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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (13211)	11/18/2006 12:39:51 PM
From: Crimson Ghost	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Good article on the warmongering US media. Too bad the author does not connect the dots of Zionist ownership and control to the warmongering she abhors. What they do not mention by Margie Burns \| Nov 18 2006 - 10:31am \| permalink article tools: email \| print \| read more Margie Burns Few things demonstrate the vitiation of our television networks as information providers more than the continuing appearance on television of the very people who boosted the invasion of Iraq. As most thinking people realize, every claim used to justify the immoral, illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq was false. The claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were false. The accusations that Iraq had been behind 9/11 were false. The claim that Saddam was in league with Islamic fundamentalists was false. The anticipation that Iraqi was behind the anthrax mailings was false. The story that Iraq tried to purchase “yellowcake” uranium was false. The story of the aluminum tubes was ludicrously false. The story of Iraqi “mobile labs” for germ warfare was false, and almost humorous. Yet for some reason, the people who appeared on television boosting these bogus claims, and who also supported them in purported opinion columns syndicated in major newspapers, are still ensconced in their media fora. Let’s state this clearly: when commentators like William Kristol, George F. Will and Charles Krauthammer used their positions to support the invasion of Iraq, they supported a policy of harm to the U.S.A. and to the world. In staking their positions, they also worked assiduously to discredit any opposition to the invasion, and they did not scruple to discredit fellow Americans. Perhaps it makes their positions the more loathsome that they themselves have contributed no family members to the armed forces or the war effort; perhaps not. My own feeling is that we do not have a government of hereditary positions (in spite of the Bush team’s best efforts), and the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the children. But that gets hard to remember when thinking about all the Iraqi parents and all the parents of U.S. military personnel who have lost children. At the point when the administration sent troops and mercenaries to destroy Fallujah, it was not only not attacking people connected with terrorists, it wasn’t even attacking people connected with Saddam. Furthermore, during the period when the above commentators and others like them were spending considerable time and effort to boost the Iraq war, they were receiving large sums of money from interest groups, including entities that stood to gain financially from the war. So why are people like Charles Krauthammer and George F. Will still appearing on the networks? When Krauthammer gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from the rightwing Bradley Foundation and Will gets lavish “speaking fees” from corporate interest groups, why is their commentary presented as spontaneous opinion on network television? Why are discredited mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly -- who never saw an ugly attack he didn’t like -- still lavishly paid by media outlets? Like other Americans, these men have a right to their views – assuming that the views they express are really their own, which is not a given in light of their funding. I have been told that Rush Limbaugh, for example, is actually pleasant in person. Makes sense: I am quite willing to believe that he treats individuals he cares about better than he treats the public. But then that’s the crux: these men have amply demonstrated that they do NOT care about the public. So why do major media outlets give artificial prominence and respectability to their perverse and destructive war-mongering, attacks on individuals better than they, and support of a flabby takeover attempt by one branch of one administration? Making matters worse is that there was no prominent person in the news media to say publicly that one country has no right to remake another country. Not one. Nobody said it: a country has no inherent right to remake another country, because there is no such right, absent self-defense. There still is none. Instead, look how some prominent figures in the corporate media are now homing in on Nancy Pelosi’s (perfectly appropriate) support for John Murtha – taking the line pushed by that disinterested commentator Robert Novak. A real voice for the public would have other things to mention. THE IRAQIS DIDN’T DO IT. THOSE POOR IRAQIS WEREN’T THE ONES BEHIND 9/11. We cannot hide that truth by sweeping it under a rug, and we will never be able to hide it. Major media outlets who try to do so jeopardize not just the moral stature but also the safety of every American. Real journalists would be bringing up this item at every presidential appearance: The Iraqis didn’t do it. They would have told Donald Rumsfeld: The Iraqis didn’t do it. They would tell Rupert Murdoch, not that it would help: The Iraqis didn’t do it. They would tell Condoleezza Rice: The Iraqis didn’t do it. They would tell Dick Cheney: The Iraqis didn’t do it. Speaking of Cheney, it has been suggested that the Vice President will step down, ostensibly for health reasons, and that Rice is being positioned to replace him. There is a real danger in Rice’s being falsely represented as “a different kind of Republican.” She has been part of the Middle East policy making America attacked around the world, like the neocons, ever since Bush 41. But like Bush 43, Rice was never vetted adequately by the large media outlets. _______