Alexander Cockburn gets it wrong, several times

Alexander Cockburn states some inaccuracies in his article entitled Death-With Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate.

First, does Cockburn actually think California still has a primary upcoming? Apparently so:

Ever since she realized back in early March that Obama was going to take the nomination Hillary Clinton’s long-term strategy has been to do her best to ensure McCain will win this November so she can become the Democratic nominee in 2012.. But she had a short term strategy too and on Friday she deliberately made it explicit in a newspaper office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There she suggested that someone is likely to step up to the plate and assassinate Barack Obama in the waning moments of the California primary, just as Bobby Kennedy was forty years go almost to the day. The wish is mother to the deed. If anything does happen to Obama in California Mrs Clinton should surely be indicted as a co-conspirator.

Uh, Alex? California's primary this year was held on February 5th. Obama will not be in California in June.

And Cockburn, who years ago co-wrote an article explaining how Sirhan couldn't have shot Kennedy, since he was in front of Kennedy and Kennedy was shot from behind, now just lies to avoid the issue:

To save conspiracists the trouble of writing to me, I should say that Kennedy had just passed the dishwasher, then twisted back and to his left to shake hands, which explains why the entry wound in his head seemed to indicate a shot from a quarter other than where Sirhan was standing.

I use the word lie quite deliberately. He is not mistaken. He did his homework. He knows this cannot be true, and has written about the issue correctly in the past. I have a copy of his article saying there had to be a second gun in the pantry in my files. You won't find it online.

No. Cockburn has learned, like so many before and after him, that the way to a mainstream media career is to lie about such items, to support the official government propaganda, the truth be damned. So now he says something provably false - that Kennedy had turned his back to Sirhan at the moment of the firing.

First, that's simply not true. By all witness accounts, Kennedy had finished shaking the busboy's hand and had turned to move forward when Sirhan lifted his hand and fired at Kennedy's face. All the witnesses put Sirhan's gun muzzle a foot from Kennedy at closest, with the vast majority putting the muzzle about three feet from the Senator. So even if Kennedy had his back to Sirhan, Sirhan was still not close enough. The coronor found powder burns on the back of Kennedy's ear. Tests on pig ears showed that the only distance that gave a comparable pattern was when the gun was about an inch away. Not one witness to the shooting ever put Sirhan that close.

Somewhere along the way, Cockburn I fear traded his soul for his journalistic career. I fear it's not an uncommon story. I'm only curious re the turning point. I feel this strongly because I looked him in the eye and saw the enormous fear there when I confronted him in person one time about the JFK assassination. I went to a book signing event locally. When he asked for questions, I said I had a visual question that would require me standing on a chair. Bemused, he encouraged me to proceed. I got up there and put a hand behind me pointing towards the back of my neck on a downward angle.

"What I want to know is, how does a bullet that enters the back of neck from six floors above exit the front of the throat horizontally?"

Cockburn instantly turned angry and said something dismissive re conspiracy theorists, at which point someone in the audience jumped in to defend what I was asking.

I talked to him afterwards, because I wanted to look into his eyes. They were shifty and his tone was menacing, but his eyes were filled with fear. I felt suddenly sorry for him, at that moment. What a small man. What a lost soul.

But I don't feel sorry for him using the occasion of Clinton's awful, inexcusable invocation of RFK's assassination as an opportunity to inject more untruth into the assassination story.

Who does Cockburn serve? It's not the left. He ridicules Hillary, but doesn't spare the rod on Obama either:

What about Wall Street, whose leading bankers have devastated middle-income America with the sub-prime scams? Obama has been tactful, meanwhile hauling in hefty campaign contributions from these same bankers as Pam Martens has described on this website.

What Pam Martens and others have failed to explain is that Obama receives money from INDIVIDUALS, not corporations. Corporations are prohibited to donating to political campaigns, except through Political Action Committees (PACs). And Obama has refused to take PAC money. But he will take money from individuals. There'sa $2,300 contribution limit on that, so no one person can gain much advantage by contributing the maximum. Some of the contributors are bankers. Some of them work for oil companies. But to jump from there to say that Bankers and Oil Companies want Obama to be President is a ridiculous leap.

When you contribute, you are asked to provide your employers name. Exxon is, for most people, a job, not a belief system. And individuals there have given money to Obama. Pam Martens and others use that to say that Exxon, the corporation, supports Obama. But that's factually inaccurate. Exxon, the corporation, may hate Obama. The Board members may all be supporting the Republican ticket. But because some employees collectively gave 40,000 dollars (less than the amount of money Obama raised in a day online in March), Martens and others dishonestly portray that as showing "oil industry" support for Obama.

Sometimes Counterpunch gets it right. Sometimes it gets it horribly wrong. And you can bet, when it comes to matters of great importance to the government, it will be on the wrong side. And that speaks well for Obama. The more organs like Counterpunch attack him, the more reassured I am that he is NOT the candidate of the establishment.