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Despite Incongruity, Corporate Media Love a Good War Speech
US Media Positive on Obama's Oslo Speech
WASHINGTON - US media and leading opinion makers on Friday had largely positive views of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace award speech in Oslo, with conservatives especially delighted with his choice of words.
"We've said before ... that awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize after so short a time in office and so few concrete accomplishments was a mistake," wrote the Los Angeles Times in its newspaper editorial.
However the acceptance speech was "a blockbuster even by Obama's lofty standards."
The speech "should serve as a blueprint to guide international decisions on alleviating conflict, poverty and tyranny," the LA Times wrote.
For the New York Times, Obama "gave the speech he needed to give, but we suspect not precisely the one the Nobel committee wanted to hear" by constantly mentioning the Afghanistan conflict.
One example from MSNBC:
There is no chance of winning in Afghanistan or in "the broader fight against terrorism, unless the United States hews to international standards and upholds its own ideals. That is Mr. Obama's promise and his challenge going forward," the Times wrote.
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote that the speech "was both a Judeo-Christian epistle, conceding the moral necessity of war, and a meditation on American exceptionalism."
Obama was "the unapologetic president of the United States and not some errant global villager seeking affirmation," she wrote.
At certain moments Obama "articulates our problems in ways that elevate us beyond our pettier differences," and the acceptance speech "was a triumphant expression of American values and character."
Two fierce Republican Obama critics -- former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, both potential 2012 presidential hopefuls -- also praised the speech.
"I liked what he said," Palin told USA Today. "Of course, war is the last thing I believe any American wants to engage in, but it's necessary. We have to stop these terrorists."
"I thought in some ways it's a very historic speech," Gingrich told a public radio morning show, according to the Politico website.
Obama "clearly understood that he had been given the prize prematurely, but he used it as an occasion to remind people, first of all, as he said: that there is evil in the world."
The "evil" phrase prompted a CNN reporter to say that Obama seemed to be "channeling George W. Bush," famous for his 2002 "Axis of Evil" speech.
Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson told CNN that it was "a complex, intellectually rich, impressive speech."
Obama was "completely unapologetic" about US intervention in Afghanistan.
"He talked about America being a force for moral good, about the reality of evil. This was a very American speech. He didn't speak as kind of the citizen of the world as sometimes he has in the past," Gerson said.
Not everyone liked the speech: Bush's ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said it "followed the standard international leftist line," and that Obama "played to the crowd and filled the speech with cliches from the American and international left."
And prominent liberal commentator Arianna Huffington noted the "supreme irony" of accepting the peace prize after ordering a troop surge in Afghanistan.
The problem, Huffington said Thursday on The Joy Behar broadcast chat show, was that Obama has not told Americans how the Afghan war will make them safer.
Surveys ahead of the ceremony showed that most Americans were skeptical about the president accepting the award: only 19 percent of Americans believed that Obama deserved the Nobel, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll out Wednesday, while an earlier Quinnipiac University survey put support at 26 percent.
- Posted in
89 Comments so far
Show AllThump. That sound you hear is either the other shoe falling or the gloves coming off. Choose your own metaphor. We now have Mr. Obama, tails on the coin of which Mr. G.W. Bush is heads. Same. Same. Shame. Shame. "Fool me twice...fool me...won't get fooled again." Wasn't that how it went? Maybe there was wisdom there after all.
Chuck Todd is so pleased that the speech pleased Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.
How special!
This quick press agency summary of news media reaction to the speech is the real "news" of a thoroughly predictable (if shocking) performance by Obama in citing the justifications for war at a peace award ceremony. Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich I can understand approving it, but how so the "mainstream" of (more or less) skepticism about the war? True, their acceptance expresses the know-nothing chauvinism of a people who "love a good war speech" (you know, Roosevelt's "I hate war" speech as he eased us into WW II, any of Churchill's bellicose announcements), but how can a "good speech" be confused with right and decent policy? Last night on the ABC Evening News the commentators duly mentioned the approval by Palin and Gingrich, but only mentioned Cindy Sheehan as anyone objecting; they evidently didn't read the comments on yesterday's CD posts; and I've yet to hear from reactions of any supposedly "liberal Democrat" to the bloodthirsty nature of this disgusting public performance. So it seems every self-proclaimed "liberal" in the world (except Sheehan and maybe Arianna Huffington) have imbibed of that fatal flavor of Kool-Aid. I haven't done my usual morning of web-surfing yet today, but so far it looks as if Obama got the ultimate "pass" for the worst action of his entire administration. And that's the news, folks!
