Neocon strategy: genocide with a shrug

It really is repellent how casually some American warmongers talk of killing other people. Greenwald is on the case, of course:

Nothing could be more boring to Tony Snow than the question of how many Iraqi civilians we have killed as a result of our invasion and occupation. His yawn is virtually audible. What could be less relevant than that? It is better if we do not know. We can just keep repeating over and over that we are "killing Al Qaeda" -- a "fact" which Michael Gordon and The New York Times will be happy repeatedly to re-inforce -- and we can ignore the rest.

What Norman Podhoretz is advocating -- blowing Iran into "smithereens" -- is criminal and morally twisted for reasons that should require no elaboration. But the far more significant fact is that such advocacy does not relegate him to the fringes. Quite the contrary, the movement of which he is an integral part, on whose behalf he speaks, is well within the political mainstream as depicted by our political press. And it is doubtful that there is anything he (and his comrades) could do or say which would change that.