Middle East expert Juan Cole on the newly exposed Pentagon campaign to influence military ‘experts’ on television (see previous post) to paint a more rosy picture of military operations:
“You always suspected these things about corporate media coverage of Iraq, but seeing it in cold black and white is bracing. I have more than once been put opposite some sunshine peddler on radio or television and wondered whether the person was on the take”
So you think the cost of filling your tank is outrageous? Wait until your next trip to the supermarket…
Food prices are accelerating faster than a Vectrix electric scooter. The price of wheat doubled in just two months this year.
With that in mind, this fable from Ancient Greece is more relevant than ever:
The Ant and the Grasshopper
In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
“Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”
“I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.”
“Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew:
It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.
Iraq Veterans spoke out last month on what they saw and were expected to do in Iraq and Afghanistan, recalling being put into immoral and illegal situations:
Soldiers spoke out at an event sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against The War:
On the initial invasion:
“There were massive amounts of artillery strikes before we even invaded. We saw the results of that. Streets full of bodies – women and children – body parts, extremely indiscriminate. I’m talking about rolling through villages here, not military encampments.”
“I still believed everything we were force-fed: weapons of mass destruction and possibly even a nuclear weapon. We felt, like, we’re going to go in, overthrow this evil dictator and give these people some peace, finally. We thought we were doing a good thing.”
On home raids:
“Usually it was based on a tip – we’re told someone in the home is an insurgent. We would pick up people who had nothing to do with anything, keep them locked up until they came up with something.”
“We kick down the door and all we find are a few women holding babies and a couple of kids. We were ordered to take the babies away and put sandbags on the women’s heads, tie their hands behind their backs, put them on their knees facing the wall. Here I am zip-tying these women, and my buddy is standing next to me holding these babies asking what do I do with these kids? We stood there, like, oh shit, what do we do? The squad leader came in and shouted, ‘Everybody is bagged and tagged – everybody!’ So we did it.”
On interrogations:
“That’s not something I want on my conscience.”
On the very common ‘Shovel order:’
“Anyone carrying a shovel or any sort of implement that could be used to bury an IED could be considered a target…After dark, you can shoot anyone who is outside. Or anyone who puts anything on the side of the road can be considered a target. You won’t find it in writing, but it’s an order indicated to soldiers.”
On accountability:
“(Our commander) made it clear to us that if an innocent person was shot he would stage a scene to protect us”.
On the Haditha Massacre, when 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, some women and children were killed by angry U.S. soldiers, after losing their brothers in an IED attack:
“My squad was doing medivacs out of the town. I was not there to witness the shooting, but I know many marines who were.”
“I have a lot of feelings about this incident. A friend of mine from my first two tours was in that squad. He was the guy they gave immunity to to testify against the squad leader.”
“The people on the ground are looking at serious prison time. Like life. The people who were giving orders were only relieved of command. And I don’t think that’s right.”
The Haditha massacre, us ugly as it sounds, was not an isolated incident:
“It’s the one that just happened to be uncovered.”
On the Abu Gharaib abuses (after describing some inhumane hazing incidents routinely performed on fellow soldiers):
“What happened at Abu Ghraib is those orders came from the top. If the policy makers and the commanders can dehumanise their own troops, why wouldn’t they dehumanise the Iraqi people?”
On the mission and the war against terror:
“Everything that we were doing seemed almost designed to create more terrorists. To turn people against America. I couldn’t understand how we were liberating anyone. But I could understand how an Afghan person who was ambivalent about America could easily become an extremist based on their interaction with American soldiers.”
On the chain of command:
“The soldiers and marines are just doing their jobs, doing what they were trained for or what they were told to do when they got over there. Things that seem really horrible just become routine – and they are implicitly or explicitly condoned, or encouraged, by the commanders and the policy-makers.”
This really sums up the depressing media situation in this country right now:
Reporting on the last democratic debate, The Washington Post obsessed over “gaffes, missteps and past statements that could leave them vulnerable in the general election,” including such important issues as Obama’s remarks about small town values, questions about his patriotism and love of the flag, and the incendiary sermons of his former pastor, as well as Clinton’s disproved tales about Bosnia sniper fire.
