat - and also makes me laugh - is: Go back to …

Twenty years ago, it would have been Russia, but now, depending on the moment, they’ll put in China or maybe France. Part of me thinks: a plane ticket and some Peking Duck or a croissant. Sounds like a good couple of weeks. But my deeper feeling is, hey, you jerk, this is my damn country and I’m not going anywhere!

You can read Part II of this insightful interview discussion Here