Have you compared the US media response to Powell's UN security council power point?(the one with the talcum powder in a pill bottle)?
Now as then there was a divide between international observers and the US media. USers were praising Colin's irrefutable case even as papers around the world were laughing at it.
Here's the one that just showed up on HuffPo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/11/obama-doctrine-praised-by_n_388488.html
How much more can one say that hasn't already been time after time on CD?
Forgive my more than usual ranting. Obama's speech was doublethink- yet the Times (LA and NY) praise it- as the essential speech.
Quoting Orwell:
Describing "doublethink:" "The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies- all this is indispensably necessary."
Rush Limbaugh said love or leave it to an environmental reporter who wrote about how human being threaten the existence of this world. He was saying the reporter should commit suicide if he believed that humans are destroying the planet. Ironically, Rush left this world long ago. He is among us, but as inert as the platitudes in Obama's speech to Oslo.
LJG100/Orwell: "To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies..."
Beautiful description of B.O. and nearly all politicians (and salespersons and newscasters and ...). How on earth can sane and honest persons choose when to believe something and when not to? This is cognitive dissonance and very unhealthy psychology. Also, it shows confused or absent humane moral and ethical values.
B.O. in Oslo: "That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions." AFAIK torture continues, Gitmo remains open, and we still do not abide by all the Geneva Conventions.
Hubris and hegemony. How can the speech be a "blockbuster", a "blueprint", "triumphant", "complex, intellectually rich, impressive"? Pundits are full of crap.
So, how do you guys feel about the concept of just war? After I became a progressive during my final year of college and enrolled in a human rights course, I wrote a couple of fairly large papers about the morality and necessity of humanitarian intervention using military force. I was pretty specific that no nation-state should be allowed to do this on its own, since they behave by "national interests" which are ultimately selfish, but instead for responsibility and authority for such actions to come from some sort of global, intergovernmental institution. I suggested that it be limited to egregious cases of oppression, such as genocide and ethnic cleansing. Still, it basically is "war for peace."
I'm interested to know what the CD community thinks about this subject, as I doubt I can find a wiser, brighter, and more experienced and skeptical group of people anywhere else.
See The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo by Noam Chomsky
Thanks, I will be sure to check that out over the holiday break.
Al Queda and other Muslim "terrorists"--or "terrorists" anywhere characterized as such may have legitimate grivances. For the Muslims it could be the treatment of the Palestinians and US unflinching support of Israel, the occupation of Kashmire, US troops stationed as outposts of Empire, theft of natural resources and wealth, wanton destruction with little regard for human life.
You could claim, in that case, that the terrorists are waging a just war.
Instead of dealing with the issues, our criminal liars refer to them as "evil" who hate us for our freedoms.
They do have legitimate grievances, but there is more than that to have a just war...you must try to avoid civilian deaths (Al Qaeda targets them), the war must be winnable (no chance in hell), and must be as short as possible (don't see that coming either). Also, Al Qaeda's goal of a global fundamentalist Islamic caliphate is just plain insane. That's no just war they're waging. They're just terrorists, which is basically a politically-motivated violent criminal that should be dealt with primarily by law enforcement, not primarily by military action.
zmann December 11th, 2009 11:20 pm -- Insightful. I particularly like the idea that al Qaeda is a criminal organization. I've likened it to a drug cartel. The use of large armies against it is not only unacceptably harmful to innocent people, but, as we have seen, ineffectual.
zmann December 11th, 2009 10:38 am -- Haven't had time to read/listen to the entire speech, but from what I've heard, there are two main criticisms.
