Here is a lesson from the neocons at Fox and elsewhere. If you cover up a war rather than covering it and refuse to show the direct results of conflict then you are a patriot.
Let us say that someone chooses to cover that same war and shows the bloodshed that resulted. To do so is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. In fact, such coverage should be immediately shut down.
This is precisely the scenario that occurred in the Iraq War. This was Donald Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” war that was supposed to inflict casualties only on the troops of dictator Saddam Hussein, the same figure that Rumsfeld visited, shook hands with, and provided weapons with which he killed his own Kurdish population.
Now the neocons of the New World Order decided that it was time to rid Iraq of former ally Saddam so that profits would not have to be shared and Halliburton, Bechtel and Monsanto would have unrestrained pickings. In fact, the division of spoils was decided in advance through secret meetings in former Halliburton head man and then Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.
Could the American people read the minutes of those meetings and decide for themselves what the captains of corporatocracy had to say? The effort was made by Congressman Henry Waxman, but a Reagan appointee federal judge blocked the effort, siding with the Bush-Cheney government’s argument of the need for secrecy in the interest of “national security.”
When the first bombs rained down on Baghdad it became observable to those on the scene how spurious was the claim of Rumsfeld that the weaponry in effect had eyes and that the Iraqi citizenry would be spared while Saddam’s forces would be hit. In fact, the carnage was devastating.
None other than Oliver North arrived to conduct interviews for Fox. This was the same North who enhanced conflict with resulting deaths and injuries through his involvement in the Iran Contra arms for hostages tragedy and its impact on the bloody Iran-Iraq War.
Fox showed pictures of North high-fiving American soldiers. There was no indication of death or bloodshed. North spread the word that all was well and the “bad man” that the Republican administration and its Fox ally denounced, former neocon ally Saddam Hussein, along with his forces had been repelled.
Along came Al-Jazeera. This international network located in Doha, Qatar dared to actually cover the war. The picture that unfolded was of widespread death along with ambulances whisking badly bleeding civilians of all ages into overcrowded hospitals with badly overtaxed, highly pressured doctors and nurses seeking to administer to them.
Fox and the neocon New World Order had been trumped by truth and reality, a network willing to cover the war rather than deceitfully propagandize it. What was the result?
Naturally the network dedicated to truth must give way in the interest of perpetuating deceit. Fox must prevail and Al-Jazeera must leave. Hence Al-Jazeera’s office was immediately shut down by the United States and it was prohibited from covering the conflict.
What was it like in the U.S. prior to the invasion? MSNBC, the network that Bill O’Reilly and others on Fox fulminate and castigate against as a left wing propaganda organ, sacked Phil Donahue. The official justification of bad ratings was unjustified since Donahue was drawing higher ratings at the time than Chris Matthews and other commentators on the network.
The real reason was what Donahue had dared to do, something not done on other networks. He dared to interview knowledgeable Middle East hands, including General Norman Schwarzkopf, about the advisability of invading Iraq. This was the one network where a host interviewed knowledgeable sources speaking out against invasion, and so he was terminated.
What frightens Fox and the neocons of the New World Order is that they are indeed like the Dutch boy of legend who ran out of fingers in seeking to plug holes in a dike in the midst of flooding water. Citizens in the world community know about the corruption of the neocon empire and what it entails for the world’s people if not stopped.
While discussing the number of deaths from the Iraq War is verboten in America’s mainstream media the figures are mentioned elsewhere. Just Foreign Policy is one U.S. Internet website that dares to release the figures of the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet.
The current figure stands at 1,366,350 deaths resulting from the Iraq War. Explanations are provided for The Lancet’s calculations on the Just Foreign Policy site.
Empire as we know it will soon be dead. It is being currently exposed and determined people throughout the world are determined to squelch it. All that the powers that be can do is shriek “terrorism” at the top of their lungs in the midst of a dike that has broken and flooding that has commenced.