Much like the actual debate, most of the coverage was devoted to such important election issues.
At the end of the article, they mentioned:
“The debate also touched on Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, taxes, the economy, guns and affirmative action.”
Glenn Greenwald, in his commentary on yesterdays Times article (see previous post), does a stellar job of showing how there is nothing truly new about the findings in the Times article - that the times actually reported on this thorny subject back in 2003, and that the only new aspect is the mock ’surprise’ over these revelations.
Furthermore, the Times is as guilty as any other outlet of these deceptions, itself acknowledging that “at least nine” of the Pentagon’s trained military analysts wrote Op-Eds for the NYT itself. Greenwald points out that “many of those same sources were also repeatedly quoted — and still are routinely quoted — in all sorts of NYT news articles on Iraq and other “War on Terrorism” issues, something the article fails to note.”
He summarizes:
“The single most significant factor in American political culture is the incestuous, extensive overlap between our media institutions and government officials. The former is a dependent appendage of the latter far more than they are anything else. This article discloses some new details and proof of how that toxic process functions, but the fact that our major news organizations — with some exceptions — largely serve as government propaganda outlets is not news.”
Military Experts on your favorite news station turn out to be Pentagon Hacks!
Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned against the influence of an ever more powerful military-industrial complex in 1961. Indeed, his vision of the merging of government, media, industry, and the military was ahead of it’s time. Yet no one could have predicted the acceleration of that trend in the last seven years.
Author Naomi Wolf (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism) has argued convincingly that the same steps which worked to subdue and numb the people of Germany, Czeckoslovakia, China, and Latin American dictatorships are being imposed upon the American people equally successfully:
“…beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable…that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.”
Among her “ten easy steps” to fascism in the U.S. (besides “Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy”) was “control the press.”
It was slightly unreal when, in 2004, the Guardian (UK) reported that “The US government admitted it paid actors to pose as journalists in video news releases sent to TV stations intending to convey support for new laws about health benefits,” including completely fake scenes of crowds giving George Bush a standing ovation as he signed health care legislation.
More disturbing still was the 2005 N.Y. Times disclosure that “A handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government,” and that:
“at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.”
The most high profile case involved syndicated columnist and TV host Armstrong Williams, who, after being busted for accepting almost $1/4 million to promote Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law, acknowledged that it was “bad judgement” on his part.
Care to imagine the ones that didn’t get caught?
Last year it was revealed that the White House had interfered in Global Warming reports from scientists, with the Christian Science Monitor reporting that “More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies say they have been pressured to remove references to ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ from a range of documents, including press releases and communications with Congress.”
Today we learn that for years now, the administration has employed a handful of military retirees, to appear on network and cable news shows as ‘experts’ to help you and I understand everyday developments and decisions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and our upcoming sequel, Iran). These hacks have been flown around in the plane normally used by Dick Cheney in a deliberate campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s military performance.
If your head isn’t spinning yet, the Times reports that the synergies of the relationships are not simply military or ideological, but financial as well:
“Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air…Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.”
Lately an email has been circulating which is a reprint of a column in the N.Y. Sun by Kenneth Blackwell, which you are welcome to read here.
Here I examine the contents of the email. My explanations follow actual quotes from the email. I left out links, but if you want documentation on any of my points, please contact me:
Some Background:
Ken Blackwell and the New York Sun
First off, The NY Sun is hardly a respected paper in N.Y. Founded by Conrad Black (now serving time in a federal penitentiary for mail fraud and obstruction of justice), the paper was founded as “a conservative alternative in a town populated overwhelmingly by liberals”, and has been described by Kofi Annan’s chief of staff (at the United Nations) as “a pimple on the backside of American journalism.”
The Sun claims a circulation of 150,000, although they admit that only 10 percent of those are actually sold and the rest are given away free. (The N.Y. Daily News has a ‘sold’ circulation of 700,000).
