Seattle Post: News about Iraq goes through filters

[rainbow4321]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/212320_jamail17.html

By DAHR JAMAIL

How is it that more than 40 percent of Americans still believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction even though President Bush personally has admitted there are none?

How is it possible that millions of Americans believe the recent election in Iraq showed that Iraqis are in favor of the ongoing occupation of their country? In reality, the determination displayed by the roughly 59 percent of registered voters who participated in the election did so because they felt it would bring about an end to the U.S. occupation.

How do so many Americans wonder why more Iraqis each day are supporting both violent and non-violent movements of resistance to the occupation when after the U.S. government promised to help rebuild Iraq, a mere 2 percent of reconstruction contracts were awarded to Iraqi concerns and the infrastructure lies in shambles?

<snip>


But who can blame Americans when the military and mainstream media continue, day in and day out, to distort, deny and destroy the truth before it reaches the audience back home? An international peoples' initiative called the World Tribunal on Iraq met in Rome to focus on media complicity in the crimes committed against the people of Iraq as well as U.S. citizens who are paying with their blood and tax dollars to maintain the occupation. The tribunal found Western mainstream media outlets guilty of incitement to violence and the deliberate misleading of people into the war and ongoing occupation of Iraq.

[HockeyMom]

1. They are

too busy watching reality TV instead of REALITY NEWS.

[Cocoa]

2. today Barbara Starr was spreading some blatant misinformation

in discussing Negroponte's appointment, she explained how he could be spared in Iraq by claiming that the situation has improved since the election.

Then she tried to back away and qualify it, saying there's a "perception" that things have improved.

Either way, it's a total lie, the situation hasn't improved, the perception hasn't improved (except on cable news), and the whole idea of tying Negroponte's appointment to that stupid lie was just absurd.

[LittleClarkie]

3. Good story -- nominated for greatest page

Good questions, all.

[WeThePeople1911]

4. yup

yup

[Jacobin]

5. This article goes in my "NoShitSherlock" File