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TechnoratiOnce again, an American president is threatening to use force against another country; in this case, the Bush administration is threatening, at a minimum, to launch cruise missiles into Iran. President Bush also recently said that a military confrontation with Iran could lead to World War III. And once again, such threats demonstrate that the U.S . news media is content to permit the president to operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the UN Charter when it comes to one of the most important and momentous foreign policy decisions-when to resort to the threat and use of force against another country. How can it be that one person, given our well-established system of constitutional checks and balances, can make that decision alone without any immediate need to defend the territorial borders of the United States against an armed attack?
It is clear that the president has no legal authority under the Constitution or the Charter to decide whether to attack another country. According to the Constitution's delegation of war powers, only the Congress is authorized "to declare war," while the president as "Commander in Chief" has the authority to conduct war once it is declared by Congress. Referring to the constitutional limitations placed upon the president, James Madison wrote: "Those who are to conduct war cannot in the nature of things be the proper judges whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded."
Referring again to the president's war powers, Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson: "The Constitution supposes what the History of all Gov[ernments] demonstrates, that the Ex[ecutive] is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war with the Legis[lature]." Jefferson, while writing to Madison, stated: "We have already given in example one effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend [the Executive] to those who are to pay [the Legislature]."
Likewise, no head of state, including the president of the United States, has any legal authority under the UN Charter to unilaterally resort to force. The Charter prohibits the threat and use of force by a state that is not the victim of an "armed attack"-that is, in Daniel Webster's generally accepted formulation, when military forces cross an international boundary in visible, massive, and sustained form, and "when the necessity for action" is "instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." The intention of the Charter in this regard is to make force the instrument of the world community, and not of individual states.
Perhaps the most coherent explanation in the United States of international law and the use of force was presented in the 1960s by a group of distinguished foreign-policy and international law scholars. The group, the Lawyers Committee on Vietnam, chaired by Richard Falk, at one point emphasized the legal synergy between the Constitution and the Charter with regard to how they limit the legal resort to force by an American president. They wrote: "Above all, the Founding Fathers restricted the power of the Executive to 'repel sudden attacks.' This expresses and foreshadows the philosophy of the United Nations Charter provisions and affirms what is being urged here: namely, that just as the framers of the Constitution accepted the need for special, carefully restricted powers 'to repel sudden attack,' so did the framers of the United Nations Charter acknowledge the need of Member states for special, carefully restricted powers 'if an armed attack occurs.' Hence, for such emergencies, the United States Constitution permits an exception to the general rule that only Congress can declare war; and the Charter permits an exception from its general rule that only the Security Council can authorize military actions if international peace is threatened. From the standpoint of both instruments, the Constitution and the Charter, exceptional emergency measures are permitted to prevent disaster."
Thus, if in fact Iran is a threat to international peace, but does not engage in an armed attack against the United States-which it won't and can't-then the decision about how to respond to Iran under international law lies with the UN Security Council, and not the United States or President Bush. This situation is parallel to the war powers in the U.S. Constitution, which gives President Bush no authority, in the absence of an armed attack on the United States, to attack Iran without a congressional declaration of war.
In addition, the Constitution requires U.S. compliance with the UN Charter and its most important rule-the prohibition against the threat and use of force. This is because Article VI, section 2, of the Constitution says that "all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land." This constitutional stipulation would obviously apply to the UN Charter, the world's most important treaty, which has been signed and ratified by the United States. Thus, to the extent that a U.S. use of force would violate the UN Charter, it also would violate the U.S. Constitution. And as the Lawyers Committee on Vietnam argued in the 1960s, "No branch of government is permitted directly or indirectly (by delegation) to violate the Constitution." This means that, short of formally abrogating the UN Charter and dropping out of the UN, even the Congress cannot legally authorize President Bush to attack Iran in the absence of an armed attack by Iran on the United States or an authorizing resolution from the UN Security Council.
