Unconscionable Media Warmongering

By Stephen Lendman

Washington needs media support to wage wars and plan new ones. Broadcast and print scoundrels oblige. Paid liars infest Western media. Managed news misinformation creates enemies. Fear is stoked. War is cheerled, glorified, and sanitized to suppress truths too grim to report. Reasons for war aren’t explained. Fake ones are invented. Public opinion is manipulated to support what should be condemned.

Unindicted international war criminal Paul Wolfowitz. An insider in the highest cliques of the American ruling class, his policies have held true across several administrations, including Bush2 and Obama’s, of course. The man is a poster child for the evil represented by the American imperial system. The mainstream media, naturally, has never even remotely thought of exposing such figures. In the case of Paul Wolfowitz  they continue to treat him with the reverence accorded a senior statesman.

Wars beget more of them. America wages permanent ones. It’s longstanding official policy. Where it ends, who knows.

Washington’s targets Syria and Iran. Destroying both countries and remaking them in America’s image is planned. Media scoundrels turn a blind eye. Imperial dominance alone matters. Daily articles, commentaries and editorials promote Washington’s agenda. Willing co-conspirators invent reality. Media scoundrels fell from grace long ago. Conflicts of interest proliferate.

Administration and Pentagon handouts substitute for journalism. Reporters and commentators comprise a virtual Noah’s Ark of scam artists. Savvy readers ignore them. Maybe some day everyone will and tune out propaganda TV.

Progressive Radio News Hour regular Peter Eyre explained New World Order methodology. Paul Wolfowitz planned it two decades ago.

Project For the New American Century members endorsed it. Bush officials implemented it. Plans were made to destroy seven or more countries. Wars are proceeding as intended. Democrats wage them like Republicans.

Planned economic turmoil accompanies them. The worst of all possible worlds continues. A new dark age arrived. Global war threatens. Police state harshness targets non-believers. Bad as things are now, imagine what’s coming if not challenged and stopped.

New York Times commentator Nicholas Kristof calls Obama AWOL in Syria. He smells blood and wants more shed.  He praised US intervention in Libya. He ignored another country destroyed. He considers it a foreign policy success. He questions why Syria isn’t targeted the same way.  He stops short of urging invasion. He wants stepped up intervention other ways. Act aggressively, he said. He added that Clinton defense secretary William Perry said he favors a no-fly zone and joint US-Turkey “military intervention.”

According to Perry:

“This isn’t a full strategy, but it could facilitate the overthrow of Assad and have a real humanitarian benefit. And if successful, it could help us influence the post-Assad government. If we sit by, we’ll be in no position to influence it.”

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright agrees. She told Kristof:

“I’m for intervention, but it doesn’t have to be on-the-ground military intervention. We do have to get more involved in this.”

In Clinton’s administration, she was criminally involved in mass deaths attributable to Iraq sanctions. She also played a key role in destroying Yugoslavia. She urges the same for Syria.

In May, Obama rewarded her with the Medal of Freedom. It’s the nation’s highest civilian honor. She deserves prosecution and imprisonment instead.

Media scoundrels deserve no less. They’re willing co-conspirators. Their hands are blood-drenched like officials responsible for criminal policies.

Kristof gives three reasons for “action in Syria.”

(1) Regional destabilization accompanies fighting. Ignored is who’s responsible and how easily it can be stopped and avoided elsewhere.

(2) Assad has chemical weapons. “Jihadis (and/or) global black market(eers)” could get their hands on them. Assad never used them won’t now unless forced to against invasion in self-defense.

Washington contaminated Vietnam with them. It irradiated large parts of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya with depleted uranium. It also uses chemical and biological weapons. So does Israel.

(3) A “humanitarian imperative.” Again, naming who’s responsible is suppressed.

Kristof claims he’s no hawk. He’s endorsing more war for less of it. Obama “no longer (should be) a bystander,” he urges.

Kristof and other administration critics won’t admit he’s far from it. Washington orchestrates everything going on and what’s planned.

On August 9, New York Times contributor Samar Yazbek headlined “In the Shadow of Assad’s Bombs,” saying:

Civilians have Free Syrian Army battalions to protect them. Assad is punishing them severely. FSA fighters “treated (her) like part of the group.”

