"The Lying Warmonger Times" (aka The New York Times) has published a tiny hint of truth, in which they "finally" expose a certain group of liars (while mostly absolving or feigning ignorance regarding the third -- and, by far, guiltiest -- party in the conspiracy). This group of liars has turned my stomach every time I've seen their smug faces on TV for the past five and a half years. Here is just a brief bit of that "tiny hint of truth":
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay... The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo...
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance... Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air... Collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants...
The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation. These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated...
Click here to read the rest.
Thankfully, Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com discusses the third guilty party to which I refer above (I've added the bold emphasis):
In 2002 and 2003, when Americans were relentlessly subjected to their commentary, news organizations were hardly unaware that these retired generals were mindlessly reciting the administration line on the war and related matters. To the contrary, that's precisely why our news organizations -- which themselves were devoted to selling the war both before and after the invasion by relentlessly featuring pro-war sources and all but excluding anti-war ones -- turned to them in the first place...
I could see from the very start (long before the war started) that the media was doing this. So why, then, were the majority of Americans unwilling and/or unable to see it? It was so blatantly obvious! Is it, in part, because they have been subjected for the past sixty years to too many blindly patriotic, mindless movies featuring such "kill-them-first-and-ask-questions-later" stars as John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Steven Seagal? Is it because, in their blind rage, they wanted to get revenge on someone, anyone, no matter who the guilty parties involved really are? This is a question that has caused me no end of intense frustration for the past five and a half years.
In my opinion, the CORPORATE media (for what corporations wouldn't manipulate the output of what they consider to be their very own "PR departments"?) is, by far, the guiltiest of all three guilty parties.
Why are they the guiltiest?
Because if they had been doing their jobs for the past eight years (actually, the past 95 years), we wouldn't have this sort of government (which is quickly approaching fascist) and this nearly unfixable economic, diplomatic and military mess in which we are now mired. Nor would we have the small group of handpicked, corporate stooges that run for president every four years, thus ensuring that the bad guys are never replaced, and our criminal foreign policy is always seen as "just and decent."
Why again is the media the guiltiest of the three?
Because, due to their willful complicity in all of this unconstitutional mess, most Americans of the 21st century are not only uninformed and filled with incredibly stubborn, misplaced pride (and excessively hedonistic desires), but are also stupider than fence posts. We have the media to thank for our idiotically mindless -- and depressingly unconstitutional -- brand of patriotism more than we do the government or those traitorous retired generals.
P.S. Of course, our horribly federalized, completely shallow, politically and "patriotically" correct (to a fanatical degree), incompetent educational system has primed all of us to be completely receptive to the lies (and hedonistic pleasures) broadcast by the CORPORATE media. I worked in that federalized educational system for five years and saw it first hand!
P.P.S. And, no, I don't believe in religious-based local education either. That warps most people just as badly as does the federal education system.
