NATIONAL PENTAGON RADIO
NPR’s Talk of the Nation propagandist Neal Conan had Andrew Exum from the Center for a New American Security, an extended arm of the National Security State, on yesterday’s program to hype:
“I think the important thing is because the United States military is held to, frankly, a higher standard than any other military, we have to be seen as being accountable. And that when atrocities take place, you have to see some sort of accountability take place in a transparent way that make sense for not just U.S. voters but, quite frankly, for the world at large.”
The program was titled “What lessons should Americans draw from the Iraq War?” Peace movement people, who aren’t allowed into the American mass media system, were not invited to comment as guests.
“Held to a higher standard than any other military?” Even the Commanders in Chief, Bush and Obama, have not been so much as investigated for all the lies, illegal wars (Iraq, Libya), countless massacres of innocents, torture and other horrors in violation of international law and the Constitution.
Conan found nothing wrong with what the guest he’d invited had to say, letting the comment stand, although he often interrupts callers and guests who stray from the National Security State line to “correct” them for comments that don’t strictly follow fealty toward the National Security State and corporate greed at any cost to the public interest. All of the worst problems we have could be improved easily if we were allowed a single mass media public interest option, preferably a TV network required to be on cable systems, from which most Americans get their TV. Democracy is impossible in the darkness, as ignorant people are controlled people.
When one reads American foreign policy in the mass media, it is always the same opinion, in the New York Times, Fox News, NPR — wherever one looks. The American people are told who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. They shift from time to time, Saddam Hussein was a “good guy” when he was murdering leftists in Iraq, and on the payroll. He was even eventually promoted to president, after which he was given components for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons systems (all of the forms of weapons of mass destruction) together with missile technology, with the approval of the Reagan Administration.
For reasons we’ve not been told, Saddam was moved to the “bad guy” list and the American people were bade by their mass media to hate him, after he met with US Ambassador April Glaspie, who signaled US non-interest in an attack by Saddam on Kuwait to set him up for a US invasion by Daddy Bush. All US mass media participated in spreading lies about Saddam’s soldiers murdering babies in hospital nurseries to get public support behind the invasion, just as they spread the weapons of mass destruction lies when Bush’s idiot son invaded more than a decade later.
Saddam was executed before he could testify in court, many think because he would have revealed his complicity in working for the Empire all those years, as the American people were being told by their mass media that he was the devil. This changing image of Saddam has been duplicated many times in modern history with other dictators — all mass media agreeing in unison to cover up for them when they are on the payroll, and paint them as evil when they either disobey or after they get ousted by their own populations, as happened with Marcos in the Philippines, Samoza in Nicaragua, and more recently Mubarak in Egypt (after it became obvious he was a goner).
On the current bad guys list is Pakistan, again for reasons unexplained. They have certainly helped both the Bush and Obama regimes with the Empire’s phony “war on terrorism,” allowing supply lines to run through their nation, allowing drone bombing of their Western Frontier population (mostly women and children have died in this) and set up checkpoints to watch for Taliban crossing the border to or from Afghanistan. Yet corporate media, as always in unison, often stick their microphones in front of people who make it sound as though Pakistan is our enemy.
For some reason late in November the USA decided to attack two Pakistani outposts dedicated to watching Taliban movements in coordination with NATO. NATO had been advised of their positions and knew their coordinates. It seems unlikely it could have accidentally attacked these Pakistani soldiers. Shaukat Qadir, previously a Pakistani brigadier, whose reporting has been outstanding enough that we keep going to him for information beyond the crap we get from our mass media, asks the questions about this important event that the cowardly sycophants of the US mass media will not, in the following piece.
But there is another twist in this from an al Jazeera column today. Congress is pushing the president to send more weapons to Georgia, knowing this will infuriate Russia, which a short few years ago went in to South Ossetia to defend those people against what appeared to be an act of genocide by the Georgian army (although US corporate media spun it as an attack by evil Russia, in pushing as they are for a renewed Cold War on behalf of the weapons sales of their owners, advertisers and board members).
Russia is currently allowing NATO forces to move supplies to Afghanistan over Russian territory as the only major land route left with Pakistan having cut off supply lines because of the US belligerent acts previously mentioned. It is believed the Russians will shut down the Northern supply line if the US sends weapons to Georgia. All of this is unsettling, Another war could break out from all this saber rattling, and the US mass media is either asleep or in bed with the National Security State in hushing all of this.
What if the Empire’s desperate ruling Forces of Greed believe that capitalism is crashing and burning, and a more massive war could distract the masses while giving a boost to the most pathetic economy we’ve had since the Great Depression (for all but the rich, who are no longer connected to the working class because of globalization). If our forces in Afghanistan have their supplies cut off, there may be cries for war with either Pakistan or Russia, as corporate media talking heads shout “Our troops are helpless, running out of ammunition,” and as brutal as the psychopaths who run the Empire are, they might be willing to allow American troops to die to have an excuse to go to a bigger war to save corporate capitalism from the trash heap it appears to be headed for. —Jack
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