Unfortunately, when the Bush administration, from September 12, 2001 to March 20, 2003, repeatedly threatened to invade Iraq, the New York Times editorial page took none of these constitutional or international law conosiderations into account in any of its editorials throughout this period. In fact, in over 70 editorials on Iraq from September 2001 to March 2003, the Times' editorial page never mentioned the words "UN Charter" or "international law" on any of the editorials. This history is repeating itself with respect to the Bush administration's threats to attack Iran. While the Times has improved its oversight of the Bush administration's foreign policy since Andrew Rosenthal became editorial-page editor in January, it has not invoked to date the words "UN Charter" or "international law" in any of its editorials about the Bush administration's threats to attack Iran.
Why would it be important for the New York Times to integrate international law into its editorials on U.S. foreign policy? For one thing, the Times is the leading news organization in the United States. If the Times began using international law as a criterion of editorial analysis, including about the conduct of its own government, other major news organizations might follow. The net result would be increased journalistic oversight of illegal U.S. foreign policies. Invoking international law would also diminish the political utility of presidential lying as a way of justifying the illegal use of force by the United States.
For example, the Bush administration repeatedly justified its threats to invade Iraq, and ultimately the invasion itself, by claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to the United States and the international community. Irrespective of the truthfulness of this claim, it was offered mainly as a justification to invade Iraq. However, by itself, this claim, even if accurate, did not justify a U.S. use of force against Iraq under the UN Charter. But the political usefulness of the WMD claim rested on the assumption-unchallenged by the New York Times and other major news outlets-that it legitimately justified a unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq.
In this case and many others, American presidents have misrepresented facts to the American public in order to justify the illegal use of force by the United States. In almost every such instance, the New York Times reported these presidential assertions as valid, not only in a factual sense, but also as providing a legitimate justification for an American president to resort to the use of force. The result has been not only some of the worst journalism in the history of the New York Times, but the initiation of numerous illegal wars by the United States.
Today, it is difficult to tell whether Iran is developing a nuclear-weapons program or aiding armed insurgents in Iraq, as the Bush administration charges. In any event, these charges, even if true, would not provide President Bush with any authority under the UN Charter to launch cruise missiles or otherwise attack Iran. Whether Iran is a threat to international peace, and what to do about it, is a determination for the UN Security Council to make, not the Bush administration by itself. While this is an obvious and critically important point, the Times has neglected to make precisely this point throughout the course of its post-UN Charter history of supporting the illegal use of force by American presidents.
While the New York Times and the rest of the US news media ignore international law, they deprive the American public of the opportunity, and the right, to participate in the formulation of US foreign policy, and ultimately to determine (a) whether the United States should conduct itself legally or illegally in world affairs, (b) whether its citizens will fight in legal or illegal wars, and (c) whether taxed income should continue to pay for the apparently endless stream of illegal U.S. military adventures.
While the editorial page under Rosenthal's direction has certainly improved its oversight of the illegal policies of the Bush administration, the mother of all improvements would be to incorporate the UN Charter and international law into its editorials about U.S. foreign policy. This should begin at the Times and elsewhere in the U.S. news media before President Bush attacks Iran and, by that, quite possibly, starts World War III.
Howard Friel is coauthor with Richard Falk of The Record of the Paper: How The New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy (Verso, 2004), and Israel-Palestine on Record: How The New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East (Verso, 2007).
40 Comments so far
Show AllThe Media
The New York Times, along with all major publications, have always represented the interests of capitalism. Why would anyone think differently? It is big business who pays their bills, and generates their profits. This is even more the case with Television. Without the approval, and support of their sponsors they would be out of business. Their partnership with industry, and government has not changed. What has changed is our the government. Our democracy is bordering on fascism. The Media that was once supporting only the powerful,is now supporting outright criminals. There is a big, big difference.
I don't think our media has ever been in such sad shape, but we do not have to depend on them for information. It is unbelievable, but for the first time in fifty years people are watching less television. People are rediscovering books. More books have been published on almost every subject, and people are buying them, and reading them. The government hasn't taken over the Internet yet, and you can find plenty of quality independent journalism, and differences of opinions. The silliness on the web is sometimes better than TV sitcoms.
