Like many Americans, I have been skeptical about RT, the TV network, previously called “Russia Today,” that is funded by the Russian government. That didn’t stop me from going on the network because I don’t have a policy of going only on stations I agree with. If I had such a policy, I would never do any media work. For that reason, I did this show a couple of years ago.

So, if you had asked me to predict whether anyone critical of the Russian government’s invasion of Crimea would be given a chance to state his or her views, I would have put a low probability on that. I would have put an even lower probability on the dissenter being one of the regular employees of RT.

Nevertheless, that’s just what happened yesterday. Check out Abby Martin’s strong criticism of the Russian invasion.

Again, I carry no brief for RT. I’ll always be skeptical of any network funded by a government and I’ll be especially of a network funded by a government run by Vladimir Putin.

But then I think back to how much evidence there was, even before the U.S. government’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq, against the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. I also think back to my argument, before the invasion, that even if he had WMD, he was not a threat to the United States. Yet I can’t think of one regular employee of any U.S. network who made such a strong statement, on his/her own network, against the U.S. invasion. Also, I can’t think of any regular employee of a U.S. network who came out so strongly against the U.S. government’s attack on Panama. Can any readers cite such a person?