The Story Behind A NY Times Op-Ed Defending Civilian Casualties

Glenn Greenwald (pictured), who appears on radio with me later this week, looks into what was behind the New York Times op-ed by Lara M. Dadkhah urging that we worry less about civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Last week Greenwald railed against the lack of information about who this writer is, as the Times made only vague references to her work in the defense industry.

What bizarre behavior from the NYT: it publishes an extremist, repellent Op-Ed calling, in essence, for the deaths of more innocent Afghans and accusing the Obama administration of sacrificing the lives of American troops due to excessive concern about civilians, all while providing basically no information about the author and allowing her vaguely to refer to a “defense consulting company” for whom she works while concealing its identity.

After a day of severe civilian casualties in Afghanistan, Greenwald follows up with more information. It turns out that Dadkhah works for defense consulting company Booz Allen, a company with tentacles deep into the Pentagon, and this was not disclosed when the article appeared. And it appears as though the Times sought out this article or, at least, this point of view.

To summarize: the NYT Op-Ed Page decided, for whatever reasons, that it wanted to find someone to urge more civilian deaths in Afghanistan. The person it found to do that is someone about whom virtually nothing was known, yet works for one of the largest, most sprawling and influential defense firms in the nation, a virtual arm of the Pentagon, but they decided there was no reason to have its readers know that.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.