On the sad shape of our nation, I am afraid that turning off the TV, and reading a book is not going to help much. I try to keep an optimistic outlook. We must never stop doing all we can to end the war, prevent the next one, and return our Nation to a Democracy.
This is not the right approach. Again, it seems this failed administration is shooting us all in the foot.
Do you think sanctions on Iran are an effective measure to force change in leadership & behavior or will they end up hurting the average Iranian? Vote NOW on: http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=791
Make your voice heard.
Our legislators have been corrupting "law" and the American Constitution for years - unwittingly or not - before any of us were even born.
The "secret" war taking place is also one of corrupting our very language to suit a specific legal purpose - to tear apart our Constitution and eventually enslave us.
This idea of subjugating American law to international law is preposterous... and it's destructive of our Republic!
Why give the Times the gift that keeps on giving... like respect? They are conspicuous in their absence of defending our sovereignty at all - just like all the other big-time media mouthpieces - in the same way they've corrupted their credibility as truth warriors of the 4th Estate in the first place.
The NY Times is indefensible; and it should never be sought out as an honest purveyor of anything... except obfuscation and lies!
Check out the concept of commmunitarianism and its insidious relationship to the CFR, UN, CAFTA, NAFTA, NAU, GATT, WTO, the Fed and other central banks, and our own big media and government lap dogs - from the Left and the Right. America is being taken over by totalitarians... from within... and without the knowledge of ordinary Americans.
May I suggest one start with this series of articles?
http://www.newswithviews.com/Raapana/niki11.htm
These trumped-up wars are FOR the cabal of financial elitists leading us to their grand vision of a NWO - make no mistake about it!
Our "protectors" are anything but... as they are identifiable only as useful sock puppets to their paymasters behind the scenes. In their world-view, oil is still the one essential resource left to save the dollar... counterfeit though it may be.
And the neo-con-artists understand the UN is toothless... just like now is our Congress... which explains Bushco's audacity.
If we really want to stop whining and start acting to save our individual liberties from disappearing forever we need to wake the **** up!
Only Ron Paul has been advocating for the repeal of the 16th Amendment from way before this election cycle. It's time we paid this man some serious heed.
Throw out your assumptions, false beliefs, accepted definitions, and previously understood labels - our country is headed for sure disaster... without some intervention here at home... where it counts!
This is a good article, but fails to mention that Iran has options and rights.
I think we need to consider the situation from Iran's point of view with international law in mind. Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter (and by extension the US Constitution via Article 6 (2)) forbids threats of or attacks against member states. The Nuremberg and the Tokyo precedents establish illegal aggression as the supreme international crime–a crime against peace. The US government is violating the law, not only in Iraq with the invasion and occupation; not only via the threats against Iran; but is actually building up troops and naval forces to strike Iran. The president and the candidates in both major parties are threatening war including nuclear war by saying "all options are on the table"–a war crime.
Consider what this means. If some nation did all of this to us, via UN Charter Article 51, we would have the legal right to inform the UNSC that we are invoking the Article 51 right of self-defense, and while we strike those preparing to strike us, we ask the SC to restore peace and prevent war. This is the legal right of preemption.
But the US government is the aggressor.
Iran has never invaded or occupied another nation, not in modern times. Iran has an inalienable right to their commercial nuclear enrichment program via Article 4 of the NPT. In fact the US has the obligation to help them develop it, while we have the obligation to engage in good faith efforts to negotiate for complete nuclear disarmament (via Article 6).
What does all this mean for progressives regarding a likely crime against peace by the US against Iran?
Simply this: Iran increasingly has a legal right to strike US forces provided they invoke Article 51 with the UNSC. They could destroy the so-called Green Zone. They could sink US carriers. They have a real military. The US could lose more soldiers in a day than so far in Iraq during the invasion and occupation.
So if and when Iran strikes out to defend itself from US government aggression, it is important for progressives to have a clear understanding of the legal and constitutional situation. The way to deal with such an outbreak of hostilities is not to rally behind US government leaders, but to hold them accountable for their crimes and seek peace with the Iranians.
