Propaganda and the Media
Once upon a time, it was widely believed that one of the greatest sins the U.S. government or its temporary political masters could commit was to turn a propaganda machine loose on the American people.
Congress viewed this so seriously that every appropriations bill passed since 1951 has contained language that says no public money “shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States” without the lawmakers’ prior approval.
The Bush administration has been caught violating the propaganda ban before, notably in 2005 in the case of radio host Armstrong Williams, who was paid to endorse President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.
Particularly abhorrent to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which oversees compliance with the ban, is an agency’s use of “covert propaganda” or “covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties.”
This is why alarm bells should be ringing all over Washington about The New York Times’ disclosure that then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld encouraged a secret Pentagon program to care for and spoon-feed more than 50 retired senior military officers whom the administration deemed reliable friends who could be counted on “to carry our water” on the television and cable networks.
Feeding the military analysts “key and valuable information” in secret briefings by Pentagon and White House officials, the idea went, would make them the go-to guys for the networks and encourage the networks to “weed out the less reliably friendly analysts . . . .”
This 2005 memorandum, addressed to then Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Larry DiRita, added: “This trusted core group will be more than willing to work closely with us because we are their bread and butter.”
Asked about the case of Col. Bill Cowan, who says he was fired as a military analyst for Fox News and cut off from the briefings for criticizing the war effort, DiRita told Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com: “I don’t know anything. I saw that in the story. I’ve heard other assertions to that effect. It was certainly not the intent.”
In a follow-up e-mail exchange between DiRita and Greenwald, Rumsfeld’s former mouthpiece - now Bank of America’s chief spokesman - elaborated on what he said he didn’t remember: “I simply don’t have any recollection of trying to restrict him (Cowan) or others from exposure to what was going on.”
DiRita added: “There are plenty of examples to the contrary - reaching out to people who specifically disagreed with us. One example I recall is Joe Galloway - a persistent critic and apparently popular with military readers. He came in and met Secretary Rumsfeld and we had other interactions.”
Now that’s a real knee-slapper: Me as a poster boy for how Rumsfeld and DiRita “reached out” to their harshest critics even as they stroked and promoted and schemed to embed the old reliables to wax enthusiastic about a war that was going from bad to worse.
Let the record show that Rumsfelds’ folks reached out to me on these few occasions:
* In early summer of 2003, half a dozen of us were invited to an off-the-record lunch with Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. The defense secretary seemed to have a poor grasp of the reality on the ground in Iraq and was still declaring that we’d do no nation-building there. He saw no insurgency, only a handful of “dead-enders”.
* In October 2005, DiRita called to invite me to travel with Rumsfeld to the Middle East and Australia. I declined because it conflicted with a long-booked graduation speech I was to give at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. to a class of new Air Force F-16 fighter pilots that included my nephew. DiRita was stunned that I wouldn’t drop a bunch of fighter pilots to be schmoozed by his boss.
* In November 2005, DiRita invited me to a “one-on-one” lunch with Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. This one I accepted. I arrived to find across the table Rumsfeld, the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace; Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody; Joint Staff Director Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp and DiRita. We went at it hammer and tongs for an hour and a half over their conduct of the war and the errors that were costing the lives of American soldiers. As I left, I told Rumsfeld that I’d continue to point out those mistakes every week in my column.
* In April 2006, DiRita sent me an e-mail telling me that my most recent column was “silly”. That column had discussed an expensive war game the Pentagon conducted about a U.S. attack on a thinly disguised country that obviously was Iran.
A retired Marine general, Paul Van Riper, had been the commander of the “enemy” forces, and he used unconventional tactics to destroy the U.S. Navy flotilla in the Persian Gulf, leaving thousands of sailors and Marines dead. At that point, the commanders stopped the war game, reset everything and imposed new rules forbidding Van Riper from employing those tactics.
Van Riper walked out, furious, and requested an investigation. DiRita complained in his e-mail that I was silly to blame Rumsfeld for this and for covering up the investigators’ report. After all, he wrote, Rumsfeld couldn’t be expected to know retired generals several levels below him or to bear responsibility for such matters. His complaint sparked an escalating e-mail war that most reckon DiRita lost. The entire exchange was posted on the Internet and can still be found there.
