|
Recent
Stories
April
23, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers
William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
Binoy
Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq
David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?
Standard
Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Andrew
Rodman
Lawn Poem
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23
Website
of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
April
22, 2003
Edward
Said
The Appalling Consequences of the Iraq
War are Now Clear
Sam
Hamod
What's the Deal with This War?
Kurt
Nimmo
Shi'a Will to Power
Gary
Leupp
At last! The Necessary Evidence
Carl
Estabrook
Oblivious Americans: They Distort,
We Subside
John
Stanton
Iran's Reza Pahlavi: a Puppet of the US and Israel?
Ramzy
Baroud
What Else Hasn't Israel Told America?
Steven
Sherman
About That Cuba Letter
Wayne Madsen
Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult
Stew
Albert
Creep
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/22
Website
of the Day
Critical Media Literacy in Times of War
April
21, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
An Administration in Contempt
Gary
Leupp
Easter Thoughts on Liberation, Jesus
and Kanaka WaiWai
Roger
Witherspoon
Why Michigan Needs Affirmative Action
Uri Avnery
At Midnight, a Knock on the Door
Col. Dan
Smith
Early Lessons from Iraq
Jo
Freeman
After the Protest Comes Politics
Michael
Berry
The Friedman Absurdities
Gray
Brechin
Hang Black Banners: Mourning the Cultural Loss
Bob Riedel
The Taliban from Texas
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/21
April
19, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Rape of History
Saul
Landau
Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush's
War, Wait for Armageddon
Michael
J. Fellows
Off With Their Heads: the Constitution According to Scalia
Pablo
Mukherjee
Roadmap to Resistance
Omar
Barghouti
Sharon's Bloody Beat
Anthony
Gancarski
Tony Blair: the Most Powerful Man in the World
Mickey
Z.
Animals: the Other Collateral Damage
Will
Potter
When Police Attack Journalists
William
MacDougall
America's In-Bedded Journalism
Neve
Gordon
Haunted by History
Adam
Engel
Wal-Mart and Peace
Dr.
Susan Block
Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Buono, Guthrie
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/19
Song of
the Weekend
Baghdad to Basra
April
18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom":
This One's Not About Oil
Jorge
Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become
Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation
Mickey
Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes
Hussein
Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV
Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles
Matania
Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President
of Israel's Supreme Court
Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us
Joe
Allen
My Lai Revisited
Carl Estabrook
Support Our Euphemism
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/18
Website
of the Day
Meet the Victims of War
April
17, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in
the Patriot Missile System
Joanne
Mariner
Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications
for the Pentagon
Issam
Nashashibi
Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman
to Baghdad
Wayne Madsen
Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism
Robert
Fisk
The Army of Occupation
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Virtual Saddam Takes Aim
Biljana
Vankovska
A Personal View of Iraq: Where
is the Truth?
Dan Brook
Oil War: Fueling the Empire
Stanley
Heller
Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like
Tim Robbins
A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation
Harold
A. Gould
Iraq After the War
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/17
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
April 25,
2003
The Shock and Awe
of American Ignorance
Playing Spin
the Battle
by WALT BRASCH
More than half of all Americans believe that Saddam
Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
According to an Associated Press poll conducted shortly after
the conclusion of the successful invasion of Iraq, 53 percent
of the nation pin the 9/11 murders on Saddam, something the CIA
and most of the world intelligence gathering organizations have
consistently discounted.
The fact that so many Americans believe
this reveals the successful drum beating of the Bush administration
along with a failure of both Congress and the media to adequately
question the President's motives or to challenge the statements
coming from the White House and Pentagon. President Bush and
his horde of advisors have constantly said they never--ever--said
that Saddam was the person behind the attacks. But, if the President
could say "subliminal," that's what he, the vice-president,
and their administration did to the Americans, with the complicity
of the media who abrogated their responsibilities and made it
seem that challenging anything the President said would be treason.
In message after message, the President
referred to 9/11 and the war on terrorism. Then, as in the movies,
he jump-cut to the evils of Saddam, letting the people think
there was a smooth transition, while implanting those "hidden"
meanings.
A month after 9/11, Americans believed
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible. Upon that basis,
the President ordered an invasion of Afghanistan, one of several
countries that harbored bin Laden and his terrorists, and overthrew
the Taliban regime. At the time, finding anyone who thought Saddam
was personally involved in 9/11 was as rare as finding a corporate
executive who believed in unions.