Does AIPAC also control the NY Times?
Excellent article. But I really do not understand why people complain so much about Bush. This is a policy supported by almost the entire US senate and the house. Only a handful of them actually stood up and called the action illegal and immoral.
Bush will not attack Iran in a pre-emptive strike, he is waiting, with his bunker buster bombs and 10s of thousands of bombs ready for the day one stupid IRGC member gets mad enough to do something stupid to give an excuse to Bush (or Hilary for that matter if she gets elected next year) to destroy Iran's military as well as the was majority of the factories, power plants, bridges and most of the countries infrastructure.
The goal is to destroy Iran and not the mullahs, to divide the country into fractions and take over the control of the OIL in Azerbaijan and Kuzestan (in the name of democracy, human rights and "independence").
IRI don't have a chance in this conflict, even though they bark a lot, the can not bit, but what they can do in return is the make the life of ordinary Europeans and Americans a living hell, by stopping the oil flow from the ME even temporarily, it will get the oil up to $200 and you and I have to pay for it.
Unregulated capitalism is the disease,war is a symptom, greed is the lubrication and the poor suspecting are left with the pain in the aftermath.
So much for the "liberal" media.
It's long past time to evict this murdering lunatic war profiteer from the White House and from the USA for that matter. Let's send him and his boss Cheney to Argentina with the other Nazi war criminals.
While they're at it the NYT might remind Americans, incessantly, that genuine patriotism favours the constitution over the shredder-in-chief.
War with Iran before the election, some attack from the terrorists, a suspension of elections, overide congress, overide judicial branch, its all laid out and ready to go, the dictator is here.........
If the bombing of Iran happens, it will prove that the American electorate is freaking stupid. I plan to move to Sweden. I never married and have no children; and, boy, have these past seven loooonnnnggggg years made me very happy about those facts. What are the children going to do with this horrible world Bush/Cheney and the rightwing Republicans have wrought? There are many Americans who should be very ashamed . . . very ashamed--particularly the ones I know who voted for Bush because they cared about the right to life.
FRANK__ You are dead on right, there will be no stopping Bush and Darth from starting hostilities in Iran. Those little boys cannot wait to try out more toys, like as you said , bunker-busters and nuke missiles, to protect the AMERICAN PEOPLE again. GOD and the Decider in Chief do not need an OK from Congress to do whatever foolish and criminal action they want.
KIVALS__ I think your picture of Bush on his ranch in Paraguay laughing at we suckers who gave him eight wonderful years to be Commander in Chief is certainly a possibility.
If another war occurs before Bush's time runs out, the blood will be on Nancy Pelosi's hands.
The New York Times and other mainstream media are the mouthpieces of the US imperialism, and there is no reason why they should highlight the illegal actions of this rouge government. They are all vultures that feed on the carcasses of war victims.
The newspapers' contributions as cheerleaders to the US war crimes are not as direct as those of the US Congress and Administration officials They are, with a few exceptions, all war criminals and must be tried and hanged by the people.
The US press, the US Siamese political parties, the Congress, the church, and the military are all in it together, blowing up our tax dollars in the form of bombs and missiles, and we the people just watch.
The chicken hawk in the White House must have watched a lot of cowboy movies from the lawless, wild West that has affected his retarded mentality. He's just a lawless criminal with a big mouth that is compensating for his lack of manhood where it counts.
In case anyone hasn't noticed, laws - either domestic, international, or even of physics - are no longer operational. Some God speaks through Bush, don't you understand? And some God does not need no stinkin' laws, comprende? Pre God-Message-Receiver-in-Chief - sure, laws, treaties, basic human f**king decency were in play.
Post God-Message-Receiver-in-Chief, there is only one authority. It's really not Bushy's fault that this God really, really likes bombing the living sh*t out of stuff. If God told him to obey the laws, he would, he swears. But, you know, this particular God - well, he's just itchin' to test out the new and improved mini nuke bunker bashers...