Ken Blackwell himself was a failed politician with plenty of controversy in his past.
He was 2004 Chief Elections officer for the State of Ohio, simultaneously being Ohio chairman of the Bush Re-election Campaign. As such he was a party to more than 15 election related lawsuits, most of which ruled against him. Though there were no criminal charges against him, The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in ruling against Blackwell, said that Ohio’s rules violated the First Amendment and had “a negative impact … on minor parties and on political activity as a whole in Ohio.”
He was also involved in election controversy regarding voting machines. Blackwell ordered Diebold touch screen voting machines for Ohio, reversing a decision by the state to use optical scan machines (which, unlike the touch screen models, would leave a paper trail for ‘recount’ purposes). He then refused to disqualify the machines after security problems were discovered in their software. When an Ohio paper uncovered his ownership of stock in the company, he was forced to sell it (at a loss) and blamed it on a mistake by his broker.
He is a huge proponent of gun rights, and has advocated legalization of military and assault weapons. In the movie “Swing State,” he is seen ripping a car to shreds with a machine gun in front of gun toting, cheering children (Some may find nothing wrong with that).
There may even be some resentment or jealousy towards Obama: In 2006 Blackwell ran as a Republican for Governor of Ohio. One national religious leader supporting Blackwell was quoted as saying that Blackwell could “potentially be president of the United States someday, and the first black president at that.” He was soundly defeated (by almost double) by his Democratic opponent.
The Claims:
On Pakistan:
Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons
It is a stretch to say he talked about ‘invading Pakistan.’ This claim was first made by John McCain, who said: “Will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who suggested invading our ally, Pakistan?”
This exaggeration stems from a speech in August 2007, in which Obama said he would use military force against Al Qaeda operatives hiding in tribal areas of Pakistan if that nation did not move more aggressively against them first:
“I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges,” Obama said. “But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again…If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will.”
John McCain, the Bush administration, and right wing radio hosts ridiculed him, saying that such an aggressive position was unrealistic and proved his inexperience in foreign policy. White House spokesman Tony Snow defended this position:
“We think that our approach to Pakistan is not only one that respects the sovereignty of Pakistan, but also is designed so that we are working in cooperation.”
But events since then seem to have vindicated Obama – Ironically, The Bush administration has now adopted exactly the plan Obama espoused, with 100 percent success. In 2008 they adopted a new policy of using missile strikes on terrorist leaders in Pakistan without the knowledge or blessing of the Musharraf regime. According to the Washington Post:
“Having requested the Pakistani government’s official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek the government’s formal permission beforehand. It is an approach that some U.S. officials say could be used more frequently this year…”
“The administration also feels an increased sense of urgency about undermining al-Qaeda before President Bush leaves office, making it less hesitant, said one official familiar with the incident.”
On meeting with Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il:
…meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people…
Obama simply said that he would be ‘willing to meet’ with these world leaders, adding afterwards that he would be willing to do so after lower level diplomatic efforts. He said:
“And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”
“…Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their enemies and talk to their adversaries…In the same way that Nixon met with Mao and that past presidents met with people that we don’t like.”
Last week (April 2) William Odom, Army General and former director of the National Security Administration) testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemning the policy which has been urged by this administration:
“No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president’s policy has reinforced Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.”
Whether or not you agree with this position, I will say that claims about Ahmadinejad are exaggerated by those willing to wage another unprovoked war. For instance, he has never ‘vowed’ to create another Holocaust (though his position is that the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated for Israel’s benefit - a position, by the way, held by most arab countries in the Middle East, including our ‘allies-with-oil’ Saudi Arabia).
On the Nuclear option:
…emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists - something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s…
It’s true that no president has taken Nuclear weapons off the table (though the terrorist threat is fairly recent). But Nuclear weapons are usable only against cities, regions, or countries. Terrorists are individuals, and the aspect that makes terrorism so elusive is simply that these are individuals or groups that are independent of states.
