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No mulligans for this war president. George Bush says he's staying off the links so that it not appear that he's taking lightly the sacrifices of so many.
That doesn't mean, however, that this White House has given up its No. 1 wartime pastime: misleading us.
To that end, day after day since shortly after 9/11, it has polished up and deployed a bag of big clubs. Shiny and steely, they have lent credibility to policymakers lacking it.
We speak of retired military officers who became as central to telling the war story on TV as reporters themselves -- telling Americans that everything was as planned, that the claims leading us to war were right as rain.
These military TV analysts continue to be central to the story, portrayed as they are on TV news as independent voices.
Well, in case you hadn't heard, here's what The New York Times reported last month:
- As far back as 2002, the Pentagon cultivated a stable of more than 75 former military officials to get out its message through news organizations, posing as independent observers. The Pentagon described them as "surrogates" and "message force multipliers."
- Most of the analysts are employed by military contractors and have direct interests in the war-making, money-making, Iraq-occupying machinery.
The Times' David Barstow describes the end result as "a kind of media Trojan horse" that succeeded beyond all expectations in making news into government propaganda.
This means that "staying on message," then, isn't just a matter of White House talking heads and partisan ditto-heads. It's the mission of these TV-hired "independent analysts." You know: Iraq is the "central front in the war on terror," and reports of strategic blunders are overblown. Orders: Support Rummy
The recruited info-infiltrators were summoned time and again for Pentagon briefings to counter stories gaining steam in the media, like inhumane conditions in Guantanamo Bay and increasing chaos in Iraq.
When several generals who served under Donald Rumsfeld started speaking out against the war policy, the Pentagon gathered its dutiful TV surrogates for a pep talk. They put on their flag pins, went on camera and performed like champions.
Not all of them were swallowing every word. One told the Times that after a briefing aimed at inflating hopes about the situation in Iraq, "I felt we'd been hosed." Now, that's speaking for the American people.
Don't think for a second that the access granted these talking heads didn't come with strings attached. The Times reported that the Pentagon spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring a company to monitor every phrase these individuals uttered to the media. One discouraging word about Iraq from any one them, and he'd be cut off.
Now, why haven't you heard about this? Maybe because you've been watching TV news. After all, this is a broad indictment of it and the very media sirens that enabled Bush to con our nation into war. With John McCain reaching for the baton, Bush now seeks to lull the nation into never-ending occupation.
Arianna Huffington, on Huffingtonpost.com, is right to call the propaganda campaign, and the sustained media silence about it, "among the most shameful in the history of American journalism."
But, then, little outrage was summoned when the administration paid a black radio commentator to say nice things about No Child Left Behind, or peddled phony news segments to TV stations, or planted an imposter to pose questions at presidential press conferences.
Little outrage has been summoned about the increasing privatizing of something -- war -- that once was a joint national endeavor with accountability measures built in. So, too, with the seizure of power by the executive branch and the subservience of the legislature branch.
Maybe it's all because this executive has been so skilled in attaining the subservience of the "fourth estate," the messenger.
John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald.
Copyright 2008 Waco Tribune-Herald
17 Comments so far
Show AllLook what happened a few years ago. FOX was all of a sudden under investigation for TAXES. Look at FOX now, it is the Republican private cheerleader station. McCain could pee himself ( he did in one of his IRAQ visits) and something some Alzheimer people do and FOX would not report it. So you see, they are lock step and only a few times a month report the negative side but only for a couple seconds.
The US mainstream media is in the neo cons' back pocket. Nobody has to persuade them to go along, with all their piles of money they're making being a huge business which always puts their greed ahead of the facts and everything else, ya'll!
Ask each newly "elected" official how much they expect to garner in kickbacks and bribes: then cut them a check from the U.S. Treasury; and, then they can get down to doing the People's business without K-Street's distractions.
Snow Crab is correct, China and the other US creditors are counting on the US taxpayer to continue funding the middle east occupation to provide lots of oil for the big oil companies to supply to China, and other nations.
The US taxpayers who are paying for the occupation will need to compete with all of the other nations when it comes time to buy the oil. In view of the US Gov. deliberatley keeping the US Dollar's value in freefall, those US taxpayers won't be able to buy much oil, will they?
When W visited the Saudis last week and made a token appeal for more oil, the US media failed to report that the Saudis told Bush that unless he quit devalueing the US Dollar, no amount of additional supply would help the runaway inflation now in progress.
How could anything as one sided as the corporate media run up to the Iraq war have been anything but a bought off corrupt piece of shit? I don't understand how so many people can be so dim witted as to not see that?
I forget the total number of interviews on the corporate plus PBS news programs there were, it was in the thousands, with "experts" before the war, but I do remember the total of interviews there were with Peace advocates - three.
That could not happen by accident or incompetence. It would have to be orchestrated.