Plus, there is no International Police Force capable of enforcing International Law, which means there really is no such thing as International Law. Aside from a Congressional wrist slap, who's gonna stop Cheneybush - or any other crazy American Pres - from killing any and all he or she damn well pleases?
Here we go again:
Bush threatens to bomb Iran, to invade Cuba but is going to BUY Mexico for 7 billion.
Cheap deal--because Mexico has less than 10 years of petroleum reserves left.
It's a moot point....when the time comes, Benedict Pelosi and her merry band of ass-kissers will give B.L.Z. Bush whatever authorization he wants to further his evil plans
The American public does not want to know, doesn't have time to read, finds it depressing and boring to think. The only kinds of "issues" that can grab it's attention are celebrity antics and sex scandals. Let's not fool ourselves. The American public wants everything to be cheap, easy, and risk-free, and entertaining. The government and the media have committed egregious wrongs, but the populace has not been too impressive either.
the people who really own the Times own Lockheed and the rest of the crappy mess. 'nuf said?
If (or when) the Bush-Cheney administration and their associates decide to attack Iran, there will be various serious outcomes.
The "blowback" from such an attack could come in many forms.
The impacts on American society could also be quite significant.
Thoughts on this in the articles ...
"Will Bush, Cheney attack Iran? When and why?"
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=2009...
- - -
"Military draft needed for war with Iran and Syria?"
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=1169...
If the media and the public buy this shit again then Americans and any complicit nation (that means you Israel)deserve whatever catastrophe ensues. How fucking insane is it for the president to "chuckle" over World War Three?!
I'm just a nobody on the fringes of a failed democracy. I have very little power to change the course of these madmen, but I do have power to respond to the sinking feeling in my gut. The writing is on the wall and I'm preparing for the worst. I will not let the survival of loved ones be dependent on the governments actions. I'll continue to work within this rapidly failing system as best as I can, but I'm not hopeful.
As the sufi's say "praise god, but tether your camel". Or as my friend says "praise liberty, but head for the hills".
ON A RELATED TOPIC:apologies to anyone who has read this.
"Presidential power patois?" [Excerpt]
Bruce Fein
October 23, 2007
"President Bush has his Michael B. Mukasey, attorney general-designate, to defend his multiple challenges to the Constitution, just as King Henry VIII had his Cardinal Wolsey to defend his nullity suit against Katherine of Aragon.
During two days of confirmation hearings last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey echoed Mr. Bush's bloated conception of presidential powers. A few senators complained or voiced chagrin, but Mr. Mukasey's confirmation seems assured. By not leveraging confirmation to insist on an attorney general devoted to the Constitution's checks and balances, the Senate betrayed effeteness destined to culminate in government by presidential edict.
Mr. Mukasey denounced torture as unconstitutional, but declined to rebuke President Bush's signing statement issued in conjunction with the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 claiming inherent constitutional power to torture to gather foreign intelligence. Indeed, Mr. Mukasey expressed no qualms about hundreds of Mr. Bush's signing statements declaring his intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that the president believes are unconstitutional. Signing statements are indistinguishable from absolute line-item vetoes which the United States Supreme Court voided in Clinton v. New York. They result in the enforcement of laws that Congress did not pass. Members vote to approve an entire bill, not an expurgated version prepared by the president.....Mr. Bush has logarithmically inflated the danger of international terrorism and a caliphate in the United States to a combination of Josef Stalin, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Adolf Hitler, Hirohito and Benito Mussolini to justify, among other things, permanent war, indefinite detentions of U.S. citizens as unlawful enemy combatants and the kidnapping, imprisonment and torture of terrorist suspects abroad....
.....The attorney general-designate supports every dubious premise that President Bush has trumpeted since September 11, 2001, to cripple checks and balances: that the conflict with international terrorism constitutes permanent war in which every square inch of the United States is an active battlefield where military force and military law can be employed at the president's discretion; that global terrorists must be subject to a special system of military or quasi-military justice that shortchanges procedural protections against government abuses or overreaching; that transparency should be subservient to government secrecy under the twin banners of national security or the confidentiality of presidential advice; and, that congressional oversight is a needless vexation to the executive branch because legislators are motivated by petty and partisan ambitions.