First, the use of the word "evil" is right in line with Reagan and Bush. Although often used merely as a synonym for "extremely bad," as Obama used it, there are theological overtones. Saying there is evil in the world is equivalent to saying Satan intervenes in the world. Satan is a spirit, like God, with no discernible reality. It bothers me that Obama is making decisions about how to use the most powerful military force in the world based upon the supposed existence of an incorporeal spirit, rather than rational analysis of evidence. Of course, Obama never has hidden his religious background, and it has always disappointed me that he seems almost as willing as Bush to rely on religious belief in deciding how to perform his secular duties.
Second, as far as I can tell, Obama never referred to defense, whether it be self defense or defense of others, as the only moral justification for war. The criminal law incorporates the rational moral principle that one has the right to defend against imminently threatened unjustified attack, and to defend another who is so threatened, with the force necessary and appropriate to prevent the threatened injury. In my opinion, this principle applies among nations as well as inter-personally, and is a fundamental keystone of morality. Obama didn't mention it, in the media accounts I've seen. Instead, he seemed to be saying that the U.S. is morally justified to use deadly military force against "evil," regardless of whether it reasonably appears that unjustified use of force against us or our allies is imminent. Bush II relied on that kind of thinking for the invasion of Iraq, unless you think the Bush administration really believed Saddam Hussein was actually threatening to use actual weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. and/or its allies. Bush at least paid some degree of lip service to the correct principle; Obama seems to have adopted the real motivation Bush didn't openly state (i.e., get rid of the evil Saddam Hussein) as his operating philosophy.
What do you bet none of the MSM commentators come to grips with these issues?
As many analysts have shown, the only rational explanation for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is for control of oil and gas. This is obvious in the case of Iraq with its huge reserves. In Afghanistan there don't seem to be any reserves but there are in its nearby neighbours. To control the huge flow of the gas out of Central Asia Bush-Obama have to make sure it doesn't go through Russia, Iran or China, countries which the US can't control. That leaves Afghanistan as the only option for the pipelines. So if a puppet gov't can't guarantee the pipelines then Afghanistan must be occupied -- at least until the Caspian reserves dry up.
Why couldn't Obama come clean about this in his speech? Perhaps because to do so would have put the cap on who is really "evil".
Good! Right on....Granted I am not adding anything to your post- but since it is stated so clearly and succinctly- I couldn't resist commenting.
When a President's acceptance speech to the Nobel Peace Committee is focused on justifying war- great trouble lies ahead....
to not acknowledge Afghanistan as the source of 95% of the world's heroin is akin to not acknowledging the elephant in the living room...why is this continually ignored?
"and to defend another who is so threatened, with the force necessary and appropriate to prevent the threatened injury. "
That would be a good standard to follow, although my research dealt primarily with internal conflict...violent government oppression against its own citizens, and tried to provide justification for military intervention in cases like that.
zmann December 11th, 2009 11:23 pm -- I think defense of others so threatened provides justification for government intervention that is necessary and appropriate (or "proportional"), which might justify use of military force, depending on the circumstances.
zmann -
I, too, wrote some fairly lengthy graduate level papers that touched on the just war thesis, back in the days when the real manly men of academe were all into game theory, balance of power gymnastics, and thinking about the unthinkable. Although it is really hard to separate out the intellectual substance of Obama's Oslo speech from its Afghanistant/West Point address context, here's my thoughts.
First, the just war thesis was formulated by a Christian theologian as a guide for individual moral decision making (not as a framework for nation states considering the propriety for resorting to war). Thou Shalt Not Kill is a pretty emphatic moral point of departure. Could a good Christian, personally, ever be anything but a pacifist when the state came calling to render military service unto Caesar? That was the basic issue that the just war thesis sought to address. It was never intended as a framework for collective political decisionmaking regarding the use of military force.
Second, I give President Obama credit where credit is due for articulating a couple of his own conclusions about the role of warfare in human history.
Clearly Obama is not a child of light, like Rousseau, who believes human beings are fundamentally good, and violence is an aberration from the natural order of human relationships. Barack is philosophically anchored somewhere between Locke and Hobbes, like most American politicians.