So much for the Rumsfeld/DiRita outreach to their critics. They were much too busy hand-feeding horse manure to their TV generals, who in turn were feeding the same product to the American public by the cubic yard.
There’s little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert propaganda operations mounted against the American public by their own government. But in this administration, there’s no one left to enforce that law or any of the other laws the Bush operatives have been busy violating.
The real crime is that the scheme worked. The television network bosses swallowed the bait, the hook, the line and the sinker, and they have yet to answer for it.
Joseph L. Galloway, a military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, is the co-author, with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, of “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” a story of the first large-scale ground battle of the Vietnam War.
© 2008 McClatchy Newspapers
This article shows that it wasn’t just the Generals who were embedded with Pentagon talking points. The entire Bush Administration has used the tactic of limiting access to reporters who don’t give favorable coverage.
The entire “rule of law” concept is dead and its murderers reign supreme. End of story.
Where is the accountability? Where is our Congress?
I would like to see this thoroughly investigated and some real accountability– as opposed to the media’s convenient pooh-pooh Pollyanna labels like “shenanigans” and “scandals”.
Like so much else that the Bush Gang has perpetrated, this is clearly against the law.
It amazes me that a teen caught with a joint would go to prison but blatant law-breakers at the highest levels just wave their hands dismissively to their media pals as they crawl into their Hummer limos.
Oh wait, silly me. I forgot who runs our politicized Republikkkan Uber Alles DOJ and how it and the FBI and Talon-wielding local police forces trained to become jackbooted JTTF run the show.
Nevermind.
The major networks still refuse to cover the story. It will just go away into our history books or a Hollywood movie.
Hoa binh
According to some older Germans living in the US now, they say that the media in the US now is the SAME as during Nazi Germany — a propaganda machine spewing whatever the ‘government’ tells it to. The difference is that during Nazi Germany, the people knew the news was from the ‘government’and took it for the propaganda it was — but in the US, the people didn’t know it. They had to slowly wake up to it — way too late.
Capitalism, capitalism, it devours everything, everything—a book called “On Bended Knee” came out after Reagan demonstrating the government realization that they, officials, own the raw material that is sold as daily/nightly news. Be nice to the crooks and tyrants or no more press-pass into the bunker. Give the press chumps something to suck on so they won’t (as against Nixon) do their own investigating. Lo and behold, journalists have gotten used to the spoon feeding, their bosses like the reduced costs. Imagine cutting the number of overseas people/bureaus in a globalizing world….What a concept! So everybody can keep believing in the “freedom” we’re spreading….
And then there was this:
“White House’s Loyal Reporter Once Worked as Gay Hooker.” Another clear violation of propaganda laws, planting a cultist in the press corp.
And also this:
“Those on stage at most of the (Bush) town hall meetings are carefully screened people from the area who agree with the president’s proposals. The participants typically rehearse what they will say with members of the president’s advance team and rarely, if ever, say anything critical…”
The clearly insane Decider has been violating all propaganda laws (and virtually every other law in the known universe except the law of gravity,) since nearly the day he stole office.
IMPEACH!!!!
Why does all the Main Stream Media still only allow as guests and commentators on the Iraq War those who got it all wrong from the very beginning?
Propaganda in the Media??? Never. Where the F$$K was the American Media yesterday 15 March, 2008 in Room 2261 of the Rayburn House Building @ 9:30 am, this includes GD Commondreams?????
Sworn testimony before Congress, by name due to extensive voting on measures to help the Veterans, Barbara Lee, Keith Ellison, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Sheila Jackson Lee, by the IVAW Winter Soldiers Luis Montalvan(Army Captain 2 tours), Jason Lemeiux(Marine Infantry Rifleman(3 tours), Kristofer Goldsmith(Army Artillery Forward Observer) and many more. Sworn into the Congressional record to quell the bullshit about “Oh if they were honest they would have been under oath. They just did not want to be charged with anything.” bulls**t people.
No media just Cspan if you were watching, showed it split screen House Votes and Winter Soldier side by side. No one gives a F$$K, no one on this site because I know who was there, they ran 2 X 2 to place their votes, so testimony would not be interrupted. Yes Media Complicity it should read, ASSHOLES!
its called a coup d’etat, our democracy and free liberal press have been crippled severely
I have a FOAF who works for the GAO in Denver. I would like to hear what she has learned recently. I have found employment working for the soon to be doomed LNCB movement- grading government tests. Like the recently celebrated smack down of the ignorant neocon on Chris Mathews “Hard Ball”- These bastards have to be held to account for their ignorant propaganda. They have been getting a free ride for way way too long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK0d8ENS__c
“The drugs don’t work they just make you worse”- Radiohead
Propaganda is the worst drug there is.
