Who's Your Daddy

Salon.com has obtained the entire collection of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID) torture photos, videos, and investigative reports – all neatly hand over on a DVD.

Apparently, the "uniformed member of the military" who gave the material to Salon has no fear of BushCo, the Pentagon, the law, or the CIA. Risking life, limb, and livelihood to turn over the material; material which has been leaking for the last 2 years anyway. Would this be considered an information flood?

It's not every day such a documented and detailed "leak" occurs. Not every day a DVD from Command is handed over to the "liberal" media. Salon quotes the deputy legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights as believing "the material obtained by Salon represents all of the Abu Ghraib images and video the Pentagon has been fighting to keep confidential. I'm guessing that what you have is a pretty rare and complete set."

Rare and complete indeed. The evil neocon cabal have lost their plumbers.

According to this blurp about Salon.com, the site's history began with "journalism veterans" David Talbot, Andrew Ross, and David Zweig in 1995. Targeting a literate audience attracted to highbrow content, the trio launched Web-based Salon Magazine with financial backing from Adobe Ventures, Apple Computer, and Hambrecht & Quist.

Hmmm. I can understand Apple and Adobe backing but Hambrecht & Quist? H&Q is a Boston based (as in Brewster Jennings) capital management / investment firm who "invest in small emerging growth equities, both public and private, in the healthcare and life sciences industries."

Not sure how the Salon website, which began and made it's fame with Clintonism, Ken Starr, and Princess Di fits into healthcare and life science investors but … what do I know. (BTW, life sciences encompass companies in the fields of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, biomedical technologies, life systems technologies, nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals, food processing, environmental, biomedical devices, and organizations and institutions that devote the majority of their efforts in the various stages of research, development, technology transfer and commercialization.)

Then, with "essays by Camille Paglia and an interactive Table Talk section, Salon soon caught the eyes of the mainstream media. Time magazine selected Salon as the best Web site of 1996. Michael O'Donnell, a consumer software executive, became president and publisher that year.

Salon's coverage of the death of Princess Diana in 1997 brought a cluster of new visitors (tabloid grazers) to its Web site. By the end of the year, the company had attracted additional financial backing from Japanese publisher ASCII Corporation and Borders Group." (Big publishers.)

With inquiries into the dealings of President Clinton dominating the headlines in 1998, Salon began delving into investigative pieces. Its coverage of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation helped usher Salon into the spotlight. The company secured 1998 distribution agreements with America Online (now AOL Time Warner), the Go Network (now Walt Disney Internet Group), and CIA – oops wrong acronym, I meant CNN Interactive.

It all makes me go hmmmmmm. Usually the writers at Salon (remember they target the literate highbrow) pooh-pooh the idea of conspiracies, i.e. the Clinton cocaine smuggling, Princess Di's death or 9/11 insider/coverup – although they seem to believe the 7000 pages of the Pentagon paper proved we can't believe anything our leaders say - but Salon does make sure the reader is given all the fruitynut details surrounding every conspiracy theory floating around. Not sure how that makes their brows any higher than the rest of us.