Life can be short, nasty and brutish. Left to their own devices, men (with a capital M) will gravitate towards clannish warlordism, and the foundation of national sovereignty is to put a lid on the factional violence that would otherwise take place. Within this Manichean framework, most of what liberals and conservatives squabble about ad nauseum about is simply how much of a monopoly upon the use of deadly force the citizenry should surrender up to the Leviathan state.
At one point early in his Nobel address, Obama correctly noted that war was once considered an awful, inevitable external curse foisted upon the human race (like famine, plague, and pestilence), but with the passage of time (and intellectual rationalization) war was believed to have taken on utility, sometimes even achieving ultimate good. In my opinion, the most intriguing (and hopeful) part of the speech was Barack Obama's absolute, categorical rejection of Holy War. So much for the Bushie evangelical/Book of Revelations crowd.
Bottom line is it's great to have a President with some intellectual heft, but extraordinarily disappointing and depressing to find the new Commander-in-Chief so divorced from the reality of facts on the ground. The American/NATO escalation in Afghanistan today is not a war of necessity, nor an act of self defense, and it certainly not an exercise in humanitarian intervention. What looms large upon the horizon violates, rather than vindicates, the just war thesis.
Small wonder Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and the other neocon Neanderthal pundits applaud lustily, and keep smiling all the way to the bank.
Bill from Saginaw
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
The Afghan war is certainly not any of those 3 things you listed. I used to buy the self-defense case until reading one of Seymour Hersh's books enlightened me to how simply phony the War on Terror really is. In any event, self-defense from terrorism would be increased security precautions in your own territory, increased law enforcement resources dedicated to the prevention of terrorist attacks, and increased intelligence resources dedicated to uncovering and disrupting plots, along with legal and diplomatic cooperation with other nations to cut off funding, isolate them, prevent travel, etc.
Eternal military occupation of their former hideout ain't the answer.
-"I was pretty specific that no nation-state should be allowed to do this on its own, since they behave by "national interests" which are ultimately selfish, but instead for responsibility and authority for such actions to come from some sort of global, intergovernmental institution."
Good question, zmann. But don't you think Obama and Bush have done everything in their power to make it clear that in their mind the US has rejected the just war theory? Isn't the UN charter and its chapter 7 component, the treaty that the US signed, the existing implementation of "just war"?
The US pledged to respond, in immediate self defense to an armed attack only until it could come before the UN and get approval for collective action.
The US never did this.
indeed, even as the US violates the UN charter(as it does so many other treaties) it cannot fall back on "just war" in any sense. Just war must be proportional. The US's avowed enemy in Afghanistan, Al Queda, has hundreds of members there. Is starving Palestinians, killing thousands of Afghans and making refugees of millions of Iraqis proportional?
Just war must be in self defense. Did Afghanistan attack America? Did Iraq attack America? No.(see gulf of tonkin incident). Mistaken intelligence is not a casus belli, all the more so, nine years into the fighting.
Just war must be a last resort. From Bush and Blair's attempts to provoke Saddam into shooting down a fake UN plane, to Obama's labeling the majority of Afghans, the Taliban, "evil" I find little evidence that war was not the FIRST resort.(how long have you guys been at war now?)
Just war is also supposed to be winnable, How exactly are Americans supposed to win? ...On the border of Russia, China, and Iran? Are those countries going to help secure US bases there?...Or are they happy to have front row seats as your guys go through the meat grinder?
"Are those countries going to help secure US bases there?..."
Love your sense of humor!!
"Or are they happy to have front row seats as your guys go through the meat grinder?"
As far as that goes, I think they are delighted we are this stupid.
Excellent points, thank you, and you are correct. Except I think just war does not only have to be limited to self-defense, but also to the defense of others, those that cannot defend themselves. Yes, just war must be proportional (hence my oft-repeated call to deal with terrorism with law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic, and legal resources and means), a last resort (that's why we need to be willing to talk with anyone, without precondition, to prevent wars), and yes, it must be winnable and short to inflict the least amount of misery as possible on those innocent of any wrongdoing. We sure as hell are not doing that.
zmann
"I'm interested to know what the CD community thinks about this subject, as I doubt I can find a wiser, brighter, and more experienced and skeptical group of people anywhere else."
I wanted to say something too even though I'm not a member of that group!