Bush and McCain have everything simplified to waving the flag and “the terrorists”–the essential method of propaganda. Same in Vietnam. Same again today: Iran = the Nazis. Absurdity and idiot thinking, but Americans are too dumb to think about it, and the propagandists chuckle all the way to the bank. Why is Bush so continually in a good humor? We’re too stupid to think about what he says and represents.
What would we do if an enemy power occupied our country with an economic agenda as its foremost reason for invasion, tore down our economic structure, privatized everything to foreign companies, and made a move on our resources via the oil “law”? Add “shock and awe” to the populace generally and killing about a million of them. We’d sit back and say don’t bother me, I’m tired.
Truthseeker58 describes it correctly. In the old SU, people didn’t believe the lies. In the US, a lot of people do. In that respect, the US is one of the dumbest nations on Earth.
It’s not surprising that we have a near total blackout on this vital issue: all of the major TV networks in the U.S. are controlled by the Neocons. And I do mean all of them: Roger Ailes is president of Fox News; Les Moonves is president of CBS; Neil Shapiro is president of NBC News; David Westin is president of ABC News. When the major media are all controlled by one group, we should not be surprised when they collude to kill an important story.
Anybody who prefers sobriety to drugs just doesn’t appreciate this situation.
The propaganda arm of the American Administration is the American mainstream Media,MSNBC,CNN,ABC,CBS AND OF COURSE OUR FRIENDS WHO ARE FAIR AND BALANCED FOX and countless other media that toe the party line,they are the Love Child of Joseph Goebels,boy would he be proud of his off spring today if he were alive.
Even in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that this group of media corps could be so easily manipulated and compliant.
In 1975 the Papers of Record in the USA the New York times and the Washington Post went to the supreme court to fight for the right to publish the “Pentagon Papers” and won,they took on the Nixon Administration in the supreme court and won,but that was then and this is now.
And now there are no more Woodward and Bernstein,no more Danial Ellsberg,Deep Throat has passed away and the plumbers have fixed all the leaks and the Zionist are in complete control,and anybody who threatens the Status Quo will be destroyed or assasinated,just ask Joe Wilson and his wife.
G.Gordon Liddy has his own radio program,Oliver North is a celebrity and hero to a lot of Americans,Necroponte is back in favour,you know the guy who ran the death squads in Latin America.
All these guys have one thing in common,they want to win and win at all cost,that’s the American ideology,as the American Football Coach said “winning isn’t everything,it’s the only thing”and you have won.But What have you won?
You have won the right to call yourselfs the the most Blood thirsty,warmongering,War criminals in history,from Vietnam,Korea,Latin America,Middle East,Europe and every god Forsaken country that you have installed a dictator and financed him to the hilt.
The main stream media talked about bringing democracy to the middle East,well why not start with all the friends of the USA,shall we.
Saudi Arabia,now that’s Democracy in action.
Jordan,wow when is the last time they had elections
Egypt,dictatorship at it’s finest
Pakistan,Musharaf was backed from the start by Uncle Sam
Kuwait,let’s keep the OIL flowing
Iraq,Saddam,what was that Quote,he was our “son of a bitch”
Chile,Pinochet now there is a true patriot and war criminal
Oman,Qatar,UAE, the List is endless.
ALL BROUGHT TO YOU THROUGH THE COURTESY OF FOX MSNBC,CNN,CBS AND ALL THE OTHER MAIN STREAM MEDIA.
One day and i hope it will be soon,you will wake up from your slumber,get off your butts and turn that crap that calls itself news,of your TV,AND MAYBE JUST MAYBE,YOU MAY FINALLY COME FACE TO FACE WITH REALITY.
In November,you the American people will be going to the polls to elect the next President of the USA,and the whole world will be watching,and the choice you make will effect the whole world,but changing the man who sits in the oval office won’t make one bit of difference,it is the American Foriegn Policy that needs changing and that is the root of the problem.
