U.S. Media Caved in to
the Bush Agenda
Toronto Sun/Common Dreams
by Eric Margolis
Published on Sunday, June 15,
2003
Why, readers in the U.S. keep asking me, are so many Americans
unconcerned their government appears to have misled them and
Congress over Iraq, and then waged a war with no basis in law or
fact?
Why is there growing outrage in Britain over Tony Blair's
equally exaggerated or patently false warnings over Iraq, while
middle America couldn't seem to care less about George Bush's
"Weaponsgate."
One answer is found in an old joke.
Greenberg is sitting in a bar. He goes up to Woo, a Chinese
gentleman, and punches him.
"Why'd you do that?" cries Woo.
"Because of Pearl Harbor," snarls Greenberg.
"But I had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, I'm Chinese!" says
Woo.
"Chinese, Japanese, it's all the same to me," answers
Greenberg.
A month later, Greenberg sees Woo in the bar and apologizes to
him. The Chinese gentleman smiles, then punches Greenberg.
"Why did you do that?" cries Greenberg?
"Because of the Titanic."
"What do I have to do with the Titanic?" asks Greenberg.
"Greenberg, iceberg, it's all the same to me."
Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Saudis, Taliban, al-Qaida ...
it's all too much for many geographically challenged Americans.
Don't bother us with the details and strange names, they say,
kill 'em all, God will sort 'em out. The Muslim 'A-rabs' did 9/11
and we got revenge. Whacking those I-raqis made us feel a whole
lot better. So what if Saddam didn't really have the weapons of
mass destruction good ol' George W. Bush said endangered the
entire world? All politicians lie. So what?"
First, venting national outrage over 9/11 was one factor that
helped form this group-think.
Second, starting with Afghanistan, the Bush White House
threatened big corporate media it would be held "unpatriotic" and
occasionally hinted at unspecified reprisals if coverage did not
actively support the war effort there and in Iraq.
Big media too often caved in, sometimes sounding like a public
relations arm of the administration.
Third, there was near total domination of Iraq media
commentary by the special interest groups that helped to engineer
this phony war. Almost all of it in the lead-up to war was done
by self-serving Iraqi exiles, uninformed generals and
neo-conservatives from Washington think-tanks sometimes echoing
the views of Israel's Likud party. In short, a media lynch mob
developed, endlessly repeating that Baghdad's terrifying killer
weapons were about to blitz the U.S.
I scanned the major U.S. networks for voices challenging the
distortions and bunkum coming from the White House and neo-cons.
There was virtually none.
Group-think and the big lie prevailed. The British and
Canadian media carried both pro- and anti-war views; as a result,
there was far more healthy skepticism in both nations about the
war than in America.
By contrast, much of the U.S. mainstream media muffled
criticism, became part of the war effort and devoted itself to
patriotic flag-waving. Americans would have been totally misled
had it not been for such Internet sites as Antiwar.com, Bigeye
and LewRockwell, and incisive magazines such as American
Conservative and Harpers.
Even the august New York Times allowed itself to be used.
Right now, the Times is hand-wringing about two cases of
plagiarism and phony reporting by staffers. It should instead be
anguishing that its pages trumpeted phony reports about Iraqi
weapons and links to al-Qaida that came from anti-Saddam exile
groups and the pro-war cabal in the Pentagon.
Most so-called Iraqi "experts" on TV, including some
colleagues of mine, merely regurgitated what they had read in the
morning's Times. The Times and much of the major media were
duped, to put it politely, abandoning their vital role in our
democratic system as tribune and questioner of the
politicians.
So, too, the Democratic party, which, as war fever was being
stoked by the Bush administration and the press, shamefully
rolled over and played dead - with the exception of that great
American, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who long ago
denounced Bush's Iraq misadventure, and who now demands a full
investigation of how Americans and their Congress were
misled.
Absurd exaggerations
The black comedy continues:
Bush citing what turned out to be crudely forged documents in
his state of the union address.
"Drones of death" that turned out to be rickety model
airplanes.
The "decontamination" trucks cited by Colin Powell that turned
out to be fire trucks when inspected by the UN.
The notorious "mobile germ labs" the British press now reports
were for inflating artillery balloons and, in fact, were sold to
Iraq by the U.K.
Some British and American intelligence officers are accusing
their governments of outright lies or absurd exaggerations.
Maybe Americans have become brain-dead from too much TV. Maybe
they don't care terrorism is surging, or that recent polls show
the U.S. is reviled, hated, or distrusted around the globe thanks
to this administration and its neo-con mentors. Maybe they don't
understand that over 288 Americans and an estimated 26,300 Iraqi
civilians and soldiers have so far died in a totally unnecessary
conflict. Or that the U.S. in now stuck in an ugly little
colonial war in Iraq, its very own West Bank and Gaza.
(Note to American hate-mailers: spare Canada, I'm a New
Yorker.)
Copyright © 2003, CANOE
© Copyrighted 1997-2003
Excellent article. But there's one problem. The author thinks the
media went bonkers just prior to the war. In reality it lost all
credibility when it pushed republican false accusations against
the Clinton Administration around the clock for eight years and
then attacked Gore for lying.
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