One irony is that this discussion only arose in the context of attacking terrorist leaders in the remote areas of Pakistan, the same issue Obama was attacked about for being too naïve and inexperienced (see above). So the same guy accusing him of being too aggressive about attacking Pakistan is (several sentences later) accusing him, in a sense, of being too ‘soft.’
On Foreign Policy and National Security:
Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who oversaw the arming of the Afghan Mujahaddeen and was our National Security Advisor during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, endorsed Obama with these words:
“He has a sense of what is historically relevant, and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world…There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs,” he added “And Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America’s relationship with the world.”
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, explicitly stressed Obama’s ability to handle National Security in his endorsement of Obama.
His backers include generals, admirals, and former members of both Bush administrations and the Reagan administration. Clifford Alexander, Jr., former Secretary of the US Army, Richard Danzig, former Secretary of the US Navy, and F. Whitten Peters, former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force are all endorsing Obama, as is Richard Clarke, former counter-terrorism advisor to Clinton and George Bush.
Health Care:
For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world
Wow. Where do I start?
One medical researcher described our system as: “pretty good if you have access. But if you don’t, I think that’s the main problem, isn’t it?” In the largest economy in the world, out of 300 million people, 47 million have no health insurance of any kind.
In January 2008, a respected medical journal released a study focusing on levels of preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations. While France and Japan were at the top of the list, the U.S. was ranked dead last, having slipped from 15th to 19th since the same study ten years ago.
Free Trade Agreements:
free trade agreements… have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago
Plenty has been written about free trade agreements (the largest one, by far, being NAFTA), but I have never heard this argument before. Sure, more goods are affordable to consumers through these arrangements, but there are even graver pitfalls on the ‘producing’ side.
NAFTA was sold to all sides (the U.S., Canada, and Mexico) on the premise that it would increase trade (and therefore increase jobs for all three countries). The World Bank has reported that while trade increased dramatically since NAFTA between the three nations, there was an almost exact increase of trade between non-NAFTA nations. NAFTA has not reduced poverty rates as promised. While being good for business owners in all three countries, poverty rates have increased and it has contributed to rising levels of inequality in both Mexico and the U.S.
Here at home, NAFTA had negative impacts on workers in manufacturing and assembly industries who lost jobs. Although the U.S. total civilian employment rate grew by almost 15 million in between 1993 and 2001, manufacturing jobs only increased by 476,000 during that time. Furthermore, from 2001 to 2007, net manufacturing employment declined by over 3 million.
Taxation & The economy:
Obama promises to raise taxes on ‘the rich.’
and
Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.
Unfortunately, our nation has embarked on a path of borrowing and passing along the debt to future generations (this debt has increased more than 50 percent under President Bush). Just the interest on our debt is a big proportion of the taxes we all pay – and this growing expense is robbing us of the ability to invest in infrastructure, national security, health, and education. Most Americans don’t understand how serious this is – it is exactly the same as running up personal credit card debt, to the point where you cannot afford to get out from your obligations - And who are we borrowing from? Countries like China and Japan and our friends in the Middle East. Welcome to reality.
Obama has indeed attacked tax breaks for the wealthy (which will cost the nation over 2.3 trillion by the time they expire in 2009). He has pledged to protect tax cuts for poor and middle class families, while reversing most of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers.
He has demanded an end to subsidies for oil and gas companies that are enjoying record profits, and special-interest loopholes and tax breaks. He has pledged to give the Treasury Department the tools it needs to stop the abuse of tax shelters and offshore tax havens and help close the $350 billion tax gap between taxes owed and taxes paid.
Partial Birth Abortion:
He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional.
It’s true that Obama has voted against banning partial birth abortions, but to paint him as ‘pro’ partial birth abortions is simplifying and ‘spinning’ the issue. In explaining this belief, he said:
“I feared a ban on abortion would force women to seek unsafe abortions, as they had once done in this country…
“The broader issue here is: Do women have the right to make these profoundly difficult decisions?
“…I think that most Americans recognize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don’t make them casually. And I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy.”