When the Senate confirms Mr. Mukasey, it will have confirmed its own reduction to an inkblot among the Constitution's checks and balances."
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer with Bruce Fein & Associates and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20071023/COMMENTARY02
It is about time again for Judith Miller to write another one of her enlightening articles that the Bush Administration can quote as a reason to go to war. I'll get my popcorn ready.
Militantliberal...I believe the congresspeople are more attached to fear; fear of whatever the bush dynasty "has" on most congresspeople and fear of losing their corporate "gifts". Everyone asks why do they cave in all the time...it's the ongoing question. I always look for the simplest answer. And, given the corruption of the vast majority of politicians, the fears I mention above are my answers. If they are "choosing" empire power over institutional power, I truly believe we are putting them on a pedestal far above their intellectual capacity.
This is an outrage!
The people heard his quote about WWIII, and where is the public outcry?
This is UNACCEPTABLE!!!
I've become convinced that there is a close relationship between the imperial presidency and American empire. Why would Congress yield its war power when to do so concedes control over spending? We see this effect in the way Congress forks over the money today with scarcely a murmur because they must "support the troops". One would think they'd want that money to spend on bridges to nowhere in their home states or something. And why would they continue doing this when the war and president are deeply unpopular? The only answer I come up with is they are more attached to the power of the American empire than they are to their institutional power. And so are we the people. Letting the president launch wars on his own is a form of moral displacement; he gets his hands dirty so we can have clean consciences while supporting the troops occupying someone else's country and not worrying about the details.
Here's an idea so radical that you may never see it in the Nation or Mother Jones. I'd like to amend the Constitution to strip the president of the "commander-in-chief" power. Let Congress fill the post of Secretary of Defense and make her the commander-in-chief, serving at the pleasure of Congress. The thing could still devolve into a dictatorship, but you'd have a chance of restoring balance to our government. Congress would have to do its dirty work or get rid of the dirt.
A less radical idea, but one requiring a Congress with spines, would be to impose explicit and dire criminal sanctions on the president and his civilian and military subordinates for beginning hostilities without a declaration of war. I assume Hillary or Mitt or whoever would run crying to the Supreme Court, which would likely invoke its "political question" doctrine and hide.
I feel like we are in the movie "Groundhog Day"...it is like we are in a timewarp back to 2003 and reliving the build-up to war with Iraq.
This article is very important and frankly, there can not be an educated conversation about any type of Iran confrontation without discussing the law. The point seems like common sense, but it is a fundamental point that is consistanly ignored by the mainstream media. When we have leaders that are constantly operating outside of the Constitution and International Law it is necessary for impeachment to be ON THE TABLE. I am fearful of the road that we are on.
Jack London wrote over a hundred years ago in IRON HEEL: "You have forgotten the editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain. Their policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the established. The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it."
Hoa binh
Bandido..I would be statistically kinder and say 60%-70%. In some interview (believe it was Faux News), Norman Mailer and his son were being interviewed around his recent book. The commentator (sorry, who knows who it was..all these guys look the same to me) asked if bush was so bad, why did 52% of the American voting public vote for him. Mailer's answer was concise and quick. "They're stupid", he said. Haven't seen Mailer on TV since then. Of course, I don't watch TV anymore, so who knows.
It seems to me that all the evidence cited above shows the country who threatens international peace the most is the United States of America.
Americans are apparently too stupid to understand concepts like just war, too ignorant of even recent history, and that includes reporters for the Times. They live in a TV reality, a shallow intellect, without any integrity or honesty, they are Mencken's booboisie, governed by base emotions, devoid of rational thought. That's 99% of Americans. The other 1% are blogging on this and similar sites.
No one should wonder about whether the US will be ultimately punished for its transgressions. Almost certainly at least 95 percent of the population will pay a steep price for all the crimes and foolishness of the Bush administration, as well as previous administrations. It's just too bad that the small percentage who actually influenced and benefited from the Bush administration policies will not be in that 95 percent.
