Allahpundit asks a very good question regarding CNN’s airing of the sniper vid (fuller accounting here, if you don’t know about it yet), one I can easily answer for him:

There’s nothing wrong with showing enemy propaganda. We’ve done it here before and we’ll do it again, for the simple reason that it tells you something about the guy in the other trench: his motives, his methods of persuasion, and how far he’s willing to go.

What does this tell us, though? What did CNN hope to accomplish by showing it?

And why will they show snipers when they won’t show beheading videos? Or the Mohammed cartoons?

Because as good little liberals, obedient to the party line, they regard it as their sacred duty to undermine this war any way they can. There’s more to it than just that — a human desire to indulge in any opportunity that may present itself for a bit of schadenfraude over a war they opposed from the beginning, for example — but in the end, it comes down to bitter, blame-America-first ideologues unable to divorce themselves from their rigid partisanship even when it advances the cause of our enemies.

They’d rather see us lose this war than win it, because A) they consider it an “unjust war,” and a US victory would do so much to undermine so many of their inflexible beliefs about just who is responsible for most of the trouble, woe, and strife in the world, and B) it was conceived, promoted, and is being run by a Republican. We’ve seen this sort of outright assistance to the enemy in getting his message out — often accompanied by some trifling, laughable mush about “supporting the troops” — since well before the opening of the Iraq campaign, and the only thing that will stop it is a Democrat in the White House, properly expressing contrition for all America’s faults, and then undoing the damage Bush has done by humbly kissing whatever UN rings he can get his mouth onto. It’s just that simple.

Well, I take that back. A few prosecutions for aiding and abetting the enemy would probably cut way back on it. But when an incontrovertibly treasonous serpent like Lynn Stewart gets the kind of slap on the wrist she did from a Clinton-appointed liberal judge, you have to ask yourself why we even bother at all.

Just don’t question their “patriotism,” okay?

Update! Blackfive is hearing from his military brothers and sisters. Guess how they feel about this. Go on, guess. Strong message follows, from Uncle Jimbo. Gotta quote it:

CNN has made a conscious choice and they chose the wrong side. By promoting these evil killers, by giving them credibility, by treating them as simply our opposites, they have decided that the terrorists are our equivalent. How shameful that our major media are so unable to make moral distinctions that terrorist killers and our own sons and daughters are simply opponents, equally culpable for the crime of having disturbed the peace of their liberal mindset.

And how unfamiliar the folks at CNN seem to have become with that quaint, antiquated, and now near-meaningless word: shame.

Updated update! Taranto sez:

By airing this video, CNN is participating in what it acknowledges is “a P.R. campaign aimed at influencing the American public” in ways favorable to America’s enemies. And the network does not even seem to realize what a shocking admission this is…

With the midterm elections less than three weeks away, the media are filled with Tet talk…Tet, that is, was a military victory for the U.S. that turned into a propaganda victory for the communists because American journalists presented a false picture of what had happened.

The media today are eager to repeat their “success” in Vietnam–and it was a success inasmuch as the media were hugely influential over the course of events. But from a journalistic standpoint it was a gross failure. The real lesson of Vietnam is that journalists got the story wrong. We are not at all convinced that the American people are about to get fooled again.

Actually, I have to disagree with James here. The journalists didn’t truly “get the story wrong,” nor are they doing so now. They misrepresented it, with the intention of helping to secure the outcome they think is right and just. Just like they’re doing now.

James is clinging to an outmoded definition of “journalism” here — the one that dictates things like fairness and balance in reporting the news, the one that birthed the hoary old phrase, “just the facts, ma’am.” What we now call “journalism” hasn’t been much concerned with accurately and fairly reporting the news — with “just the facts” — in years and years.

Most of them are just cheap activists for a moribund agenda now. You aren’t any more likely to find old-school integrity among a convention’s worth of ‘em than you are at the Kennedy compound on a holiday weekend. And that’s the sad truth.