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With its coverage of the Iraqi situation, our mainstream media has been pathetic. There has been little questioning of the Bush administration, virtually no investigation into the evidence posited to support its policies. Instead our media seems determined to avoid the truth, simultaneously promoting an agenda and influencing public opinion. To succeed, such an approach requires a willingly influenced populace that does not want the truth and accepts that agenda.
The polls show that a majority of the American people, differing from vast majorities around the world, favors an attack on a country that has done absolutely nothing to us. Not coincidentally, similar majorities believe the completely unsubstantiated notions that Iraq was behind 9-11, is somehow linked to Al Queda and worldwide terrorism, and poses a real threat to our security. These stories, though questionable at the very best, are the ones the administration wants us to hear. The media gladly obliges, telling such tales over and over again to one group that willingly believes and to another that hears them so often that they eventually believe, too.
The media is undeniably a great cheerleader for the Bush team. It helped create the myth that these people are honest and have integrity. Although our economy flounders, our foreign policy is in chaos, commentators never miss a chance to praise the administration in one way or another. On Iraq, we hear from one ex-general, after one ex-state department person, after one hawk of some sort after another. Sure we hear some anti-Bush, anti-war voices, but much of what they say is lost in the cacophony reigning down from pro-war, pro-administration commentators.
Certainly, the big corporations that own most of our major media outlets serve their best interests by supporting this most corporate-friendly administration. The obscene alliance between corporate America and the administration borders on the fascistic. Part and parcel of this alliance, the media is a major disseminator of propaganda to support its most powerful benefactor.
To aggressively question the validity of the reasons used to justify the upcoming attack, the media must necessarily question the honesty of the administration and the integrity of its policies. Since the answers would not be favorable to those in power, our media simply does not routinely seek those answers.
Such honest reporting would bring many things front and center, not buried in the back pages. Iraq has no nuclear program whatsoever. In fact, Iraq may not really have any viable WOMD at all or the capability and motivation to deliver them. There is absolutely no evidence linking Hussein and 9-11 and worldwide terrorism. The consequences of an attack could be catastrophic. A FORGED letter falsely told us of Iraq’s attempt to acquire material that MIGHT be used to fabricate a nuclear weapon. Hussein never "kicked out" the weapons inspectors in 1998. Maybe, after all, Hussein did not gas his own people. The IAEA never said that Iraq was six months away from developing an atomic weapon as Bush has told us. Before the UN, when Collin Powell described an intercepted conversation between Iraqi military officers he included crucial words and language that are not in the official transcript, that the terrorist camp with WOMD in northern Iraq Powell again told us about doesn't actually have any such weapons or the capability to produce them, that more evidence of the Iraqi threat used by Powell was plagiarized from a ten-year old term paper written by a British college student.
The honest reporting of a responsible media would clearly expose George W. Bush, Colin Powell, et al as liars and totally undermine the credibility of the administration. Our media simply will not do this.
All too conveniently, many Americans do not want honest reporting either. Despite their inherent skepticism of politicians, most people want to believe their leaders, especially on matters as important as these. This media is largely responsible for the myth that THESE leaders specifically are honest folks. Even though reality tells us a different story, enough Americans do not want the truth about this group. Our mainstream media is usually happy to give them exactly what they want.
If, then, the reasons for an attack are questionable at best, why the rush to war? The answers expose more fundamental truths about our leaders and our world on which, again, the media will not report and many Americans cannot tolerate. When there is war some people benefit and profit. Our media will not now properly tell us who these people are, how they will benefit, and why they might want this war. Americans do not want to hear the disturbing truth that leaders will take a country to war for reasons of economics, power, profit, greed, and politics. But history tells us that people will do strange and terrible things when the stakes are so high. No matter. The media ignores reality and tells the story it wants to tell, especially when that story is the one so many want to hear. The poll results are not surprising.
Our media has other reasons to hide the dishonesty of the current administration. It spent eight years telling us Bill Clinton was a liar and a lout. Many commentators, certainly playing a role in the outcome of election 2000, bent over backwards, wielding distortions and outright fabrications, to pass on the liar-in-chief torch to Al Gore. All the while they told us that George W. Bush was a decent and honest guy who was going to restore integrity to the White House. To now tell us Bush is corrupt and a liar is to undermine ten years of work. This media, like the American people, sometimes cannot tolerate the truth, either.
So the vicious circle turns, bounded by an enormously influential media that does not want to do its job and report the truth being fed by a populous that refuses to demand that truth. Our cheerleading pundits have abdicated virtually any semblance of responsibility. Honest reporting would no doubt produce a majority of Americans against an attack and perhaps no attack at all. But this media is not now capable of honest reporting. We did not have it on Vietnam until it was too late and look at the price we paid.
We must demand more from our media and from ourselves or history may indeed repeat itself. For if the best our reporters can do is to tell us silly tales of Iraqi drones made out of balsa wood and duct tape, powered by weed-whacking engines, flying half way around the world to deliver weapons on the American people, then they too are responsible for what is to come. But what of the people who accept such nonsense as the truth? The blood of many will be on many hands, the corporate media power brokers, the punditocracy, and yes the people that both request and accept their lies included.
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