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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Mr. Whist who wrote (233675)3/4/2002 12:25:23 PM
From: DMaA  Respond to of 769667
 
Interesting you think adding Carvile and Begalla moves CNN more to the right. Shows how red they are to begin with.

CNN is moving to the right?



To: Mr. Whist who wrote (233675)3/4/2002 1:37:09 PM
From: jlallen  Respond to of 769667
 
Only demolib pinheads find the the truth to be "right wing rage"....



To: Mr. Whist who wrote (233675)3/4/2002 1:42:09 PM
From: Skywatcher  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769667
 
Published on Monday, March 4, 2002 in the Guardian of London
Spinning to War on Iraq
by Andrew Murray

Spin may be proving an increasing embarrassment for the government at home. But its
New Labour practitioners must be hoping they can still turn a trick when it comes to
events abroad. And with the prime minister showing every sign of joining in with George
Bush's war of revenge against Iraq, the British public is in for a sustained propaganda
offensive to soften it up for what threatens to be a bloody and dangerous conflict.

It will take several months before the projected US invasion to bring about "regime change"
in Iraq can begin. At every step along the way, ministers will try to make the case that an
attack on Saddam Hussein is the only way to spare civilisation untold dangers. The prime
minister was at it yesterday, warning that the Iraqi government had weapons that
threatened the world.

But can those continually caught fibbing over everything from public spending increases to
who is doing what favour for whom be trusted when it comes to war and peace? It would
pay to be sceptical. Iraq, in particular, has already been the subject of a prolonged
campaign to transform its image from the domestic despotism it is into the worldwide
menace that it isn't.

The US has its own agenda for attacking Iraq, mainly because the installation of a pliant
government in Baghdad - friendly to Israel and big oil and indifferent to the Palestinians - is
a prerequisite for a wider Washington-approved settlement in the Middle East.

Immediately after September 11, former CIA director James Woolsey was dispatched to
Europe by Washington hardliners to knit together evidence linking the Iraqi government to
the attacks on New York and Washington. Months of digging have left him empty-handed.
Last week, Mr Woolsey was reduced in the Wall Street Journal to repeating the mantra
that the Baghdad regime was "evil", a category which apparently relieves the prosecutor of
any obligation to adduce further proof orarguments.

Another major spin operation last October tried to tie Saddam into the anthrax letters sent
to media organisations and public figures in the USA. The allegation made the headlines,
while the truth - that the letters were the work of a lone psychopath in New Jersey,
probably a one-time US government scientist - was buried in the small print weeks later.

Al-Qaida and anthrax have both now been discarded as too fragile reeds to sustain the
projected attack on the evil axis. Instead, we are back to "weapons of mass destruction".
This has served as the rationale for the Anglo-American bombing of Iraq, carried on almost
continuously now for more than three years. Never mind that years of intensive UN
inspections found no evidence of an Iraqi capacity to produce and deliver such weapons,
whatever its intentions. Scott Ritter, ex-deputy head of the UN inspectors, has declared
Iraq "effectively disarmed".

New Labour already has a dismal record with anti-Iraq spin, even by its own debased
standards. Robin Cook, as foreign secretary, made much of the story of an Iraqi teenager
supposedly imprisoned since the age of five for throwing stones at a portrait of Saddam,
only to be forced to backtrack once it became clear the boy did not exist. There has been
a string of such intelligence-inspired whoppers, from tales of babies thrown out of
incubators to beheaded prostitutes.

None of this is to deny the brutal nature of the Iraqi regime. However, 10 years of US and
British sanctions and bombardment have clearly done nothing whatsoever to shake its
foundations. Instead, Anglo-American policy has heaped new miseries on the Iraqi people,
including the deaths of upwards of half a million children, according to United Nations
estimates.

The attack being prepared for later this year will add mightily to that toll. Tony Blair knows
he is virtually alone in the world in supporting Bush's war, now it can no longer be
presented as having any connection with September 11. Growing numbers of people in
Britain want a halt to this "war on terror". Afghanistan, mourning its own civilian dead, is
further away from stability and tranquillity than ever, while the roots of anti-US terrorism
have been nourished. Nothing has been achieved beyond a major extension of
Washington's strategic power, from Georgia to central Asia to the Philippines.

Those in power want this war, so we should remember that whatever they say about their
intended victim over the coming months is, to put it at its most generous, not necessarily
going to be true. US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld's disinformation department has been
ostensibly shut down, but its spirit surely lives on.

·Andrew Murray is chair of the Stop the War Coalition.

apdmurray@hotmail.com

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
CC



To: Mr. Whist who wrote (233675)3/4/2002 2:18:42 PM
From: Tom Clarke  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769667
 
Please cite an example of right wing rage on AM radio.



To: Mr. Whist who wrote (233675)3/4/2002 3:30:03 PM
From: DOUG H  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769667
 
Comment, if you would, on the right-wing rage and outrage factor so prevalent in AM radio and now on cable TV shows such as O'Reilly

I don't listen to anyone who rages because they give me headaches. I'm sure there are some real nutcases spouting far-right, anti-government, racist hate. I just don't have time for them. I do however spend some time listening to a refreshing alternative conservative view. It has been sorely lacking in mainstream media and now Goldberg's book explains why. Impossible to dismiss him as a VRW conspirator.

I don't see O'Reilly as a conservative per se. He is in most regards but he has a populist thread running thru him. He is boistrious and arrogant which may make it hard for some people to listen to and therefore miss his message. I don't listen to Rush Limberger because he is just too arrogant for me. However he is often dead on point from a conservative viewpoint.I like a lot of Larry Elder's message though I do disagree with him on some issues. His on air persona though can be gruff and I think his message gets lost behind that as well. He is a prime example of how the Left excoriates dissent.

I know what we're seeing in this regard though, it is a channel for the conservative message to get out and the frustration at having to deal with a liberally slanted press. If you really are for the "little guy" you should be happy that he is now able to recieve "the other side" of the issues.

Also, don't you find it interesting that Faux News is moving to the left and CNN is moving to the right?

I do, I was surprised by Fox's signing of Geraldo but it makes sense. At last CNN has de facto admitted to it's leftist bent. Why else would it, as you say, move right? It show that the newsmedia is still paying attention to the bottomline. They know where the butter comes from.