Trash Talkers: The Black Mud of Bush/Blair Propaganda- Chris Floyd

[Clara T]

Trash Talkers: The Black Mud of Bush/Blair Propaganda


Written by Chris Floyd   
Wednesday, 15 March 2006
It is not enough for those gentlemen of rectitude, the oh-so-Christian Coalition of George Bush and Tony Blair, to snatch innocent people from around the world and plunge them into a black hole of torture and anguish for years on end. No, even in those rare instances where they finally spit out a victim after grinding his body and mind to bits, they cannot let him rest. They purse him to the ends of the earth, trying to taint his reputation with slander, innuendo and black propaganda fed to willing media accomplices -- anything to muddy the waters, to keep the truth about their despicable enterprise from emerging fully into the light.

Victoria Brittain, writing in The Guardian, shows us how it's done in Trial by Spin Machine. Excerpts: The coincidental release of Michael Winterbottom's prize-winning film about the young men from Tipton, Road to Guantánamo, and Moazzam Begg's book, Enemy Combatant, predictably brought the US and British spin machines into full swing last week - so that anyone reading the book or seeing the film would have got the idea that these men may have been badly treated, but they certainly were not innocent.

Last week the Daily Telegraph flagged an exclusive on its front page. "Begg told FBI he trained with al-Qaeda," was the headline over a full-page article by Con Coughlin, the paper's security correspondent, using an FBI report which, as Begg's book explains, was written by two FBI agents. After Begg had been tortured, threatened with death, offered a job undercover by the CIA, and come to believe he would never see his family again, he signed the "confession", confident that it was so illiterate and inconsistent that no court of law would accept it as having been written by an educated man such as himself. Coughlin had a copy of the book from the publishers, so - assuming he read it - knew all this as he prepared his piece, which has so damaged Begg.

Meanwhile, Colleen Graffy, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, was in London last week on a propaganda offensive. Ms Graffy had visited Guantánamo and witnessed no unpleasant interrogation, no torture and plenty of sports facilities, she told Jeremy Vine on Radio 2. The imperturbable Vine was speechless when she drew from her bag a sample tube used for force-feeding prisoners and explained to him that it had no metal edges and was therefore humane…..<*However, for some reason she didn't offer to stuff down her own gullet, just to show viewers at home how comfy it is. A pity. CF>

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