The war isn't going to end soon. Doesn't matter who says what. America is in debt to "the man", China, to the point that only possession of all middle east oil, Iraq, Iran, Syria and even that of those uncooperative Saudi's,is going to buy them out from under. They are running out of time. China can beat them to the punch and use all those American dollars to buy it out from under them while some raggedy ass insurgents keep the American's distracted.
With enough beer and sports the military could invade the Vatican and nobody would care, even if they knew, which they wouldn't. Journalism: The art of avoiding truth for profit. Sports and Beer: The art of avoiding citizenship for fun.
Fascism: Fun's over, beer's gone, truth is dead.
Young sez: "Most of the analysts are employed by military contractors and have direct interests in the war-making, money-making, Iraq-occupying machinery."
NBC and its subsidiaries are also owned by "military contractors." There was no subterfuge on anybody's part ... the broadcasters and the propagandists are co-workers. And they do a very good job.
That's why nothing has changed since the 'blockbuster revelation' of this practice.
How many people know about Operation Mockingbird?
The US media has been an asset of the CIA and its affiliates for a very long time.
Please see this excellent article (http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_01_03_03_mockingbird.html ) from which the following quote was taken:
"Personally, I have come to the conclusion that the media is not only influenced by the CIA.....the media is the CIA. Many Americans think of their supposedly free press as a watchdog on government, mainly because the press itself shamelessly promotes that myth. One of the first tenets for the control of a population is to control all sources of information the population receives and mostly because of the pervasive CIA and Operation Mockingbird, the mainstream American Press is a controlled multi-national corporate/government megaphone."
And don't look for it to change with the next administration.
The congress will still be spineless in the thrall of the fear-mongering fascist elite.
And most of the public will still go "BaaaaaBaaaaa" while the excess profiteers create more conflict and wars and human suffering to linetheir pockets to overflowing.
We are all GOOD GERMANS.
"The President of the United States has LIED, repeatedly. His LIES, and the lies of those "serving at his pleasure," have resulted in millions of deaths and injuries, trillions of stolen wealth, and a potentially fatal weakening of our military, economy, and general health and welfare."
Thank you, frank1569. Your words are literally true. Not figuratively. Not virtually. Not hypothetically. LITERALLY. And NO ONE at the federal government level will do anything about it. Pelosi is COMPLICIT. Reid is COMPLICIT. Clinton is COMPLICIT. The Supreme Court is COMPLICIT. And WE are ALL royally SCREWED. Whaddaya gonna do about it? NOTHING. What am I gonna do about it? NOTHING. Because we are all to SCARED, to FRIGHTENED of the consequences if we take the really necessary actions to free ourselves from this FASCIST government.
"That doesn't mean, however, that this White House has given up its No. 1 wartime pastime: misleading us."
Grow up already, will y'all?
The word is: lie. We were - and are still being - lied to by "this White House." More namely, it's occupants, minions and cultists. LIE.
Say it with me now: The President of the United States has LIED, repeatedly. His LIES, and the lies of those "serving at his pleasure," have resulted in millions of deaths and injuries, trillions of stolen wealth, and a potentially fatal weakening of our military, economy, and general health and welfare.
One more time, for all you so-called reporters and journalists who are still afraid to speak the truth: This White House has told thousands and thousands of out-right LIES, each one a high crime and/or misdemeanor.
Now, John Young - you write that the President has LIED to the American people many times, which is patently illegal in all kinds of ways. Yet, you somehow failed to mention what action should be taken? Aren't you "outraged" enough to demand our "leaders" suffer the consequences of their illegal actions?
As the Irish plaint goes: "Lord, put a stone in the shoe of my enemies so that I may know them by their limping."
Maybe nailing their lapel pins to their foreheads will help us identify the bought and paid for 'sickophant' that the criminal regime in Washington has been using for mouthpieces.
Let's not forget a compliant media as well. Everyone from FOX News to CNN also frame the occupation in corporate freindly terms. Did anyone for example ever see one of these generals on the air facing Chomsky, Naomi Klein or Ralph Nader? Not in a million years! If the Pentagon hadn't supplied these 'experts', the MSM would have created their own legion of propagandists.
So what else is new. . .profit at all cost. The Republicans only believe in cost/benefit analysis when it comes to everyone else; especially programs that actually ensure domestic tranquility. But then again, Dubya "won" the last election with the help of an aweful lot of people - the same people who are now suffering under his lack of leadership, mishandling of the economy, politization of the war effort and outright lying about most issues. You reap what you sow as the saying goes; America is reaping it ill-gotten gains and too many, especially at the top of the heap are getting away with fraud on a massive level. I hope the new President will do more than just talk about fixing the problems.
I feel all elected officials have to list in full where they get kick backs from. It should be listed after their names every time it is on TV or in print. Then maybe people will wake up