The only "just" war that I know of would be WW2 for instance where our country was attacked by another. Any country that was attacked by another would be engaged in a "just" war in defending itself
I wouldn't call Viet Nam, Iraq, Afganistan "just" wars.
You can't even call wars where a group of nations join together for war "just" because usually its something like the "Boxer" wars, something on that order.
"I was pretty specific that no nation-state should be allowed to do this on its own, since they behave by "national interests" which are ultimately selfish, but instead for responsibility and authority for such actions to come from some sort of global, intergovernmental institution."
The problem with this is that there is no such organization. The UN for example can only act if a nation state gives it the power to act. They have no way of enforcing their will or edicts without that lead nation state.
And the people of that nation wouuld have to agree with their aim.
The best war is no war.
"The problem with this is that there is no such organization. The UN for example can only act if a nation state gives it the power to act. They have no way of enforcing their will or edicts without that lead nation state."
The Security Council would be ideal since it already exists, but of course it needs to be heavily changed. No veto, and enlarged membership, make it more democratic. I would also include the requirement that all members of the UNSC would be required to contribute troops and funding to all actions authorized by the council.
"The best war is no war."
Amen :-)
"I would also include the requirement that all members of the UNSC would be required to contribute troops and funding to all actions authorized by the council."
Problem is it will never happen. The US and very few other nations will ever cede control of their troops to an International authority.
And the security council will NEVER be enlarged to include small nations. There is no international community nor international government and you need that to do what you are talking about.
"Problem is it will never happen. The US and very few other nations will ever cede control of their troops to an International authority."
Then they lose their vote, period.
"There is no international community nor international government and you need that to do what you are talking about."
I know. Who says one can't be created though? That would probably be a topic for a MA or PhD dissertation, but I'm enjoying what I do right now so much I may not go back to school.
My computers been down, but I wanted to say...
No one can tell them they are losing their vote. They are the UN.
It cannot be created because of the simple fact that no one is willing tom give up their freedoms and secondly, no nation will surrender their sovereignty in this millennium.
But it would be a fascinating topic indeed for an MA, even better for a PhD!
If you are enjoying what you are doing...keep doing it...you can alweays go back to school. Always.
Peace my friend.
zmann;"just war".I see nothing in history or today that would make me think that a just war would be just.We'll just go back to WW1 and why this had to be a war and all the questions have not been answered either about WWII,Korea and the UN,Vietnam and allies,Iraq and the coallition of the willing and today NATO.My point is that so long as there is one big dog or even sometimes more than one many of the other nation states can be bullied.One example today besides Afghanistan is Gaza where they elected Hamas which Israel and the usa blockaded to try and starve out the people;the UN went along and abetted this criminal act,why?The words progressive and liberal have been so perverted that it is difficult for me to take people serious when they proclaim that is what they are.What I think you aspire to is "humanism" which hasen't been co-opted yet.Lot to think about.Tony
"Bush's ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said it "followed the standard international leftist line," and that Obama "played to the crowd and filled the speech with cliches from the American and international left." - huh?
It seems surreal that Obama got the prize in the first place. His speech made it even more surreal. But comments like Bolton's make me think that I live in some kind of a parallel universe.
No, you don't, but the right-wingers/neocons sure do.
Right is left, and wrong is right.
The right wing liberal media will always promote war over peace and they particuklary love democratic warmongers like Obama.
But the FBI says there's no evidence Bin Laden is responsible for 9/11...
Not only did the FBI say there was no link between Osama Bin Laden and the attacks of 9/11, they admitted that there were only two possible cell phone calls from the planes.....Who was able to make those phone calls and imitate the voices of the victims?
