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TechnoratiRecord of Iraq War Lies to Air April 25 on PBS
Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq War to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I've watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from 9 to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you'll never watch television news again — not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism.
While a great many pundits, not to mention presidents, look remarkably stupid or dishonest in the four-year-old clips included in "Buying the War," it's hard to take any spiteful pleasure in holding them to account, and not just because the killing and dying they facilitated is ongoing, but also because of what this video reveals about the mindset of members of the DC media. Moyers interviews media personalities, including Dan Rather, who clearly both understand what the media did wrong and are unable to really see it as having been wrong or avoidable.
It's great to see an American media outlet tell this story so well, but it leads one to ask: When will Congress tell it? While the Democrats were in the minority, they clamored for hearings and investigations, they pushed Resolutions of Inquiry into the White House Iraq Group and the Downing Street Minutes. Now, in the majority, they've gone largely silent. The chief exception is the House Judiciary Committee's effort to question Condoleezza Rice next week about the forged Niger documents.
But what comes out of watching this show is a powerful realization that no investigation is needed by Congress, just as no hidden information was needed for the media to get the story right in the first place. The claims that the White House made were not honest mistakes. But neither were they deceptions. They were transparent and laughably absurd falsehoods. And they were high crimes and misdemeanors.
The program opens with video of President Bush saying "Iraq is part of a war on terror. It's a country that trains terrorists, it's a country that can arm terrorists. Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country."
Was that believable or did the media play along? The next shot is of a press conference at which Bush announces that he has a script telling him which reporters to call on in what order. Yet the reporters play along, raising their hands after each comment, pretending that they might be called on despite the script.
Video shows Richard Perle claiming that Saddam Hussein worked with al Qaeda and that Iraqis would greet American occupiers as liberators. Here are the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, William Safire at the New York Times, Charles Krauthammer and Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post all demanding an overthrow of Iraq's government. George Will is seen saying that Hussein "has anthrax, he loves biological weapons, he has terrorist training camps, including 747s to practice on."
But was that even plausible? Bob Simon of "60 Minutes" tells Moyers he wasn't buying it. He says he saw the idea of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda as an absurdity: "Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn't believe it for an instant."
Knight Ridder Bureau Chief John Walcott didn't buy it either. He assigned Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay to do the reporting, and they found the Bush claims to be quite apparently false. For example, when the Iraqi National Congress (INC) fed the New York Times' Judith Miller a story through an Iraqi defector claiming that Hussein had chemical and biological weapons labs under his house, Landay noticed that the source was a Kurd, making it very unlikely he would have learned such secrets. But Landay also noticed that it was absurd to imagine someone putting a biological weapons lab under his house.
But absurd announcements were the order of the day. A video clip shows a Fox anchor saying "A former top Iraqi nuclear scientist tells Congress Iraq could build three nuclear bombs by 2005." And the most fantastic stories of all were fed to David Rose at Vanity Fair Magazine. We see a clip of him saying "The last training exercise was to blow up a full size mock up of a US destroyer in a lake in central Iraq."
Landay comments: "Or jumping into pits of fouled water and having to kill a dog with your bare teeth. I mean, this was coming from people, who are appearing in all of these stories, and sometimes their rank would change."
Forged documents from Niger could not have gotten noticed in this stew of lies. Had there been some real documents honestly showing something, that might have stood out and caught more eyes. Walcott describes the way the INC would feed the same info to the Vice President and Secretary of Defense that it fed to a reporter, and the reporter would then get the claims confirmed by calling the White House or the Pentagon. Landay adds: "And let's not forget how close these people were to this administration, which raises the question, was there coordination? I can't tell you that there was, but it sure looked like it."
Simon from 60 Minutes tells Moyers that when the White House claimed a 9-11 hijacker had met with a representative of the Iraqi government in Prague, 60 Minutes was easily able to make a few calls and find out that there was no evidence for the claim. "If we had combed Prague," he says, "and found out that there was absolutely no evidence for a meeting between Mohammad Atta and the Iraqi intelligence figure. If we knew that, you had to figure the administration knew it. And yet they were selling the connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam."
