"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency"The truth manages to find it's way out somehow, eh? That nugget of wisdom from Scotty was in response to today's bombshell news (pun intended) from the Washington Post that the Bushistas knowingly withheld information from the public that debunked their claims of mobile trailers being used as laboratories to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
That lie was just one of many that were used to condition the American people for the expansion of war. The run-up to the Iraq invasion was blatantly full of propaganda, and the division lines of support weren't necessarily partisan, it was whether a person's bullshit meter was calibrated correctly or not. Catnip has more on the power of message-control.
When I recently read an article that appeared on Slate's website, "The Twilight of Objectivity" by Michael Kinsley, which supports the idea of opinion-based journalism over objective reporting, I flinched at the thought. With the advances made on the internet, the presence of newspaper editorial sections and the proliferation of readily available radio and television news pundits, the one thing we cannot afford to surrender is a media that gives us "just the facts, ma'am" - especially when we know that influential, agenda-driven organizations like the Pentagon and the White House have the power to distort the truth every single day by planting stories, opinions and by flat-out lying. We saw it happen with the Iraq war and it's deja vu all over again with the current warmongering about Iran.I've always been one to give a person the benefit of the doubt. When I meet someone new they have a clean slate with me, it's just the way I'm wired. With George though, the 2000 primary election season sealed his fate in my perception of him as a slimy scumbag. He proved capable of going for the jugular either directly or through his well-connected web of goons. It's the reason I don't trust anything that comes from their noise machine.
We've seen blowback against these efforts on the internet, led by the blogosphere, but we must also be careful not to fall into the trap of taking comfort in only those opinions that soothe us. We must be ever vigilant.
It's no surprise that the general public has almost become immune to the ghastly pictures of death we see every night on our television screens or that proven facts about wrongdoings by the Bush administration seem to be taken so lightly by so many who take so long to catch up to reality. It's just too difficult for some to believe that the person who leads their country could be anything but someone who acts for the good of the people which he is supposed to serve.
Especially crap like this
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that it is "time for action" on the international demands for Iran to cease its uranium enrichment activities.Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. (that's the correct way to say it, Mr. Chickenhawk in Chief)
Iran said Tuesday it had enriched uranium at a level of concentration high enough to operate a nuclear power plant, defying last month's U.N. Security Council presidential statement calling for Tehran to suspend the program."When the Security Council reconvenes [later this month], I think it will be time for action," Rice said. "We can't let this continue."
Tags: Iran, George Bush, Iraq, propaganda
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