Hannes Stein has a piece in Die Welt where he praises a number of the "liberal" Bush-Blogs in Germany for their relentless efforts to expose "anti-American" sentiments in the German press and their contrarian political views:
Jene kleine radikale Minderheit kommt in der Öffentlichkeit kaum vor,
trotzdem verfügen die liberalen freunde Amerikas über ein Forum. Im
Internet hat sich eine regelrechte Subkultur aus sogenannten Weblogs
herausgebildet, aus Tagebüchern, die online geführt werden: mit
wütender Kritik an den herrschenden Medien, bissig-geistreichen
Kommentaren zur Weltlage, Links auf interessante Artikel,
Informationen, die anderswo nicht (oder nur schwer) zu bekommen sind.
Stein mentions the following blogs in his article: Achse des Guten, Senordaffy, A New European, No Blood for Sauerkraut, Statler & Waldorf and Anti-anti-Americanism and, of course, Davids Medienkritik.
I cannot comment on the group blog Achse des Guten since I don’t read it regularly, but the others could hardly be charactized as "liberal". For the most part they parrot the neo-conservative talking points that we read in the National Review and the Weekly Standard – except that they disdain Der Spiegel rather than the New York Times. Mostly what they expose as "anti-Americanism" in Germany is criticism of the policies of the Bush administration. One can read the same opinions in these blogs: the war in Iraq is a "catastrophic success" despite all evidence the contrary; the US is good, the EU is evil; Iran should be bombed; diplomacy is appeasement, etc. Despite professing to be pro-American, there is no evidence that these bloggers are familiar with the US consititution: they have no problems with unconstitutional practices such as prisoner abuse and torture in Guantanamo or "extraordinary rendition" (the US practice of outsourcing torture to Egypt and Uzbekistan). The fact that Germans overwhelmingly oppose the war Iraq is seen as "reflexive anti-Americanism"; they are silent about the growing opposition to war in the US. One thing these blogs fail to realize: the true friends of America oppose the destructive policies of unilateral war and human rights abuse.
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You indicate that these blogs merely “parrot” the neoconservative agenda. You often use the term “neocon” to imply some sort of radical right wing group. I know that conservatives often use “lefty” or “lib” in the same way; so I suppose this is okay. But since your blog could be said to merely puppet the opposite point of view, it may be a bit hypocritical for the pot to highlight the kettle’s blackness.
Which article of the US Constitution or amendment prohibits torture? Even Alan Dershowitz (hardly can qualify as your often-used “neocon”) has stated that the Constitution does not prohibit the events at Gitmo or Abu Graib. He also seems to believe that this qualifies more as abuse than outright torture.
Just last week, the Weekly Standard came out AGAINST rendition. So, perhaps some of the media outlets you have painted as puppets actually have independent principles. Also, the LA Times came out with an op-ed piece highly critical of Gerhard Schroeder’s foreign policies, and the Berlin – Baghdad connection. You don’t think the LA Times is a neocon puppet, do you?