Moyers questions a number of people about their awful work, including Dan Rather, Peter Beinart, and then Chairman and CEO of CNN Walter Isaacson. And he questions Simon, who soft-pedaled the story and avoided reporting that there was no evidence.
Landay at Knight Ridder did report the facts when it counted, but not enough people paid attention. He tells Moyers that all he had to do was read the UN weapons inspectors reports online to know the White House was lying to us. When Cheney said that Hussein was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, Landay knew he was lying: "You need tens of thousands of machines called 'centrifuges' to produce highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. You've got to house those in a fairly big place, and you've got to provide a huge amount of power to this facility."
Moyers also hits Tim Russert with a couple of tough questions. Russert expressed regret for not having included any skeptical voices by saying he wished his phone had rung. So, Moyers begins the next segment by saying "Bob Simon didn't wait for the phone to ring," and describing Simon's reporting. Simon says he knew the claims about aluminum tubes were false because 60 Minutes called up some scientists and researchers and asked them. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post says that skeptical stories did not get placed on the front page because they are not "definitive."
Moyers shows brief segments of an Oprah show in which she has on only pro-war guests and silences a caller who questions some of the White House claims. Just in time for the eternal election season, Moyers includes clips of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry backing the war on the basis of Bush and Cheney's lies. But we also see clips of Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy getting it right.
The Washington Post editorialized in favor of the war 27 times, and published in 2002 about 1,000 articles and columns on the war. But the Post gave a huge anti-war march a total of 36 words. "What got even less ink," Moyers says, "was the release of the National Intelligence Estimate." Even the misleading partial version that the media received failed to fool a careful eye.
Landay recalls: "It said that the majority of analysts believed that those tubes were for the nuclear weapons program. It turns out, though, that the majority of intelligence analysts had no background in nuclear weapons." Was Landay the only one capable of noticing this detail?
Colin Powell's UN presentation comes in for similar quick debunking. We watch a video clip of Powell complaining that Iraq has covered a test stand with a roof. But AP reporter Charles Hanley comments: "What he neglected to mention was that the inspectors were underneath watching what was going on."
Powell cited a UK paper, but it very quickly came out that the paper had been plagiarized from a college student's work found online. The British press pointed that out. The US let it slide. But anyone looking for the facts found it quickly.
Moyers' wonderful movie is marred by a single line, the next to the last sentence, in which he says: "The number of Iraqis killed, over 35,000 last year alone, is hard to pin down." A far more accurate figure could have been found very easily.
David Swanson is creator of MeetWithCindy.org, co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997. His website is www.davidswanson.org.
41 Comments so far
Show Alla friend told me that there was a pbs show around 4/20 that put the blame for 9/11 on the whitehouse. does anyone have info on the show?
John Freeman, many of us would be very happy to impeach folks at the White House and tried in the Senate no matter how easily removal is defeated. The hit on reputations would be ample punishment and the disruption of their usual course of predation would be a bonus. Personally, I'm tired of living under a king's misrule.
Even if it had been the truth, would it have been justified for the USA Inc. to invade another country? Can the US ever fight a just war, or is it always for the enrichment of American corporate capitalism. There is no reason for Bush to stop this war, no matter how bad it gets, or how many American soldiers, or Iraquis die, as long as they're making the big bucks off of it. The only problem he has to deal with is being able to sustain it against public pressure to halt it. War is Business.
Deception, blindness, misleading, fabrications, misrepresentatons - ok lets stop skirting the issue, and call it for what it is -
LIES, LIES, LIES, LIES.
Hello, Y'all, the best way we can effect political reform is to get the politicians out of Washington. Here's how: telecommunication. If we can vote electronically, so can our elected reps. Physically meeting is an old paradigm, because that used to be the only way to do it. Imagine that your elected representative carried out his or her duties from his local, in-state office, so that she was available to you, but every lobbying entity had to send multiple lobbyists to your state, and they had no better access to your rep than you did, and you could see all who were seeking to meet with your rep. Also, it is a grave risk to our national security to have all our elected reps sitting ducks in Congress, just waiting for the next airplane crash. They're safer decentralized, in their home states
Wonder if Moyers will mention that Congressman Ron Paul(R-Texas) opposed the invasion of Iraq from day one, and made speeches on the floor to the House stating his opposition, disbelief in the Administration's story, and how the war would be unconstitutional. Rather a large omission if Paul isn't mentioned, if both Bird and Kennedy are.