What is the Catch cry of the Neo-cons
FULL SPECTRUM DOMINATION
My friends and I marvel at how blatantly UnAmerican Bush and his rightist flag wavers really are. They’re indistinguishable from a professional demolition team sent in to wreck every last vestage of government-by-the-people.
They get away with it largely because the news media frame what’s happening for the gullible US public, as if it were all normal and necessary –which proves that the media are are an integral part of the demo team.
You could say that this recent action by the US Senate to resist further news media centralization is a step in the right direction -but it’s such a tiny step that it’s real meaning may only be window-dressing, intended to throw media critics a few zero-calorie crumbs. In any case, Bush The Impaler promises to veto it.
Gee, I always thought that, since the year 2,000, the MSM was employed by the White House. Are you sure they aren’t?
Anyway, Rupert will soon own the White House, won’t he? He might get George to deliver papers! Surely he could handle that.
P.S. Does anyone know if George is a member of the NRA? Check my blog for an irreverent post about it and McCain!
- it’s a very deep rabbit hole - dissected a bit more here - They’re Building a Box - and You’re In It - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box-intro.html
Turce May 16th, 2008 8:33 pm:
Where the F$$K was the American Media yesterday 15 March, 2008 in Room 2261 of the Rayburn House Building @ 9:30 am, this includes GD Commondreams?????
…
Yes Media Complicity it should read, ASSHOLES!
I enjoy passion in a Reader Comment
But seriously, do you think CommonDreams can afford to send reporters to cover important events ??? Did you notice they are asking for $35K in Donations for this QUARTER ?
CommonDreams is a handful of people in Portland, Maine that Every single day - 365 days a year - our knowledgeable and dedicated staff sifts through hundreds of sources on your behalf, to compile the latest and best news and progressive opinions available.
I appreciate this site very much, and the Forums are a nice plus (you were able to describe the event that you were passionate about), but don’t expect them to have a budget of $millions like The New York Times. Corporate advertiser sponsored News is obviously not the best system for an informed citizenry.
And please donate to CommonDreams; I have.
Also, do you know about The Real News ?
It had nice coverage of the Winter Soldier testimonies, if not the meeting you just mentioned. They too, need donations (I gave a little…)
You can Curse the Darkness, or you can Light a Candle.
Found an interesting fact the other day about NPR ‘public’ radio.
The president and chief executive officer of NPR is Kevin Klose: 1998-present. Before that… he was the director of world wide CIA propaganda broadcasts!
“Some criticize the choice of Kevin Klose to be the head of NPR because he “used to be the director of all major worldwide US government propaganda dissemination broadcast media including VOA, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti.” [1].”
Also, don’t forget Radio Free Iraq, and Radio Free Afghanistan. Freaking CIA at it again!!!!
Did you know NPR puts out casting calls for actors with regional accents? They quote ACTORS as SOURCES…. because it’s ‘easier’ then going on location to record the actual source!!!! YEAH RIGHT!
One word, people…”Network.”
In 1976, Paddy had it right. sadly.
Seems Mr Galloway as a misconception: “Once upon a time, it was widely believed that one of the greatest sins the U.S. government or its temporary political masters could commit was to turn a propaganda machine loose on the American people”.
PROPAGANDA!
We the American people have been misled almost from the outset of this so-called democracy.
The constitutional system was originally designed “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” in the words of the leading framer, James Madison. Political power, he explained, must be in the hands of “the wealth of the nation,” men who can be trusted to “secure the permanent interests of the country”—the rights of the propertied—and to defend these interests against the “leveling spirit” of the general public. If the public were allowed to participate freely in elections, Madison warned his colleagues, their “leveling spirit” might lead to measures to improve the conditions of those who “labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.”
Another words as have I heard it put ” those that own the country should run it”.
So, general public, you just go right on believing that you live in a democracy “by the people,for the people”. The fact is, you never have.
Micheal Moore said :”The top 1% of this country have two political parties representing their interests,and the bottom 99% have no one representing them.Yet the bottom 99% run around waving flags, shouting, “we are free,we are free, we live in in democracy”!
It is the MSM job who are themselves corporations,to cover up and continue this lie on behalf of the top 1%.
The article mentions a “retired Marine general, Paul Van Riper”, any relation to USAF General Jack D. Riper?
