By Jim Stanford on April 21, 2008
Just when I think it’s OK to move beyond the outrage over the Bush-Cheney administration, along comes a story like this one from yesterday’s New York Times:
“The Message Machine.”
Sure to win a Pulitzer, the story is a superbly written, thoroughly documented exposé of the propaganda campaign the Pentagon has been waging, quite successfully, through the U.S. media.
Turns out those retired generals and military officers you see on TV, ostensibly as “independent” analysts, have been carefully groomed by the Department of Defense to manipulate public opinion and promote the war. In return, these analysts — many of them lobbyists for the defense industry — receive access to the highest-ranking officials awarding contracts for Iraq.
In essence, you keep our war going, and we’ll make sure you get rich off it.
One of the retired officers who participated in the campaign called it “MindWar.” Another, Gen. James T. Conway, then of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as Iraq began to disintegrate into civil war, “The strategic target remains our population.”
George Orwell couldn’t have envisioned it any better.
How Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al are not in prison is absolutely bewildering. These men are traitors, they are terrorists, and they belong in the gulag they created at Guantánamo.
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Also, from the op-ed page, don’t miss Alexandra Fuller’s essay on the gluttony of the energy industry in Wyoming.
Posted under Politics, Republican Party
speaking of the gulag they created @ Guantanamo, here’s an interesting article about the on-going saga of what rights the prisoners at the camp have/will have: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/14/080414fa_fact_toobin
amen
How does this happen? Our country is self destructing because of our own lack of knowledge and inability to organize, unite, and speak out against this administration. It is only getting worse. People are too busy working for insufficient wages and too busy drinking their Victory Gin to care…
This story was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting today. Well deserved.
Still, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. are not in shackles.
According to Glenn Greenwald, all TV news outlet exposed by this story are quite blatantly ignoring the existence of this particular Pulitzer.
They have never bothered to answer David Barstow’s reporting except in bland, chest-puffing how-dare-you’s.
Anyway, Jim: sharp prediction!