Who's Watching Over Who's Watching Over You?
Words and Music by Harvey Rubens
Copyright © 2006
Song: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2007/03/20/whoswatching.mp3
Lyrics: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/03/20/18380069.php
Verse 1:
I see men looking over their shoulder,
Running hard just trying to stay alive,
And they say that it's gonna get colder before it gets better.
At the time of the crime, who believed us?
We all took a fall on the ride,
When the powers that be had deceived us to leave us the debtor.
Chorus:
And who's watching over who's watching over you?
Tell me who's telling you what to do what to do?
Verse 2:
All the forces of war were compelling,
And blacker than Colin, the Knight,
And the lies they were telling, they sell in the name of their savior.
And they silence the voices arising,
From those who would show us the light,
With their guys with their spies in the skies watching you and your neighbor.
Chorus:
Verse 3:
I see men who are trying to squeeze us,
And taking whatever they can,
While they buy those who try to appease us with scraps from their table.
It gets harder each day to break even.
This wasn't a part of my plan.
Time is right to be fighting or leaving this tower of Babel.
Chorus:
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eagar and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die
in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?
a Poem by Kipling
Will Bush, Cheany, Rumsfield, Rice, Gonzales, the rubber stamp congress and others will they come to honour to the grave? Heaven forbid. Not just the present corrupt adminisration but the Media. Isn't there any shame any more?
Wow, I'm amazed to see Bill as a hero now. As I recall, he was drinking the KoolAid along with the rest of the media at the time. Does he interview himself? During the so called 'run up to the war' I remember thinking, "Gee, I used to trust Moyers and he, sadly, seems to be duped like rest."
Am I the only one that remembers this? Sure it's great that he's making amends now but that won't wash the blood off his hands.
As a one time reporter, it's clear to me that the first rule any journalist worth his/her salt follows is "Presume those in authority are lying." It's amazing what a skeptical viewpoint does for one's reportage.
So sad to read this more than 4 years after the start of that disastrous war.
So many lives lost, a whole country in ruins, and some people are millions of dollars richer!
If the media had done their job, none of this could have happen.
I wish some day people can look back at this and learn from it. And I hope more people read the book "No Questions Asked : News Coverage since 9/11" ( http://www.noquestionsasked.org ) to understand how the main stream media failed to do their job (and still does).
It has constantly puzzled and bothered me that, before Bush attacked Iraq, so many of us ordinary citizens of the United States and so many ordinary citizens of so many other countries were aware of the fabrications and misrepresentations Bush and friends that they were putting forth, and that at the same time our elected representatives and our main stream media seemed to be so unaware. Even though we ordinary citizens might not have been able to effectively demand supporting evidence, our elected officials were in a position where they could and should have pressed for and insisted upon receiving such evidence before voting as they did in support of attacking Iraq. These elected officials, Republicans and Democrats alike, abdicated their powers and duties and responsibilities by not doing so. There is nothing any of them can say at this time to justify their inexcusable behavior at that time. The most meaningful thing they can do now is try to make amends by ridding us of the current administration as a one way to say "We are sorry!" to Iraq and to the world.
The main stream media likewise abdicated their powers and duties and responsibilities by not thoroughly investigating every Bush claim and accusation and by not thoroughly investigating every counter claim put forth by all the knowledgeable, intelligent and wise people who were bravely speaking out. In the view of intelligent citizens of the world, the credibility of the MSM has been severely damaged due to it's shortcomings and failings with regard to the war on Iraq. Unfortunately, not enough people have yet become attuned to the alternative sources for news and information that are available electronically. Also unfortunate is the fact that so much of what is available in this electronic realm is junk and it can be difficult to sort out what's worth while from what isn't.
