The beginning of the end

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,813189,00.html

I'm an American tired of lies. And with our government, it's mostly lies.

He[Clinton] said: "Everybody is telling me to bomb him. All the military are saying, 'You gotta bomb him.' But if even one innocent person died, I couldn't bear it." And I looked in his eyes and I believed him. Little did I know he was blocking humanitarian aid at the time, allowing the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

I am a father, and no amount of propaganda can convince me that half a million dead children is acceptable "collateral damage". The fact is that Saddam Hussein was our boy. The CIA helped him to power, as they did the Shah of Iran and Noriega and Marcos and the Taliban and countless other brutal tyrants. The fact is that George Bush Sr continued to supply nerve gas and technology to Saddam even after he used it on Iran and then the Kurds in Iraq. While the Amnesty International report listing countless Saddam atrocities, including gassing and torturing Kurds, was sitting on his desk, Bush Sr pushed through a $2bn "agricultural" loan and Thatcher gave hundreds of millions in export credit to Saddam. The elder Bush then had the audacity to quote the Amnesty reports to garner support for his oil war.

But in wartime people lose their senses. There are flags and yellow ribbons and posters and every media outlet is beating the war drum and even sensible people can hear nothing else. In the US, God forbid you should suggest the war is unjust or that dropping cluster bombs from 30,000ft on a city is a cowardly act. When TV satirist Bill Maher made some dissenting remarks about the bombing of Afghanistan, Disney pulled the plug on him. In a country that lauds its freedom of speech, a word of dissent can cost you your job.

So, the way we achieve balance is to take Helen Thomas, a reporter for forty years by my count, who has asked tough questions of every President in order to get at the facts of events and equate her with a person with nothing but a political agenda to sell? You may not like Thomas' manner, I didn't and don't, I think she's a bit of fussbudget, but you would be hard pressed to show that she was used by any other administration to propagate their message as Jeff Whathisname most certainly was.

I think the job of the press is say "Oh, Yeah?" whenever government speaks. Any government. And unless you truly believe every word coming down from the White House is the godshonesttruth, you should want there to a vibrant, independent, free press asking for clarity and the basic facts behind a statement.

Else you should just open wide and swallow their stories whole. Enjoy. You have just surrendered your citizenship.


Btw: I watched Ari flogging his book on both CNN and Fox yesterday. Neither "reporter-anchor" asked him about this issue. Wasn't that nice?

Joe(So Ari, what was the dumbest Q you were ever asked?)Nation

Nah - we don't - only the right wing propaganda machine does.

Shrugs.

They're bears - they hafta **** somewhere....

Just step over it.

It is odd, isn't it?

You would think there were less...er...controversial shills out there for 'em to pick - especially given their anti-gay stuff?

Executive Producer Mark Burnett is currently accepting videotapes, and will select five lucky contestants who will vie for the chance to be the next paid Republican shill, I mean fair and balanced member of the White House press corps! Coming this spring to FOX: Who will be the White House's next Top Fake Reporter?


http://citypages.com/databank/26/1265/article13013.asp