this author arrested for smuggling artifacts should be a bigger story

[Cocoa]

Especially with the scandals regarding journalistic ethics being in the news so much.

One angle that reporters and whores could approach the story from would be to notice that Salon was very openly suspicious of this guy's credibility as a commentator on Iraq. They pretty much dismissed him as a fraud. However, no other outlet seems to have questioned Braude in any way, they just accepted him as some kind of expert. That could make a fascinating discussion on one of the cable shows, maybe one of the shows that featured Braude himself.

Another way this story could be tackled would be to notice that Braude was quite optimistic about the war, and about the future of Iraq, and at the same time he profited financiall from this optimism. So I could see an interesting discussion asking the question: How many people who express optimism about Iraq have the same kind of conflicts of interest as Braude did? Maybe tie this in to the Richard Perle conflict of interest story, or tie it in with the numerous sunny and very wrong pre-war predictions.

Here's the LBN thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=58876&mesg_id=58876#58944

[DUreader]

1. Bigger than that big guy? You must think we have a free press

The librul media is too busy pushing its agenda

[madrchsod]

2. before the war a faction

of artifact dealers meant with officials from the whitehouse about lifting the restrictions on artifacts from iraq. one of the problems they had after the looting is they had no photos of what they had,why?,film was on the restricted list of imports. the authorities are still recovering artifacts stolen from the first war,those mainly were looted in basra.
it will be very interesting to see who he knows..plea bargain?