Even more unfortunate is that so many citizens have abdicated their rights, duties and responsibilities as citizens and declared through their behaviors that they are really more interested in entertainment than in news and information. I wish Bill Moyers would run for and be elected as president. To have someone with such knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, understanding, compassion and love in such a prominent position of power, perhaps more people would become inspired to wake up to their rights, duties, responsibilities and potentials as good citizens and as human beings. Our country and our world would surely be much better off for it. Not considering any other good Moyers might be able to accomplish as president, this alone would make his service more worthwhile than we can imagine because everything else of worth would flow forth from an interested, inspired and enlightened citizenry.
For the media to be truly free and independent of corporate/monied interests it must be locally owned (perhaps by the employees of newspaper, radio & TV stations?) and managed. Networks, too, should be ccoperatively owned by the local outlets rather than central corporations. Perhaps a foundation (Mr. Soros?) would care to give grants to local chapters of journalistic unions.
A wonderful Moyers idea that would help save our democracy is complete and total public funding of all elections at every level. We would, as a society, probably spend less than we do now and have elections untainted by money from lobbyists who wish "access." (I would add that all TV and radio media using OUR air waves be made to provide every candidate for every office with free air time. Serious presentations; serious debates and discussions; no stupid warm-and-fuzzy or Swift-Boat ads that offer only lies and false impressions.)
Thanks for your response, Vince. I agree with you. The way I see it, key folks on the right actually welcome and are seeking to create chaos. The more chaos/unrest the greater the likelihood that the public will accept proto-fascist repression.
I do think they made the mistake of underestimating the american people's survival instinct and common-sense intelligence. Thus, people sent the democrats a mandate to make a change - and fast.
But the stakes now involve, not just America, but the planet as a whole. It's a reasonable guess that we all will be facing incredibly complex and chaotic problms on a worldwide scale by 2020. I believe we would all benefit by studying a bit of chaos/complexity theory, which is very big in the sciences at the moment.
Edgar Morin in his recent book Homeland Earth outlines our challenges with great clarity and brilliance.
PowerofLove: Never read any of Fromm's work, but from what you've quoted sounds a lot like an expansion of the 18th century Thomas Hobbes. He observed that societies would rather accept anything other than chaos, even totalinarianism. I believe that the mass of Americans that would never visit Common Dreams and would be horrified if they did, see impeachment at this time as a descent into chaos and would rather relinquish their freedoms than go that route. The RNC and the media played on the fear that Hobbes and Fromm identified, in 2000 in Florida. Should qualify this though by referring to those polls that indicate more that 50% respondents favor impeachment. ?
This should be the lead stories, because without the complicity of the mainstream media outlets this war could never have happened. But of course they are not going to report on their own failings.
To me they the (mainstream media) as lost all of it's credibility.
And you know even with all the awareness of this ,they are still at it.
They still parade their one-sided view of the war with generals and ex pentagon officials,
With no one from the anti-war side given any time..
If one thing good could come out this for the American people, it would be that it as made a lot more aware of what propaganda machine the mainstream is and always has been.
And what utter control the corporations have over their lives.
From what they eat, to what they watch ,to what they buy.
To forming the very basis for their believes.
To forming the idea of American exceptionalism. To creating and perpetuating the lie that is Truth ,justice and the American way.
When the history of America is littered with death, destruction and genocide..
The very document that give them the right to take this continent by force "Manifest Destiny",
is a document ok-ing genocide of the indigenous populations of this continent,
all under the lie that had some "god given" right to it..
This nation will ultimately fail, I believe, because it built upon a foundation of lies.
Democracy can die of to many lies! It's dying now!
Following up what you say Poet:
"they" will rewrite history to suit "their" ends
What will happen is that the bush administration will let the next president pull out of Iraq and blame the democrats for it. Iraq will presumably become a Muslim republic like Iran, and will have to be repressive because of the numbers of Kurds, Sunnis, socialists and secularists in the country. The Republicans will forever blame the democrats, despite having misnamneged the war from start to finish.
Don't get me wrong - Democrat politicians went along with this and voted for a war which was clearly nothing to do with Al Quaeda or WMD and a lot to do with oil and religious fundamentalism in the white house. But the republicans will write the history - I don't mean the book contracts so much as the media control they exert - until you will believe that they never supported the war, that it was down to a democrat president, that bush opposed it all along.
