June, 28 2011, 12:58pm EDT
Propaganda on Libya
WASHINGTON
BRUCE FEIN, bruce at thelichfieldgroup.com
Obama legal adviser Harold Koh is scheduled to testify on Libya and war powers this morning before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Koh maintains that the attack on Libya is legal because it does not amount to "hostilities,' a position reportedly at odds with virtually every other legal view from within the administration itself; see: "Obama Rejects Top Lawyers' Legal Views on Libya."
Fein has written a series of pieces on war powers with regards to Libya and was among the first to note Obama's prior position: "On December 20, 2007, then Senator Barack Obama insisted to the Boston Globe: 'The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.'" Fein was deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy and American Empire: Before the Fall.
VIJAY PRASHAD, Vijay.Prashad at trincoll.edu
Author of "The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World," Prashad is director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. He just wrote the piece "A Beggar's Banquet: The Undoing of Libya."
PATRICK COCKBURN, patrick.cockburn at attglobal.net
Cockburn has recently written an article titled "Don't believe everything you see and read about Gaddafi: Both sides in this conflict are guilty of spreading propaganda -- and foreign journalists have on occasion been all too eager to help."
He also recently wrote "Remember the Kuwaiti Incubators! Those Libyan Atrocities: Do They Really Stand Up?"
Cockburn is the author of Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. He is available for a limited number of interviews Tuesday, Wednesday and next week.
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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