Maybe we could get some comments from: General Buck Turgidson, Major T.J.”King” Cong, or a certain Col “Bat”
Guano. Peace (is our profession).
Propaganda? What, are they kidding? Propagoddamnedganda! We live inside a propaganda machine! We’re surrounded by propaganda! Every time Bush opens his mouth on TV he’s spewing propaganda! Every time we watch the news on TV we’re watching propaganda!
This article is tantamount to worrying about a hawk eating some of your chickens when you’ve built their coop next to a colony of weasels (okay, so weasels aren’t colonial - sue me).
At the risk of sounding redundant - may I suggest once again that you use your “stimulus payment” or your “tax refund” or your “tax rebate” - or whatever the propagandists are going to send you, to support Independent media, such as this website. Independent media such as your local (if you have one - Pacifica Radio Station.) Independent media such as “Free Speech TV.” If your cable or satellite provider doesn’t carry it — switch. Independent media such as Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” You don’t have to trash your tv. You just have to be darned selective on what you watch. There are always alternative choices. Use them.
David Grayling. May 17th, 2008 1:24 am
“Gee, I always thought that, since the year 2,000, the MSM was employed by the White House. Are you sure they aren’t?”
No, they are now both owned and operated by the same Parent Company.
—–
fakedemocracy May 17th, 2008 4:40 am
“Found an interesting fact the other day about NPR ‘public’ radio.
The president and chief executive officer of NPR is Kevin Klose: 1998-present. Before that… he was the director of world wide CIA propaganda broadcasts!”
Thanks for that tidbit, it knits up NPR, doesn’t it?
——-
This is the byproduct of the Corporate Consolidation that took off in the 80s. As these huge aglomerated corporate mammoths sucked up all the smaller companies, eventually they also sucked up the Electronic Media. With successive Republican administrations stacking the regulatory agencies with their cronies and gutting the regulations as much as they could get away with, they allowed media concentration that now drowns out local and non-corporate voices. The “News Media” have become megaphones for the corporations. Remember the buzzword of the 80s and 90s: “Synergy”? That’s what we got here.
They should post this article on CBS News.
That way it can be accompanied by large Ads for the Air Force, which is using our tax dollars to propagandize us into believing that the militarization of space is a good thing, and that assassinating people remotely from 3000 feet in the air is something to be proud of.
Paul Van Riper must be very stupid indeed not to know that the U.S. Navy cannot lose, the forces of freedom cannot be stopped by the mere trickery of Shia dogs!
Yo gangs of ?
Do you not understand that you are able to say what
you feel due to the US military keeping it so. Do not
like what is going on? Vote your guy or gal in, simple
as that. If you were a military person, you would
understand how wonderful it is to have a AF that can
hit a bad guy/gal 3000 feet in the air is. Buy like
most parsites, all mouth but when it come time to go
fight a nation whom rapes & murders it own citizens,
you stay home & bad mouth. If the human race is ever
going to grow, this me first only attitude you all
mostly, have has to go. When good folks do not step
up, evil folks do. Get off your … & support a human
being, never mind color or sex or etc, who really
want to do right - vote, go talk to others about him/her. Or SHUT UP. Let the darkness come in, evil
grow & become a slave. Our system lets you do or not
do - your choice helot. Freedom isn’t free, it is
costly & requires watching always.
Thanks,
George
your favoright neocon, retired army combat vet retired
officer & Texican.
“If you were a military person, you would
understand how wonderful it is to have a AF that can
hit a bad guy/gal 3000 feet in the air is.”
Major, do all Texans have such a sick twisted mind such as yours, or are you special?
I bet he also thinks that building ICMB after ICBM after ICBM is building a safer future for his kids. Never mind that there have been 15 near accidental launches (american side only) since pandora’s box was opened. Live by the bullet… die by the bullet.
George aka ‘major hutton’… the darkness clouds your mind. GE tells you what to think…. there is no more townhall democratic debate except for little websites like this… cause GE brings darkness to light.
At least you’re an affirmative action killer George! You crack me up!
“how wonderful it is to have a AF that can hit a bad guy/gal”
Propaganda is defined as, ‘ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause’
Deeds, actions, events, become the object of propaganda, exploited, selectively reported and edited to conform by “spun” to government propaganda, which might have stated at the Rand, AEI, PNAC, etc.
