Left News and Views

In the April 25, 2007 edition of Bill Moyers Journal, on PBS titled “Buying the War,” Moyers asserts that “the story of how the media bought what the White House was selling has not been told in depth on television.”

Moyers documents case after case in which the press overlooked clear evidence that the administration was knowingly lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s capability to produce a nuclear bomb, and how members of the media were so easily manipulated by Bush and company.

A classic – and insidious – example of how the Administration turned lies into incontrovertible truth took place in September 2002 when Judy Miller, the New York Times’ reporter who came to be known as the Administration’s puppet, reported that classified documents indicated that Saddam Hussein was close to acquiring nuclear weapons.

This tactic became know as plant a story – such as the one that Saddam Hussein had acquired aluminum tubes needed for centrifuges to produce enriched, weapons-grade uranium – and then go on the Sunday news programs to point to the story in the New York Times or Washington Post – both of which were more than helpful in distributing the Administration propaganda during the run-up to the war – as proof that Iraq was close to creating a nuclear devise.

“Was it just a coincidence in your mind that Cheney came on your show and others went on the other Sunday shows, the very morning that that story appeared?” Moyers asked Tim Russert of NBC’s Meet the Press.

“Critics point to September eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable,” he continued. “Someone in the administration plants a dramatic story in the New York Times and then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the New York times. It’s a circular, self-confirming leak.”

The most damaging outgrowth of this cold-war-style use of propaganda by the Bush Administration is that it has become so hard today to separate true fact from the so-called well-known facts that so many of the hawks continue to peddle.

A good friend of mine – who is articulate and intelligent even if his brain has been a bit fried by Fox Noise – hit one of my raw nerve recently when he said that “everybody was convinced” before the invasion that Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

This belief arose from the fact that the media didn’t give any coverage to dissenters. In October of 2002, 100,000 people came together in Washington. It was one of the largest peace demonstrations in years and the Post put a picture on the metro page. I was among a group that held a peace vigil on the same day in which hundreds of us held our candles in a line along the road from Morrisville to Trenton – we covered the bridge and well beyond. And virtually no coverage came out of that.

Fortunately, much of the lying and skullduggery of the Cheney-Bush-Rove gang is finally coming to light – although unfortunately not in time to save the 3,337 American men and women and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died there since the war began.

Former CIA Director George Tenet, in a soon-to-be-published book, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials charging they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a serious debate about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

And yesterday, Senator Richard Durbin admitted on the floor of the Senate that in classified briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee by Administration officials prior to the war he and other committee members learned that what Bush and company actually knew was totally ad odds with the information they were disseminiating.

As more and more of the lies of Bush/Cheney come to the surface, I am surprised that everyone is spurning Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s attempt to bring charges of impeachment against Cheney for his manipulation of pre-war intelligence. The lies of Bush and Cheney have led to more deaths than occurred after Bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Towers. How much damage do they have to do before they are held accountable?

I guess you have to get a blow job before any action can be taken.