May 27, 2007

Why Did Fox News Fire Larry Johnson?

Larry Johnson got fired by FOX News for sharing insights that didn't conform with their right-wing, false view of the World.

According to transcripts cited below, Larry Johnson was an intelligence officer with the CIA from 1985 to 1989. He served in the State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism from 1989 to 1993. He now provides consulting services and helps the U.S. train military forces carrying out counterterrorism missions.

Unfortunately, Johnson has a loose definition of terrorism, which undermines the intellectual integrity of his cause. He considers the 1995 Iraqi attempted assasination of George H.W. Bush to be a terrorist act. Assasination of a head of state shouldn't be categorized as "terrorism." Terrorism traditionally involves attacks on civilian targets to influence a political goal.

So, back to why FOX News fired Larry Johnson:

I would like to say I was one of those who, before the [Iraq] war started, said, "this is a crock." I didn't. However, I did get fired from the Fox News network as a news analyst for having the audacity in November of 2002 to say, that if we went into Iraq, it would be a diversion in the war on terror.


Of course, we all know, and Johnson should too, that the "war on terror" is also a crock. It's surprising how long it takes some insiders to catch on.

Johnson continues with a commentary on the value of blogs:

And in January of 2003, I put together a paper — this was in my pre-blog days. I'm convinced, if I'd known more about blogs then, and there were more blogs active, we might have stopped the war.


Sources:

No Quarter Blog, May 24, 2007. The transcript is to appear in the in the May 25, 2007 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

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