It seems CNN will let just about anyone air their warmongering views on the network.
On Saturday, former CIA intelligence officer turned blogger Michael Scheuer said the U.S. should bomb even hospitals and universities in Islamic State territory to combat the extremist group, saying this would constitute going "all in" in the fight against terrorism.
"'All in' to me, I wrote this week, would be to take out every piece of infrastructure -- hospitals, universities, irrigation systems -- that make it impossible for the Islamic State to raise money, to provide electricity, sanitation and potable water," Scheuer responded. "Do exactly what we did to the Germans."
When CNN host Michael Smerconish asked Scheuer if the American people would tolerate seeing footage of the "so-called civilian death count" that would result, Scheuer doubled down.
“They should,” the blogger responded. “What’s the difference? They aren’t Americans.”
On Sunday, The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald openly criticized CNN on "Reliable Sources" for giving former U.S. intelligence officials free air time to make horrendous claims. Scheuer's recent appearance is a case in point.
"I think that CNN has actually unfortunately led the way in this," Greenwald told "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter. "You've had one intelligence official with the CIA -- or formerly with the CIA -- after the next, going on air and able to say all kinds of extremely dubious claims that print journalists have repeatedly documented in Bloomberg News and The New Yorker, on The New York Times editorial page [that] are totally false."
This is only the most recent instance of the self-proclaimed "worldwide leader in news" stirring controversy.
Last week, CNN suspended global affairs correspondent Elise Labott for expressing sympathy toward Syrian refugees after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make it harder for them to enter the United States. The network, however, did not suspend her earlier the same week when she criticized President Barack Obama's speech at the G-20 Summit, saying that he was "wining [sic] about criticism instead of presenting ideas" on how to deal with the Islamic State.
A number of journalists, including HuffPost's Gabriel Arana, have also pilloried network anchors John Vause and Isha Sesay for insisting that someone in the Muslim community must have had prior knowledge of the attacks in Paris. Vause pressed a French anti-Islamophobia activist to explain why no one in France's Muslim community had come forward and why no Muslim groups had condemned the attacks.
A number of Muslims, however, did condemn the attack on social media using the hashtag #notinmyname.
Watch the clip from "Smerconish" above.