But, if the deeds and events, where designed with propaganda in mind, and those deeds amount to a criminal conspiracy, to produce an incident by for purely propaganda purposes, we are dealing in staged events for False Flag purposes, which is not new, and we even have much documentation on such operations. Operation Northwoods is chilling one that I maintain, was rewritten and acted upon, on September 11, 2001
A new revelation has appear online today. I am surprised Common Dreams did not put it up yet, but have no doubt that they most certainly will. But of a preview, I excerpted what I think makes the case of a confession of High Treason, by Don Rumsfeld himself.:
Rumsfeld: “Why Not another 911″
In a newly-released tape of a 2006 neocon luncheon Rumsfeld declared that the American people lack “the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the ‘threats’” — and need another 9/11. “What’s to be done? The correction for that, I suppose, is another attack.”
the Bush administration, planned, orchestrated and executed the 9/11 false flag operation. As openly advocated by wide swaths of elites, from the People for the New American Century (PNAC), of which Rumsfeld has been a member, to the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski (in his The Grand Chessboard), only an attack “on the order of Pearl Harbor” would, in Brzezinski’s words, cause the American people to support an “imperial mobilization,” and a world war.
Rumsfeld gloated to the New York Times that 9/11 provided “the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world.” It is not for nothing that Donald Rumsfeld was described by legendary war criminal Henry Kissinger as “the most ruthless man I’ve ever known.”
I want to second the endorsement of the The Real News, AKA Independent World Television. This morning I watched the clip of the Winter Soldiers hearing…which apparently led to the US Congress VOTING DOWN A NEW IRAQ WAR APPROPRIATION!!! If I get one of the those “stimulus checks,” a piece of it is going to IWT.
I also want to point out that it was an investigation by the New York Times that revealed the retired-generals-pimping-for-the Pentagon racket. However, the NYT also is foremost in printing prowar propaganda, as for example the columns by Judith Miller. The thing is–what was once a military industrial complex has metastasized into a corporate government media complex. The media wing–a few huge, interlocked corporations–gets whatever favors it wants from the government in exchange for protecting the government from public opinion. The corporations get whatever they want from government in exchange for pay-offs to government’s individual politicians. Among the corporations whose rights trump those of citizens more totally each year, are the big media corporations, the drug companies, and the weapons companies…and the big media companies are tied in with other corporations, notably weapons companies. War is very good for GE’s weapons-related companies, so it’s just good “synergy” for GE’s media companies to tell the public that war is necessary, war is good, and the enemy of the day is a bunch of “bad guys” (surely only Americans have been so addled by Saturday morning cartoons that they actually think about the world with this kindergarten level of sophistication). In other words, it’s not that it just happened that the people running this or that network are “bad” or “stupid”– it’s a SYSTEM designed to ensure continued corporate rule. Unfortunately, I’m afraid those who say Americans are too stupid to see through the propaganda are right. One more thing–when the US government illegally inflicts propaganda on its own citizens, it’s using OUR MONEY to persuade us to sacrifice our sons and our healthcare and the atmosphere and world opinion in order to further enrich the rich.
I’m beginning to suspect that major hutton is a guy who dislikes the military more than any of us do, and is making the kind of posts he’s been making in order to make the military look bad.
Personally, I doubt that anyone who has ever been in the military would ever make posts as bad as the major’s are, at least not on purpose.
Just for the heck of it, I guess I’ll throw in some quotes from a man who we all know has been in the military, and that are far different from major hutton’s:
“War settles nothing.”
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
“When people speak to you about a preventative war, you tell them to go and fight it.”
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
“There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.”
“In most communities it is considered illegal to cry ‘fire’ in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?”
So, who said the above? Dwight David Eisenhower, that’s who.
NOT GOING ALONG/PRESENCE: Excellent posts!
Yes, ticonderoga, I agree. As a vet, and a member of Veterans for Peace, I know that Eisenhower’s words were right on. I am further sure that whoever that Texican might be, he was never an officer in the US Military. No one that illiterate could ever have been an officer in our pretty well educated military. Deluded, doubtless, illiterate, never.
Nietzsche PLEASE try to stay sane and sober, we are going to need clear headed rational people to organize and fight back if it gets worse, as could well happen after peak oil. Propaganda, 4.00/gallon gas, oil traded in Euros, and Bush’s wars don’t bode well for democracy continuing.