While he is adamant that this is the woman’s choice, he emphasizes a more preventative strategy:
“Can we move past some of the debates around which we disagree and can we start talking about the things we do agree on?: Reducing teen pregnancy; making it less likely for women to find themselves in these circumstances…”
In that light, he voted to increase funding and access to family planning services, to require equitable prescription coverage for contraceptives under health plans, and to fund, create and expand teen pregnancy prevention programs and education programs concerning emergency contraceptives.
He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing.
This is just so whacked and distorted it is not worth spending much time on…
Do you know who Margaret Sanger is? I doubt most Americans do.
Issues about abortion and a woman’s right to choose are one of the most challenging and enduring debates of our time - depending on your stance on the issue you would either agree or disagree with Margaret Sanger.
American Values:
His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban - ban - on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francis co values, not Middle America values.
These values are more mainstream than Mr. Blackwell realizes. In a 2006 poll on faith and values, Americans were asked to name “the most serious moral crisis in America today.” The top answers were “kids not raised with the right values” and “corruption in government,” while only 4 percent cited “abortion and homosexuality.”
Another poll (by conservative group The Family Research Council) concluded:
“Social issues such as abortion and gay marriage rank last in importance to the vast majority of Americans…An overwhelming majority of Americans, including at least three-quarters of every major religious tradition, say issues like poverty and health care are more important than hot-button social issues.”
“…Americans overwhelmingly agree that too many religious leaders focus on abortion and gay rights without addressing more important issues such as loving our neighbors and caring for the poor.”
On gun control, there’s no doubt that most Americans (usually about 70-75%) agree on the right to own arms. A majority (although less) also agree this includes handguns. However, In response to a March 2008 Washington Post poll, 59% said “yes” to the following question: “Would you support a law in your state that bans private handgun ownership and requires that rifles and shotguns kept in private homes be unloaded or have a trigger lock?”
Opinions about gun control change over time and in response to recent events. I think that the above response may be more ‘anti-handgun’ than normal because it came not long after several school/mall shootings. But in any case (despite large scale agreement on the right to own arms), roughly 2/3 of Americans consistently agree that handgun laws need to be stricter.
And Finally:
My point is simply that blanket statements (such as “these are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francis co values, not Middle America values”), should not be accepted as fact just because they are printed somewhere or spouted on television or radio.
I am not asking you to endorse Obama or to otherwise agree with any opinions or beliefs. I am simply suggesting that you don’t accept just one source for information (in this case, a source which makes no effort to hide it’s biases). There are many sources of information out there – if you truly care about this country or our future, the best thing you can do is to seek out additional information, or to at least absorb information from a variety of sources – some of which, hopefully, will be less biased than Ken Blackwell and the New York Sun.
In desperation, Hillary takes a lesson from the Giuliani fear mongering playbook:
Last night on the democratic debate on ABC TV, Hillary invoked the worst terror attack on US soil to continue her criticisms of Barack Obama, mentioning 9/11 five times to criticize his association with a member of the group Weather Underground (which bombed government buildings in the 60s), his openness to talking to rogue leaders, and even a question about energy policy.
She continued to keep Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama’s former pastor) in the news, reiterating her earlier declarations that she would not have Wright as her pastor. This time she invoked the suffering of the people of New York to justify that view:
“But I have to say that, you know, for Pastor Wright to have given his first sermon after 9/11 and to have blamed the United States for the attack, which happened in my city of New York, would have been intolerable for me…”
But is it still intolerable if it is honest and true?
Many others have been denounced for suggesting 9/11 was caused by failed U.S. policy. But regardless of your opinion of Pastor Wright, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seems to be in agreement with the Pastor, in testifying to the house arms services committee on April 10:
“We were attacked from Afghanistan in 2001, and we are at war in Afghanistan today, in no small measure because of mistakes this government made–mistakes I among others made in the end game of the anti-Soviet war there some 20 years ago.”
I hope the 9-11 ploy works as well for Hillary as it did for Rudy.