Writing of Ted Cruz's refusal to endorse Donald Trump in his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Death of the Republican Party," David Brooks observes:
"I’m not a Cruz fan, but his naked ambition does fuel amazing courage. As the Republican Party is slouching off on a suicide march, at least Cruz is standing athwart history yelling “Stop!” When the Trump train implodes, the docile followers who are now booing and denouncing Cruz will claim they were on his side all along."
Agreed. But how is it that Brooks, Dowd and the rest of America's mainstream media are ignoring Erdogan's encirclement, following a failed military coup, of the Incirlik Airbase in southern Turkey, where the US stores nuclear weapons and from which NATO launches strikes against ISIS?
As reported today by Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News in an article entitled "Turbulence in Turkish-US ties: The İncirlik crisis" by Selin Nasi:
"U.S. President Barack Obama’s message that it supported Turkey’s democratically-elected government was largely dismissed after arriving late. According to daily Hürriyet’s Tolga Tanış, news that many experts in the U.S. had spoken in favor of the coup and that Erdoğan had already escaped abroad added fuel to the fire.
The tension between Ankara and Washington rose even further the day after when Labor and Social Security Minister Süleyman Soylu declared the U.S. to be behind the coup attempt.
. . . .
Those alleging U.S. involvement in the coup attempt have highlighted the role Brig. Gen. Bekir Ercan Van and nine officers at the base played in the attempt, the fact that Van requested asylum in the U.S. before being caught, the fact that jets taking off from İncirlik participated in the bombing of Ankara and the fact that airborne fuel supply planes for the jets also took off from İncirlik."
Now go to the home pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post and search for any mention of Incirlik: Nada.
Do you remember how Ben Rhodes said of the "sale" of Obama's duplicitous unsigned nuclear deal with Iran, "We created an echo chamber"? Well, Rhodes has conveniently disappeared from sight following this ugly admission, but an echo chamber, this time characterized by the silence of the lambs, is once again very much in evidence.