During the Kennedy Assassination, the FBI was forced to coverup CIA involvement....Evidence was destroyed, witnesses killed, and Congressional hearings were used to further "The Coverup"........Who would have wanted to know that the CIA had been involved in the murder of the President of the United States? ("JFK and the Unspeakable" by James W. Douglass)
Not only did the FBI not have proof of who committed and was behind the attacks of 9/11, they destroyed evidence,confiscated video evidence, and failed to connect the money trail. The money trail led to DOD, ISI of Pakistan, and the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia. People who had "Insider Information" and made millions on "Put Orders" were never investigated.(Philip Shenon, "The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission")
Who created Al Qaeda? The United States! Who put the Taliban in power? The United States and Saudi Arabia! Who created the concept of a JIHAD? The United States, in "Operation Cyclone", recruited,armed,trained, and financed 100,000 Islamic Militants, recruited from 43 Islamic Countries including Brooklyn, New York, to wage a Jihad..........Benazir Bhutto had warned George H. Bush that he was creating a monster. She also claimed that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by ISI operatives before she too was assassinated and forgotten by the "Mass Media".
So, Obama gives a great speech according to the 200 Media Members of the Council on Foreign Relations and Obama's advisors, all members of either: The Council on Foreign Relations, Tri Lateral Commission, or Bilderberg Group. (Daniel Estulin, "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group")
I am sorry, The Truth is both Iraq and Afghanistan were targetted for Invasion and Occupation pending "The Pearl Harbor Type Attack" that was being planned, not by Osama Bin Laden, but by men who could control the attacks, the investigation, and the coverup. The Plan was written in 1997 and it was called "The Plan for a New American Century".........The United States will occupy both countries until the "Oil" runs out.
No sir, your speech was offensive. The last "Man of Peace" was John F.Kennedy and he was murdered so that the Military Industrial Complex could send 58,000 American Soldiers to their deaths and hundreds of thousands of American Veterans to their early deaths from cancers and fatal diseases caused by contact with: Agent Orange,Agent Pink, Agent Purple, and Napalm........Never mind the 3.3 MILLION Vietnamese killed.
No sir, to kill unarmed civilians with predators and drones is murder, not collateral damage, and it is murder in the first degree because you know that there are civilians in your targets.
Without the Truth, the American People will be forced to accept the propaganda that they have been force fed through a controlled media..."God is Truth" Ghandi
Brother you hit the nail on the head, over and over. I remain dumbfounded why so many people, especially pundits, are so naive as to believe the cover stories the government comes up with. If anyone had any sense of history, they'd operate under this principal: Whatever the official story is, take the exact opposite to get the reality.
For an overview of our current (and future) wars and their context, please read and consider this passage, especially the last half.
http://tinyurl.com/y8mjmdd.
Good points, even most journalists cannot or will not write about this sort of thing. Adam Curtis's BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares" goes in depth about the Al-Quaeda myth. Also Webster Tarpley, Tariq Ali, Pepe Escobar, John Pilger and Robert Fisk and Jeremy Scahill have written on related issues.
Herbert -
I agree with much of your political slant on the need for a genuine investigation of 911 (particularly the money trail connection to foreign and US intelligence operatives), and about the historical significance of the Kennedy assassination (perhaps our last elected Commander-in-Chief with balls enough to say No to the Pentagon and the black ops boys of the CIA), regardless of who may have shot from the grassy knoll. I have considerable problems with spinning the web of vast, international, military/industrial complex conspiracy a whole lot wider than that, however.
Bilderberg? The Trilateral Commission? Why leave out Skull and Bones, or even the Elders of Zion?
On your first specific question, however: it is my understanding that, according to the "official" 9/11 narrative telling, one of the cell telephone calls made from one of the highjacked planes was from the wife of US Solicitor General Ted Sorenson to Mr. Sorenson, frantically telling her husband that there were men with box cutters taking over the plane. Mrs. Sorenson was herself a public figure at the time, a regular on cable television I believe. Neither she, nor any of the other passengers on that plane, have ever been seen or heard from since.
Your cell phone question, and my understanding of the partial answer, highlight my mixed feelings as a 911 Commission critic and (for lack of a better label) a 9/11 "truther."
Four commercial aircraft did not vanish that day into the Bermuda triangle. The crash of airplanes into tall buildings (and probably also a short, squat building) was no more a sophisticated faked optical illusion than Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. I do not believe Mrs. Sorenson, and several hundred other ordinary commercial airline passengers who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on the morning of September 11, 2001, have mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth, or are alive and well somewhere on a secret tropical island no doubt near Diego Garcia as we speak, sipping pina coladas together under the auspices of the CIA.
