Glenn Greenwald and IAVA’s Paul Rieckhoff Get Into a Shouting Match on “Real Time”
Last night’s Bill Maher show featured a panel with Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and the Mighty Glenn Greenwald, who got into a very heated exchange beginning when Greenwald asserted that US troops in Iraq should be considered terrorists.
It turned into a full-blown yelling match when Rieckhoff said Edward Snowden was “hiding in Russia,” and should come back to the US and “face the music” — at which point Greenwald interrupted him with, “That is total bullshit.”
And it got even louder and more contentious when Rieckhoff pressed Greenwald further on the issue of whether Snowden’s leaked documents have endangered American lives. I have to say kudos to Mr. Rieckhoff for confronting Greenwald over his “aggressive certainty” that nobody could possibly be harmed by the information he’s released. Greenwald’s attitude about this issue is incredibly cavalier, and it was good to see someone who didn’t just accept his facile rationalizations for a change.
After the show, Rieckhoff posted the following on Twitter:
Fun having a spirited debate with @ggreenwald tonight on #RealTimeHBO. I respect his passion. And after the show, we had a drink together.
— Paul (PJ) Rieckhoff (@PaulRieckhoff) June 21, 2014
So you’d assume this meant there was mutual respect, no hard feelings, that kind of thing, right?
Well, you don’t know Glenn Greenwald then, because he also took to Twitter to post several comments sniping at Rieckhoff:
Do I have any evidence that your reporting has killed people? No. But that won’t stop me from insinuating that it happened.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 21, 2014
@daveanthony Do you have evidence that it didn’t? Can you prove no CIA agents were killed as a result? No, you cannot.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 21, 2014
Can you definitively prove that your last tweet didn’t result in the deaths of CIA agents?
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 21, 2014
You can almost see the sneer.
So Greenwald went with @PaulRieckhoff after the show and had a drink, I would assume acted friendly, then came back on Twitter and immediately started trashing him. Pure class.
Greenwald’s fans, meanwhile, replied to his tweets about endangering CIA agents with even more class:
@ggreenwald I HOPE ALL my tweets result in the deaths of CIA agents, FBI agents/informants, & as many members of Congress as possible. :-)
— Richard Steven Hack (@richardhack) June 21, 2014
I love how he wishes for all these people to be murdered, then ends it with a smiley face.