Sounds craxy? Seems impossible? You need no more evidence than the way Bush senior, Rumsfeld, Cheney and several other people in this administration were linked to supporting Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, and yet you hear nothing of the weapons and cash they gave to him then. I never once - in the mainstream media - saw those pictures from 1983/1984 of Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein in all six years he was defence secretary. History effectively re-written within living memory.
karlof1
"Regarding the Moyers' piece, it must be remembered that Clinton/Gore were just as manipulative of the media vis-a-vis Iraq, and that the media served them every bit as well as they served Cheney/Bush." Oh really-for instance? The press is always open to manipulation by the party in power.However, the last six years has not been them being manipulated by the Bush adminsiration but the public by the CMSM's submission to accepting unchallenged whatever the White House sends them
John Freeman wrote:
Impeachment of this President Is Impossible
**************
But going through the motions is not. As long as the Senate and House is tied up with such matters things like Iraq war funding, the capacity to wage war against Iran, and a hundred and one other neocon fantasies will not be realized. It almost makes me excited about paying income tax to know that such a possibility might occur.
Abuleto writes:
Hey I am just an ordinary person. I know little of middle east politics, and nothing about military stuff. And I never believed any of this stuff. It's pathetic thet Moyers has to go to all this trouble to tell us what we should already know, and what in fact we did know all along.
************
No it isn't because if nobody formally tells the truth and documents the truth they tell, then "they" will rewrite history to suit "their" ends.
As Winston Churchill confidently expressed to colleagues after he was wisely turned out of office by the British voters, "history will be kind to us for I intend to write it".
This is also why every son of Dixie knows that even though the South militarily lost the civil war, they have "won" the peace by the obscuring of their history to their own purposes.
Make a tape or buy the DVD of Moyers and pass it down to your progeny as a family heirloom for how else will the truth survive?
This is all great stuff and I look forward to watching, but I see no indication that investigative reporting has caught on to the biggest lie during the runup to the invasion.
Bush promised to allow the UN disarm Iraq if it could. Bush tap danced the authorization for war through Congress by telling Committee Chairmen and Panels that he was committed to disarming Iraq Peacefully but needed authorization for war in case peaceful efforts failed.
Peaceful efforts of UN inspections were not failing when Bush malicioulsy ended them. That Saddam did not cooperate with the UN was Bush's biggest lie of them all.
Making the lie bigger is the fact that Saddam as early as December 2002 put forth an offer to allow the US to send CIA FBI and Military WMD agents into Iraq to look for themselves. Amir al Saadi was instrumental in Iraq's peace initiatives. He was in custody in Iraq for about two years and and has since dissappeared.
There's the story. PBS could do 90 minutes on Al Saadi and other Facts about the UN Inspections. Bush can't lie his way out of these or blame them on the CIA. After all Saddam invited the CIA in and the White House was not interested.
When do we get a report on all this?
It is truly disgusting how the government went merrily into this war with such compliant cooperation from the media. It's true that there was plenty of information to the contrary, even in the corporate media (buried in the back pages),
but many people just didn't want to hear it. They wanted to lash out at somebody, anybody, whether they were responsible for 9-11 or not. That's why, in the end, the responsibility for this inexcusable atrocity lies not only with the government but also with the citizens of the United States. Will we ever be able to make amends to the people of Iraq, the entire world?
Start here: If everyone who knows the falsity and complicity of the Corporate media terminates their subscriptions, now, their voices will be heard and noticed. The media is no more complicit than its consumers, who support through apathetic inaction, the continuing cooperation with the so-called power of this administration. The media does not report what their sponsors and sibscribers don't encourage. Contrary Letters to the editor that do not include termination of the writer's subscription are not credible. Democracy or a representative republic operates on the actions and participation of the citizens. Stop feeding the wolves of partisan politics and blind consumerism, and they will starve or find a new way to serve the public.
Peace,
st john
The impossibility of impeachment assumes that no Republican will grow a conscience, and all Democrats will vote the party line. I'd say both presumptions are probable, but a slim hope might remain that somewhere in those cold, dark, dogmatic, partisan minds a tiny morsel of grade school propaganda might begin to conflict with their Bible banging prejudices and create (not evolve, mind you) a moment of hesitation. Perhaps in that moment, clarity and understanding might emerge, and the possibility of righteous indignation at the flaunting of Constitutional mandates and lying to Congress, the American people and the world . . . oh forget it. We're more likely to be struck by a gigantic asteroid.
