Owning the Propaganda

Owning the Propaganda


From the Pen of Hank Roth
webmaster@pnews.org

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. - — Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch.9
Napoleon said winners own the propaganda and "history is written by winners" and the CNN journalist said it as he announced a new Iraqi television station owned and controlled by the United States and like the rest of this war, it is paid for with tax payer money - and articles written by the military and Iraqi newspapers paid to publish them and call it news. It is up to those of us who prefer a history written honestly to challenge the pro-war, dishonest propaganda of the U.S. and British governments.

Rumsfeld said pf the Saddam regime their "logic is different" than ours. Secretary Dean Rush once said the exact same thing about the Vietnamese. When asked by reporters how that little country could challenge the mighty U.S. fleet when referring to the Tonkin Bay incident, he said only that "their process of logic are very different."

"We should resist. War is killing, maiming and disfiguring human beings. It is so disgusting and horrible in reality that even the most "realistic" Hollywood movie sanitizes it. The news media sanitize it. The government sanitizes war because it doesn't want you to see the coffins. Most of all, it doesn't want you to see the bodies before they are put in the coffins. The Bush administration's real beef with the Arab television station Al-Jazeera is really nothing more than the fact that Al-Jazeera shows the bodies." - Charley Reese (journalist for 49 years formerly with the Orlando Sentinel) - War Propaganda

"This entire glorification of war – as if the whole and only purpose of the government and the country were to fight wars – smells of fascism. The news media glorify the war and militarism; we get the same dose on television, in the movies and in video games. If the American people aren't careful, they will wake up one day to find out they've become a nation of mindless heel-clickers." (ibid)
"It's time to bring down the other terror masters," (Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, in a piece entitled "Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn") If Iraq had not turned out to be a complete debacle, George W. Bush would now have American troops in Syria and Iran.

Endless War
"Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton, the former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and now Ambassador to the United Nations -- two proponents of what has been called the "democratic domino" theory, have both clearly stated that Washington's ambitions do not end in Baghdad." (SIFY News - Apr 10, 2003 - "After Iraq, US may 'reform' Saudi, Iran")

While George Bush claimed WMD was a serious concern, he was using WMD against the Iraqis. The MOAB bomb was moved to Iraq, which is currently the biggest bomb in use there (see note below), which leaves a large mushroom cloud like a small nuclear device, however a new bomb is under being made. A 30,000-pound weapon called Big BLU (Bomb Live Unit) is being developed as are tactical nuclear weapons for use in George W. Bush military mis-adventures. The U.S. has used cluster bomb units, napalm-like munitions and depleted uranium.

A lot of civilians have been killed in Iraq. It must be because they made the mistake of living in combat zones. It must be because they made the mistake of living in Iraq. As Zinn mentions in "Terrorism and War" (2002), when Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lapan at the Pentagon was asked about civilians killed in Afghanistan. He said,

"Were civilians killed? Possibly. If they were killed, it was because they were in the vicinity of a military target."

What exactly does that mean if civilians are in the vicinity of the MOAB, the "mother of all bombs"? Zinn was a navigator during WWII. It was before he developed an awareness about war - and many of us who are veterans do years later. Perhaps that is why so many had post traumatic stress syndrome after Vietnam and many continue to suffer this debilitating sense of conscience after other wars.

"At our bombing altitudes--twenty-five or thirty thousand feet--we saw no people, heard no screams, saw no blood, no torn limbs. I remember only seeing the canisters light up like matches flaring one by one on the ground below. Up there in the sky, I was just `doing my job'---the explanation throughout history of warriors committing atrocities." (Zinn - "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" - 94)
Iraq was a fifth rate military power. Anyone seeing these old men and boys on television parading their weapons can see they were no match for the United States. They could not win. But they were no "imminent threat" either. If the CIA could provide intelligence about locations of people and they claimed they could, they also could find anything considered threatening and it could be destroyed without invading the entire country if that was indeed the objective of George Bush's war - but it wasn't.

Why did we act unilaterally except for the British without consent of Security Council? See the Downing Street memos. Because we can and because that has been the policy as stipulated in documents previously released by the Bush administration in its "National Security Strategy of the United States of America" - September 17, 2002 - And because of the Downing Street memos which said we were going to do it anyway, fixing the intelligence to support the war.

"....this document advances the political and theoretical justification for a colossal escalation of American militarism. The document asserts as the guiding policy of the United States the right to use military force anywhere in the world, at any time it chooses......" (David North, "The war against Iraq and America's drive for world" - October 2002 - World Socialist Web Site - Oct, 2002)

"The document begins by boasting that "The United States possesses unprecedented--and unequaled--strength and influence in the world." It declares with breathtaking arrogance that "The US national security strategy will be based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests...." (ibid)

AND how do they sell this internationalism and American hegemony to the American people?

They do it with ease...
"Of course, for some years, it has been no secret that Corporate America openly and generously pays for our presidential elections (Bush-Gore in 200 cost them $3 billion); they ALSO OWN THE MEDIA, which is kept well-nourished by disinformation from executive-controlled secret agencies like the CIA. Media also daily assures us that since we are the most envied and admired people on earth, everyone else on earth is eager to immigrate to the U.S. so that he can share in the greatest pie ever baked by arbitragers...." (Gore Vidal, "Dreaming War" - 2002)


Some are still surprised that so many could hate us. George Bush says it is because they envy us and want to destroy our freedom. George Bush is a simpleton - but he is a dangerous simpleton and he is an "imminent threat" to others, including those who have to die to make the world safe for American investments and our oil under their sand.

For all of Saddam Hussein's ruthlessness he did (like Tito in Yugoslavia) manage to keep Iraq united. And before sanctions there was free medicine, free health care, free education (through college), jobs, secular conditions for women. When the U.S. encouraged insurrection there was a swift and violent backlash and deaths which likely would not have occurred otherwise. What do you think would happen if there was a "real" insurrection in this country? Perhaps we are more humane but I don't see any evidence of it in Iraq. Saddam has even opened the doors to prisons and give Iraqis guns to protect themselves with. The story about Saddam Hussein is far different than the one which has been disseminated by the pro-war, anti-Hussein, George Bush propaganda mill.

Hank Roth
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