Exclusive: Toting up the Iraq War’s cost is staggering, including nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. But a decade later, few of its architects in government or apologists in the press have faced accountability. Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt for one, notes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

What is perhaps most remarkable about the tenth anniversary of President George W. Bush’s war of aggression in Iraq is that almost no one who aided and abetted that catastrophic and illegal decision has been held accountable in any meaningful way.

That applies to Bush and his senior advisers who haven’t spent a single day inside a jail cell; it applies to Official Washington’s well-funded think tanks where neoconservatives still dominate; and it applies to the national news media where journalists and pundits who lost jobs for disseminating pro-war propaganda can be counted on one finger (Judith Miller of the New York Times).

Yet, arguably the most egregious example of the news media failing to exact serious accountability for getting this major historical event wrong is the case of Fred Hiatt, who was the editorial-page editor of the Washington Post when it served as drum major for the invade-Iraq parade and who still holds the same prestigious position ten years later.

How is that possible? I’ve seen senior news executives dissect the work of honest journalists searching for minor flaws in articles to justify destroying their careers (i.e. what the San Jose Mercury News did to Gary Webb over his courageous reporting on Nicaraguan Contra-cocaine trafficking in the 1990s).

So how could Hiatt still have the same important job at the Washington Post after being catastrophically wrong about the justifications for going to war – and after smearing war critics who tried to expose some of Bush’s lies to the American people? How could the U.S. news media be so upside-down in its principles that honest journalists get fly-specked and fired, while dishonest ones get life-time job security?

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/19/why-wposts-hiatt-should-be-fired/

March 21, 2013 |

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says he’s undecided on legislation that would ban the pseudo-science known as “gay conversion therapy” in his state.

“I'm of two minds just on this stuff in general,” the Republican governor said in a news conference in reference to bills “that restrict parents' ability to make decisions on how to care for their children.” The child-rearing practice in question involves labeling gay children as mentally ill and forcing them to endure “therapies” that, according to the World Health Organization, can cause “severe harm to mental and physical health.”

Gay conversion therapy rests on the discredited assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder, curable through a slew of archaic tactics that have received overwhelming condemnation from the medical and psychologist communities.

Governor Christie’s uncertainty puts him at odds with the American Academy of Pediatrics [pdf], which concludes, “Therapy directed specifically at changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation.” In addition, the American Medical Association rejects the practice on grounds that it assumes individuals should change their sexual orientation.

On Monday, the New Jersey Senate Health committee approved a bill to ban the “therapy” for minors after hearing witnesses describe painful childhood experiences with the practice, NewJersey.com reported. One witness, Brielle Sophia Goldani, recalled her parents forcing her to a gay conversion camp where she was hooked up to electrodes and I.V. machines. The administrators showed Goldani pictures depicting gay men while electrocuting her “like a dog.” “They would hook me up to an I.V. to make me sick and show me a series of unacceptable images,” Goldani recounted. “I would try to time it so I had an empty stomach on those days, but it didn’t work.”

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/chris-christie-undecided-pseudo-therapy-practices-electrocute-gay-children

Shame! NYC Cops Spent One Million Hours on Marijuana Arrests Over 11 Years: Majority Arrested, Black and Latino Youth

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The Drug Policy Alliance just released a study that provides further evidence that big city police resources are being used on victimless marijuana crime arrests, when that time could be allocated to violent offenses. In its press release, the Drug Policy Alliance reveals:

A new report released today documents the astonishing number of hours the New York Police Department has spent arresting and processing hundreds of thousands of people for low-level misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure. The report finds that NYPD used approximately 1,000,000 hours of police officer time to make 440,000 marijuana possession arrests over 11 years….

The report was prepared by Dr. Harry Levine, Professor of Sociology at Queens College and recognized expert on marijuana possession arrests, at the request of members of the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature.

Additionally, the report estimates that the people arrested by NYPD for marijuana possession have spent 5,000,000 hours in police custody over the last decade.

The full report indicates both a public safety misallocation of resources and racial bias:

New York City has made more marijuana possession arrests under Mayor Michael Bloomberg than under mayors Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani combined.

Nearly 70% of those arrested for marijuana are younger than 30 years old, and over 50% are under 21 years old. These young people receive a permanent criminal arrest record which can be easily found on the internet by employers, banks, schools, landlords, and others.

Even though young whites use marijuana at higher rates, over 85% of the people arrested and jailed for marijuana possession are black and Latino.

These arrests are costing New Yorkers more than $75 million per year.

“This report shows that people arrested for marijuana possession spend an average of 12-18 hours, just in police custody, and the vast majority of those arrested are young Black and Latino men from seven to ten neighborhoods in NYC,” said Chino Hardin, Field Coordinator and Trainer with the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions. “This is not just a crisis, but a frontline civil rights issue facing urban communities of color in the 21st century.

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17870-shame-nyc-cops-spent-one-million-hours-on-marijuana-arrests-over-11-years-majority-arrested-black-and-latino-youth