She calls them “a hodgepodge of battalions, including secularists, moderate Islamists, and all-too-ordinary people who joined up to defend their lives and their families.”

She claims they and ruling Alawites are “brothers.” They’re “defend(ing their) homes to the death.”

Featuring this type propaganda shows why the late Gore Vidal called The Times the “Typhoid Mary of American journalism.”

Op-eds like Yazbek’s almost make earlier yellow journalism look respectable.

On August 8, a Washington Post editorial headlined “Getting around a dead-end in Syria,” saying:

“The grim reality is that the regime and the brutal war it is waging in Syria’s cities is likely to go on and on — unless the United States abandons its policy of passivity.”

In fact, fighting rages because Washington proxies wage it. Change plans and it stops. It’s not policy so conflict continues toward a potential catastrophic ending.

The Post urges stepped up intervention. It criticizes months of “feckless” diplomacy. It wants more blood than already spilled.

Target Iran

At times, Haaretz reports responsibly. Other times it falls short. Perhaps its Zionist roots shows. It’s been around since 1918. It’s Israel’s oldest broadsheet.

It features excellent commentators like Amira Hass and Gideon Levy. US dailies have no one like them. It also publishes shameless articles.

On August 10, it headlined “Top Israel official: Iran nuclear threat bigger than one Israel faced before Six Day War.”

Israel faced no threat then whatever. Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin later admitted that Egypt’s Nasser didn’t threaten Israel. “We must be honest with ourselves,” he said. “We decided to attack him.”

Former General Mordechai said 16 years of planning went into “perfect(ing) the “initial eighty minutes.”

Former General Haim Barlev admitted Israel wasn’t threatened. “(W)e had never thought of such a possibility.”

Other Israeli leaders and generals said the same thing. It’s in the public record. Haaretz knows it or should. Now it’s hyping another false existential threat.  An unnamed Israeli official claims Iran points a “sword at our throat (much) sharper than the sword at our throat before the Six Day War.”

“We will absolutely not deliberately drag the United States into a war,” he added. “If we decide to undertake an operation, it must be an operation that does not rely on the expectation of igniting some large chain reaction.”

He claims “if Iran obtains nuclear arms, it will goad its neighbors and adversaries and will be unstoppable.”

“All the moderate forces around us will be significantly weakened and heavy storm clouds will gather over the Middle East.”

“The region will not be the same region and the world will not be the same world, and our lives will not be the same either. We will live under the shadow of a permanent storm.”

Dealing with Iran today, he added, will be much less complicated than if nuclearized.  Washington, other Western nations, and Israel know Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Its leaders publicly renounce them and call for a nuclear-free Middle East. Israel alone in the region has them. It has delivery systems with long-range capability. It publicly said it’ll use all its weapons if threatened. Pointing fingers the wrong way diverts attention from the real Middle East threat.

On July 20, Haaretz contributor Ari Shavit’s article headlined “Israeli Air Force veteran says that on Iran issue, leaders are playing with our lives,” saying:

“Kobi Richter….is skilled at analyzing complex situations.” He previously helped “Israel’s air and strategic power.”

He now “feels that the country….fac(es) an existential threat.”

He also calls attacking Iran “an act of madness.” Shavit said “he’s talking nonsense….Time is running out.” Israel is “backed into a corner.” Act now before it’s too late, he urged.

Richter called an attack on Iran much more complicated than against Iraq’s Osiraq reactor in 1981.  He added that attacking Iran is much more potentially calamitous than leaving well enough alone and promoting peace. Shavit disagrees. So do other Israeli hawks. At issue is will belligerent rhetoric become policy?

On the Progressive Radio News Hour, Peter Eyre said attacking Iran assures striking Dimona and other Israeli nuclear sites in response. Imagine irradiating an entire country and much of surrounding ones.

On August 10, Haaretz contributor Amir Oren expressed the same concern. On the one hand, he worries about Iran becoming nuclearized. On the other, he asks what to do in the meantime, and what about consequences.

Attacking Iran “endanger(s) Dimona.” Have Israeli officials discussed it, he asked? Do “cabinet ministers understand the consequences?” Will they go along with what may prove disastrous?

Will they act despite no existential threat? Will Haaretz writers say so? Will responsible editorial policy condemn what’s vital to prevent before it’s too late to act?

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour   

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