Hey I am just an ordinary person. I know little of middle east politics, and nothing about military stuff. And I never believed any of this stuff. It's pathetic thet Moyers has to go to all this trouble to tell us what we should already know, and what in fact we did know all along. The lies they told were pitifully obvious. If i can find anyone who belteves in the "war on terror" i will tell them to watch.
Impeachment of this President Is Impossible
All one need is the ablility to perform simple math to understand why Impeachment is not a possibility with this Congress. Democrats have only a small simple majority, Impeachment and Conviction requires 2/3rds majority. With Clinton there were a sufficient number of Democrats who crossed the isle and voted with the Republicans, I do not feel there will ever be enough Right Wing Christian Republicans who will even consider doing their patriotic duty.
Very interesting quotes. I've got to read more Fromm. Reminds me of something Marvin Minsky noted in one of his books, that children often destroy the toy block structure that they create, probably to erase the need to support that strucutre mentally. Something similar might work in the militant mindset. You don't need to deal with complex world models when you can just blow them up.
Finally, Fromm presciently reminds us that:
"Religious extremes, ultra-nationalism, intense patriotism and often war, no matter how they degrade human life, connect individuals with others and provide a refuge from isolation.
"Times of emergency (which is most times) demands careful thought, natural expression and freedom to think and act. Yet, at these moments, freedom becomes limited. A tendency to autocratic control of expression, followed by an almost sadistic need to inflict damage upon others and a masochistic urge to allow damage to be inflicted on the self, often occur. Destructiveness of home life and foreign populations by military adventures
are easily accepted by a public that automatically conforms."
Automaton conformity is the most often used mechanism of escape." ..the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be.
The use of automaton conformity displaces the burden of choice from the self to society; the discrepancy between 'I' and the world disappears and with it the [un]conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness."
The escape of authoritarianism allows us to seek to be controlled by a powerful "Other." By submitting our freedom to someone or something else we
hope to be magically removed from the intolerable realities of our aloneness, and the accountability that always accompanies freedom of choice.
We avoid freedom by becoming part of (in the hope of fusing ourselves with) an authoritarian society or system. There are two sides to this coin. One can submit to the power of others, becoming passive and compliant. Or, alternatively, one becomes an authority oneself, a person focused on imposing structure on others.
Destructiveness tends to remove the objects that contribute to our subliminal sense of hopelessness, which arises from being in an actual no-win doublebind: simultaneously craving freedom, while being terrified of the awesome responsibility it entails.
"..there is virtually nothing that is not used as a rationalization for
destructiveness. Love, duty, conscience, patriotism have been and are being
used as disguises to destroy others or oneself."
A view from Erich Fromm (circa 1968)
"Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from?
Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission?"
"Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision making which replace the [sure guidance of] of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation, which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for [effective]action.
"He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another anger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind."
We differ our animal kin. Humans are not bound (and guided) by infallible instinct. Our inescapable condition: a larger brain, with an innate capacity for learning, has replaced instinct.
"..the more man gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with nature and the more he becomes an 'individual,' he has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world that destroys his freedom and the integrity of his individual self."
Once the bonds of primordial security have been severed, human beings experience a deep need to find means to overcome the feelings of powerlessness and aloneness that accompany the human gift/burden of
existential freedom.
Fromm outlines three main escape mechanisms, which are effective in
bringing short term relief from the sheer weight of our uniquely human predicament: automaton conformity, authoritarianism, and destructiveness.
karlof1, everything this administration does makes me feel like a good German. Apart from this preemptive war that most people who could read knew was a foregone conclusion before 9/11, we are also silent witnesses to the torture and deprivation of basic rights to "enemy combatants," the disappearing of people into secret prisons, the winnowing away of constitutional rights here, the crushing of dissent, the politicizing of the Justice Department, the in-your-face institutionalization of political corruption, the attempt at creating a one-party state, the sense of entitlement and "American exceptionalism" that fuels our arrogant and deadly imperialism, and I could go on.