Americans quickly learned that 15 of
the 19 suicide/killers of 9/11 were Saudi. With a little more
digging into buried news accounts, they might have also learned
that 26 of al-Qaeda's top leadership at the time of 9/11, including
bin Laden, were Egyptian, Saudi, or Yemini. Only one, a third
level administrator, was an Iraqi. They might also have learned
that eight of the top 10 financial contributors to al-Qaeda are
Saudi. They might also have learned that Saddam and al-Qaeda
had never been close, that as ruthless as Saddam was, he was
relatively moderate in the world of terrorism except, of course,
against his own people.
A year of Presidential drum beating and
brow-bashing led to about a third of Americans becoming believers.
A month before the invasion of Iraq, about 45 percent of Americans,
according to the AP, believed the Iraqi dictator was personally
involved.
The eight percent increase in the month
after the invasion could be attributed not only to war-mongering
rhetoric, but to the nation trying to justify why it sent more
than 200,000 of its sons and daughters, mothers and fathers,
brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins to war.
By the time war had begun, the message
wasn't that Iraq was behind 9/11, but that it was a potential
enemy because it had weapons of mass destruction.
In the most recent State of the Union,
President Bush had forcefully declared that Iraq had a weapons
program that included at least 500 tons of chemical weapons,
38,000 liters of botulism, 25,000 liters of anthrax, as well
as uncountable numbers of SCUDs. But, as in the telephone rumor
game when a simple fact spread person to person eventually becomes
a bloated urban myth, America's people and their news media escalated
even those unproven numbers until the average working person
may have been led to believe that Iraq actually posed a greater
danger to America than did North Korea and Iran, both of which
had nuclear capability to hit American targets, something Iraq
did not have.
However, Iraq once had weapons of mass
destruction, although none were nuclear. Between 1983 and 1992--the
Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle era--the U.S. gave Iraq innumerable
weapons, and issued about $2 billion in loans, most of which
were used to buy even more weapons; the U.S. never expected full
repayment. In addition, U.S. corporations provided Iraq with
the means to manufacture chemical and biological weapons. The
"point man" the Reagan administration sent to solidify
U.S.-Iraqi relations-and who had personal knowledge that Iraq
was using chemical weapons against Iran, and who helped remove
the "terrorist" label against Iraq--was . . . Donald
Rumsfeld.
But, slowly and reluctantly under a U.N.
mandate, Iraq began to destroy its weapons. So far, 300,000 American
and British combat forces, aided by numerous infiltrators and
the best spy satellite system ever known to mankind, have been
unable to locate any weapons of mass destruction--other than
ones used by the Coalition forces. Maybe the Bush administration
should send in Monk and Colombo.
The fact that the two-nation "coalition"
of 300,000 overwhelmed and destroyed a country of 24 million
quickly, and that Iraq's armies used only bullets, light artillery,
and short-range, but legal, missiles in its defense, suggests
that the defeated nation probably didn't have the weapons the
U.S. claimed.
President Bush and his supporters kept
saying the war wasn't about oil. But, the first thing the Coalition
troops protected once they entered Baghdad weren't the hospitals
or museums but the Oil Ministry. Maybe the Ministry was in an
"historical district."
At the time President Bush was telling
the U.N. and the American people that he had no plans to go to
war with Iraq, his administration officials were meeting in secret
with several industry giants with financial and political ties
to the Administration to develop a plan for a post-war Iraq.
One of those giants was Bechtel, a multi-nation
conglomerate with close financial ties to the White House. Another
was a subsidiary of Haliburton, the multi-billion dollar oil
company that once had Dick Cheney as its CEO.
In a few months, Americans may be shocked
that Iraq didn't help al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, that it
didn't have weapons of mass destruction, and that there may have
been collusion between the Administration and major corporations
to reap financial rewards for rebuilding a country that the U.S.
destroyed. We should be shocked--but we should also be in awe
of how well the President and his administration spun their messages
of war, and how dizzy the major media must have been to have
accepted the words unchallenged.
Walt Brasch,
a national award-winning reporter and editor, is professor of
journalism at Bloomsburg University. He is the author of 13 books,
including The Press and the State, and the current book, The
Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era. You
may contact him through his web-site www.walterbrasch.com.
He can be reached at: brasch@ptd.net
Today's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers
William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
Binoy
Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq
David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?
Standard
Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Andrew
Rodman
Lawn Poem
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23
Website
of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|