In short, there is so much fantasmagorical wackiness out there - interspersed with genuine issues about what really did happen on 9/11/01 and in the days, weeks, and months just before - that everybody who seriously wants to focus upon specific areas worthy of further inquiry (Building 7? controlled demolitions?) gets broadly painted as wide eyed conspiracy theorist nut cakes. I've even read posts on this website to the effect that the coverup-within-the-coverup includes circulation of bogus 9/11-related urban legends, easily debunked, that were calculated to discredit the entire 911-truth effort.
Which brings me back to your cell phone inquiry.
Doesn't it seem extremely odd to you that within twenty four hours of the 9/11 cataclysm, while the WTC ruins literally were still smoldering, that the NY Times, Washington Post, and other mainstream media were reporting (courtesy of classified, official government sources) how the evil doers used box cutters (not knives, not razor blades) to get past airport security and do the dirty deed which they reportedly had rehearsed, at several different airports, several times before?
If the source of the box cutter detail indeed was a single frantic cellphone call from a highjacked hostage, how could the crime of the century possibly get so comprehensively investigated, verified, and case-closed-out all so incredibly fast?
Hell yes these guys were under US government surveillance.
Bill from Saginaw
As my family in Ireland puts it: "You Yanks have had a coup de etat, and you're too naive to recognize it." You speak the truth, sir, as much as it pains us to hear it. How about petitioning the Kennedy clan (surely a lot of them have figured out, like you, what really happened to JFK and Bobby)to get it through to Mr. Obama that allowing the coupers to high level, high I.Q. manipulate and spin him into continuing war m.o. is a travesty, and puts a final nail in the coffin of our almost deceased democracy? It's time to leave La La Land, and recognize that it's time to do the patriotic, godfearing thing and UNDO THE (military/industrial/corporate/'terrorism') COUP!
speach - total empire propaganda- slaughter IS slaughter; no matter how many hollow lies are attached to it ! - Truth : obomber Is a war criminal, and no end in sight to fascist amerikan imperialism !
tioche, Mexico
I heard something years ago about the elites in the US working out that if the military industries didn't grow the economy would collapse. I can't remember where I heard it but has anyone else heard this?
An economy that works on bribes and back-scratching needs to grow its resource and production base. Otherwise, the growing pool of free-riders can bring the entire enterprise down.
Imagine if a president had to bribe its bankers with an entire decades's worth of surplus labor. It could impoverish the nation for an entire generation (or more) and lead to all kinds of civil strife.
qatzelok: "Imagine if a president...." I don't have to imagine that, just open my eyes to the reality of what is happening: between bank bailouts as bribes to stop excessive executive compensation and bribes of Sunni tribesmen in Iraq and Afganistan to stop attacking our occupying forces: how much more bribe at the expense of our "surplus labor" do you really need to "imagine?"
We have had a Permanent War Economy (see Seymour Melman) since 1945.
And that EVIL is now epitomized by Obama. Really, what is his Promise WORTH? Anti-tyranny, war and poverty BLUEPRINT? More like the international BLACK HAND!
These are the same fawning and subserviant media assholes who got it so wrong bolstering up the denial and spinning the illusions around Bush to manufacture consensus. Critical views, not on the bandwagon, are ignored and marginalized.
They get it wrong time after time, but like Wall St banksters, they never have to own up to it, because it is their job to parrot the official perception of Obama's world as it is portrayed, not as it is.
Three generations ago Upton Sinclair wrote The Brass Check to document and prove that "Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy... Not hyperbolically and contemptuously, but literally and with scientific precision, we define Journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the news of the day in the interest of economic privilege."
Today's corporate-owned mass media is the means by which the plutocracy glorifies itself, with no other aim than self-perpetuation.
Exactly Jim! The corportocracy controls the mass MSM for its nefarious ends, whether it is the N.Y. Times,or cable T.V. News. How can you expect much truth when the plutocracy owns the mass media? And even if some reporters want to report the truth they know the parameters if they want job security and that is understandable, but what a travesty to call it news! And that is why I call it presstitutes and whores working for their madams.