I can see Bush on his gigantic, well-protected ranch in Paraguay, speaking to his guest Darth, in the not-too-distant future: "Those stupid rube losers shouldn't of voted for us, huh Dick? They gettin' their just deserts now, huh? Yuck, yuck, yuck!"
What has not been mentioned and is critical to this discussion is that Congress shamefully (and possibly unconstitutionally) abdicated it's responsibility to declare war with Iraq--including a majority of Democrats. Between Bush's 'unitary executive' power grab and a compliant and complicit Congress, they should all be tried for treason, and the administration for war crimes.
Too bad the rest of the world won't stand up to the US--how about sanctions against us for a change? Where is the moral outrage from the rest of the world? It's obvious We The People have no more say or control over this criminal and insane fascist government.
We're headed for war with Iran (and then WW3), and this spineless Congress will just cave again (or have they already, considering Hillary's vote on the recent Lieberclown declaration?).
It's no mystery why the NYT reports news this way. Chomsky & Edw Herman explained it perfectly in 1988, in "Manufacturing Consent," and many other writers on the Left have been fully aware of this phenomenon for decades.
Essentially, the above article is merely admitting that Chomsky & Herman were right all along, in their analysis. (Better late than never, I guess...)
The real question is whether any private for-profit business, like the NYT, is able to resist the pressures always pushing them to conform to the economic & political interests of the US ruling elite. And the answer is, unfortunately, that it's not possible. ANY private media business is going to behave just like this, sooner or later -- they all do. The WaPo, the LA Times, Time, Newsweek, all the broadcast networks, even PBS -- they are all more or less the same. Even FOX News, which liberals fancy themselves superior to, shares most of the same underlying assumptions that make the NYT behave as it does. // Even in the UK, even the famed BBC is not all that much better. To be sure, it's not quite as bad as the US media -- but it suffers from the same general kinds of corrupting forces.
In other words, the phenomenon is intrinsic to capitalism itself. It's not a property of the NYT; it's not even something that obtains specially in the US. In all capitalist societies, the press is a privileged sector, and will generally line up with the consensus of elites.
Well-established system of constitutional checks and balances? Not after 9/11. Suggesting that the press bring international law into the scope of their palp, as a sort of check or oversight, is ridiculous. The Washington Pot celebrated the war effort, (both of them), nary a whimper as cruise missles rained down on Iraq in 2003. The press is part of the problem, the constitution is a flexible remnant of history: outdated, a bad script for a facism, desperately in need of an overhaul, revision and update. Under closer scrutiny, any media luddite on the left or right who waves the aged script of the constitution, like a southern firebrand minister would wave a bible, is in danger of being discredited as a cheerleader for broken governance.
I don't know what the rest of you all's experience has been, but even in the least consequential of stories printed in the nytimes, say about a trend in bicycle riders in the city, it's all only partly truth and aggravatingly false. Where do they find reporters of such prodigious talent that even in the most trivial of details they have to fabricate according to some false script someone's cooking up somewhere? And why would that script even relate to, for example, the bicycle?
It's a paper you have to read knowing that it's only partly true, if that. But, there seems to be a shortage of truth going around these days anyway, living in a dream world as we do.
Condi just announced sanctions against Iran. It is now illegal for any American organization or person to engage in financial transactions with Iran. Time to close down your Iranian bank account!
The last time the US prohibited its citzens trading with Iran Cheney was CEO with Haliburton. Haliburton did trade with Iran but Cheney pleaded ignorance. Some small player from another country (where it was actually still legal to trade with Iran) took the fall for Haliburton's trade with Iran:
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/dickcheney/halliburton.html
Very important article, even if each of these points is well-known to educated readers outside the US. This type of information should be incorporated into every US high school student's civics curriculum and into every US military officer's rules of engagement/military ethics class.
How about some footnotes for the quotes from the founding fathers and the other citations?
The New York Times of Zion