So much of I have read about Germany in the 1930s is being repeated here today. It can happen here.
Very simply, the US Empire could not exist without corporate media complicity. Yet, at the same time the vast majority is also complicit--"going along to get along" is the appropriate phrase describing people opposed the the Empire's crimes but unwilling to take the principled stand to defund it at its taxbase-roots.
We are no different from the "good Germans" who watched from the sidelines, paid their taxes, and watched their world go to hell. It's very difficult to accept this, but we MUST accept this truth and act accordingly.
Regarding the Moyers' piece, it must be remembered that Clinton/Gore were just as manipulative of the media vis-a-vis Iraq, and that the media served them every bit as well as they served Cheney/Bush.
And don't forget the work of Scott Ritter, and the wisdom of those in Bush's circle (like Clarke) that published books articulating the vision before it was put into bloody action. Indeed, a case for war was FIXED and then acted upon. Of course that would be high treason if this nation didn't allow its so-called economic health to be determined by what drives Wall St and its pursuit of profit at all cost, war-for-hire included.
A longer clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Kngf803dQ
Watch the trailer on youtube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBQAQ3AWOU4
This is the fourth time I've tried to post a comment here.
Despite the media's complicity in facilitating this war, the information that should have guided American reasoning was carried there. From the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure and military in '91, the successful efforts of U.N. inspectors locating and destroying munitions, plants and feedstocks, to the effect of sanctions upon Iraqis, to Osama's interview in the desert proclaiming jihad against secularism - even Sadam's - it was all there.
It may be necessary to impeach every American that did not oppose this debacle for willful blindness and blatant stupidity.
Moyers is a hero. My local PBS station has yet to advertise this special. Will they show it? I've got a tape ready.
Fabricated intelligence and other untruths were created by the Bush-Cheney administration and the neocons, chicken hawks, warmongers and war profiteers associated with them.
The national news media, for the most part, was used, sometimes willingly, to sell these lies to the American people and Congress.
Spineless politicians in Washington went along with it.
Finally, maybe there will be more truth emerging on this terrible chapter in American history and those responsible will be held accountable.
Some of these issues are explored in:
"Mind Wars: Americans, global community are targets of deception on Iraq, threats to peace"
PopulistAmerica.com
October 5, 2006
http://www.populistamerica.com/mind_wars
does a president have to be hitler or mussolini before the democrats will impeach him and send him were he belongs. i think it would be very interesting having cheney as president for a year or so. i mean a real nut in charge. impeach him too. the claim that it would be to divisive for the citizens of america is childish. if we don't impeach these two assholes we will have a hitler or a mussolini in the white house. just wait. he/she is coming.
Bill Moyers doesn't want to be president, he wants US (American citizens) to fulfill our obligations as citizens of a democracy so that it isn't so extremely important who is running for president! Starting with getting big money out of elections so that we are heard by our representatives.
I've said this here before, but I'll say it again. I'm just a scmuck from rust-belt U.S.A. But I pay attention as best I can.
I watched in'91 as we destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq and then destroyed the Iraqi military as a fighting force in the field.
In the twelve subsequent years I watched and read, almost nightly, U.N. inspectors locating and destroying munitions, plants, and feedstocks inside Iraq.
I watched the interview, about a year before 9/11 of Osama in the desert, and realized that he was no friend to any secular government, including Sadam's.
I sought out and read the stories coming out of Iraq concerning the suffering and malaise caused by sanctions.
I would have and I should have bet everything I owned that there were no WMD's in Iraq. I could have been well off I could have got anyone to take that bet.
IT WAS AN ACT OF WILLFUL BLINDNESS OR AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF OUR OIL DEPENDENCY BY OUR LEADERS THAT SANCTIONED THIS TRAVESTY.
And on the night that Bush announced the commencement of shock and awe I envisioned everything that was to follow, to this very day, and I cried.
How can we be so stupid? I continue to say we, because I was innefective at stopping it.
I second that. Integrity, courage, not to mention the capacity to articulate...how refreshing....
Bill Moyers for POTUS.