It's wartime, the neocons are "in control", and we have unreliable and fraudulent sources, news reports and commentaries flooding the mainstream airwaves and newspapers. Gee. Imagine that.
Amir Taheri is still raking in the shekels a living as a contributor to administration-friendly mainstream publications, and still appears as a "terror expert" or "Middle East expert" on FOX Noise Channel and Glenn Beck's show — all despite the fact that he's been debunked and discredited for fraudulent "reporting". [1] Go figure.
Steve Emerson still gets regular gigs as a terror expert on FOX and elsewhere, even though he's shown himself to be a neocon/administration-friendly, xenophobic propagandist. [2][3] Ya don't say.
FOX, Glenn Beck, and mainstream publications call it fair, balanced and hard-hitting news and commentary. I and most other discerning viewers and readers in the world call it shill propaganda. What would C-SPAN call it?
I was watching a replay, the other day, of the May 24 Washington Journal on C-SPAN; the guest was former Reagan foreign-affairs official, ex-Nam infantryman, and current correspondent for The Atlantic, Bing West. The man is a complete shill for The War Party.
One caller wanted to know what Bing's thoughts were on how the war on Iraq is depicted in media. West responded to the question by imploring us to take everything we get from the mainstream publications — namely, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or The Atlantic (Cha-Ching, Bing!) — as virtually infallible: "the absolute truth. . . . You can basically take that to the bank; very rarely will there ever be serious errors in that kind of reporting," he hurled.
His reason was that if any vital part of a journalist's story (a.k.a. "reporting") turns out to be misleading or false, their editors "will fire them within 12 hours." (Even Adolf Giuliani has to say that's an absurd assertion.) He then went on to belittle sources of news and commentary outside the mainstream. What a surprise.
Hey, Bing. Try reading sometimes. [4]
Weren't "journalists" like Judith Miller "reporting" for publications like the Times and the Journal during the build-up to war and during wartime? Her editors might beg to differ with your testimonial as to their QC techniques. [5]
Also, Mr. West: Isn't Con Coughlin — the mainstream "journalist" who, "with the help of unnamed intelligence sources discovered 'the fact' that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes and unearthed 'the link' between the 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Ata, and the Iraqi intelligence" — still working for a mainstream publication and still spitting out virtually baseless claims about Iran? [6]
West ignored the obvious unconstitutionality of undeclared preemptive war and the conniving and illegal way in which Congressional and public approval for it was garnered (as in... guys like Bing West appearing on otherwise relatively credible media outlets and going unchallenged with a factually-distorted take and an extremely unconstitutional fetish for perpetual war and occupation [7]).
Bing forgot to mention that the neocon-Bush Administration-AIPAC war on Iraq also qualifies under international law as being the worst war crime committable: a war of aggression resulting in the loss of innocent lives. [8]
He wasn't bothered by the fact that occupying Iraq against the will of The Iraqi and American People — and most recently, the Iraqi Parliament — runs antithetical to the "interests" and sentiments of the Constitution, international laws, and the rest of the world. (Minus Israel, PNAC, AIPAC, AEI, the Mainstream Mafia, et al., of course: you know — the interventionist, enterprising, expansionist elite, a.k.a. neocon inc., a.k.a. "The MIC".)
Another caller asked a question pertaining to the Bush Administration and State Department's claims to the UN about Saddam Hussein having WMDs. In response, West instructed us not to focus on what has happened, or how we got here: that the war hawks lied us into it – or as he put it, "[intelligence services] got it wrong." He said that it's "more profitable" for us to focus on "how to move forward." (In other words, we need to focus on what — other than peaceful, diplomatic moves, of course — should happen now to make it easier for our military to achieve all those ever-elusive and war-prolonging glittering generalities attached by war profiteers to the Iraq War like taffy on a turd.)
War hawk to the bone.
The most telling detail of the whole show was when the C-SPAN host dropped the line on a couple of the callers who asked the toughest questions; the war hawk was thereby given unopposed spewing time to show us why he's actually just another chicken hawk propagandist.
Bing West's one-man show of intellectually-dishonest unipolarity on C-SPAN isn't, by far, the only example of the lack of ethics, balance, or perspective in mainstream "news and analysis" of US-Israeli-Middle East affairs. [9][10] [11]
It is, however, a new low in overall integrity, and a considerable departure from what I'd expected from the non-profit C-SPAN. [12]
Notes:
[1] Profile: "Amir Taheri". Source Watch.org
[2] Eric Boehlert: "The prime-time smearing of Sami Al-Arian". Salon.com.
[3] Dossier: "Who is Steven Emerson?". cair-net.org
[4] Justin Raimondo: "Our Captive Media: Bill Moyers indicts media reporting in the run-up to war". anti-war.com
[5] Stephen Lendman: "A Review of Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's End Times." Global Research.ca
[6] CASMII Press Release: "Press Watchdog Slammed by 'Don't Attack Iran' Campaigners". campaigniran.org
[7] Bing West and Owen West: "The Advisor Model: We have to stay in Iraq for a decade. Here's how to do it". Slate.com
[8] UN Fact Sheet: "Crimes within the Court's Jurisdiction". un.org
[9] Alison Weir: "New York Times Distortion Up Close and Personal". If Americans Knew.org
[10] Benjamin J. Armbruster: "Media echoed, applauded Giuliani's distortion of Paul's comments about 9-11 attacks". Media Matters.org
[11] Paul Joseph Watson: "Corporate Media Censor Ron Paul's Debate Success". Prison Planet.com
[12] C-SPAN Washington Journal Interview: "Bing West". c-span.org
-###-
May 29, 2007 © 2007 by DetainThis. Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title remains unchanged. DetainThis is a freelance writer and musician. detain_this@myway.com | http://detain-this.blogspot.com | http://www.myspace.com/danholio
