The Most Powerful Weapon in the World

The MEDIA - hands down.

Monday, March 20, 2006



The death of Justin, a 1st Cavalry Division machine gunner, stunned his parents . . .

[A] year and a day after his son was killed, [Joe] Johnson was [in Iraq], pulling escort duty for fuel convoys on the bomb-pocked desert highways from Jordan.

Why did he go?
"[A] sense of duty. I was pissed off at the terrorists for 9/11 and other atrocities."
Now where did he get that idea from?

Second, I'd only trained. I wanted combat." And then, he said, "there's some revenge involved. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't."
But there was more . . .

"I don't really have love for Muslim people," Johnson said. "I'm sure there are good Muslims. I try not to be racist."
But, the media has me programmed.

[H]e hasn't read the Quran, or spoken with Muslims, [but] he has "heard" the Islamic holy book "teaches to kill Jews and infidels. And it's hard to love people who hate you."

And from where did he get this false impression?
He could love Iraqi children, though, and said he'd hoped "to see them grow up to know right and wrong."

[W]hen speeding civilian cars passed the Americans' Humvees and Johnson failed to level his gun and open fire, which "I think anyone else," fearing car bombs, "would have done."

"I really don't want to kill innocent people," he now says. "I don't want to live with that the rest of my life."
But what about revenge?

"If I go home and didn't kill a terrorist, it's not going to ruin my life," he said. "Maybe I'd just as soon not. I don't know what it would do to my head."
Nevermind what it does to the so-called "terrorist."

[Joe's] elder soldier son, Josh, 26, might [also] be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I don't like that Joe's there," Jan Johnson said when called by satellite telephone from al-Asad. "But it's something he felt he had to do. People heal in different ways. This is how he heals after Justin's death."
Like Joe, Josh must be propelled by his sense of patriotism and his intolerance of 'evil' Muslims.

And the rest of the images that flank this AP piece?


No pictures of the family leading ordinary lives. Every image is draped with flags or patriotic messages of support. This is not by chance. The producers don't care about who these people are. They only care about what they represent.

This man's life and the lives of his sons were consumed by the fear and intolerance fabricated by the media, all in the name of an abstract notion of freedom and nationalism that simply does NOT represent reality.

Wakeup America. This is the height of fascism. You're being manipulated and controlled by the media to serve a war machine that feeds corporate interests.


Remember, everything is relative. Your sacrifice may be worth it to them. But, it's not worth it for you.

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