Saman Mohammadi
Infowars.com
May 19, 2011
“Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Authoritarian globalism, not terrorism, is the biggest threat America and the Western world faces. Terrorism is an invented distraction to keep the police and military guards occupied, and a government trick whose purpose is to scare the people into giving up their natural rights and accept the total government takeover of their lives and society.
When we read that nations like Libya and Iran are rogue regimes, which are regimes that pose a threat to the lawless international banking establishment, we should remember that America was a revolutionary nation and a rogue regime of its own day in the eyes of the financial tyrants. Back when America was a free and independent nation and not a mercenary nation for the bloodsucking global private central bankers it did not start large wars or slander other nations. But those days were over when the private Federal Reserve Bank was established in 1913. Soon after America became a puppet for the criminal internationalist bankers and oligarchs, and began to lose its soul.
Nearly a century after the creation of the monstrous Fed, America is on the verge of starting a new world war in the Middle East to protect the interests of its global oligarchical masters. Regimes that are not subservient to the lawless international banking establishment have to be eliminated and destroyed.
The road to World War III and the centralized global government that is being designed to take shape after the war is over has been paved with the blood of innocent Americans who were murdered on September 11, 2001 by the tricksters and traitors in the United States government.
The September 11 attacks made clear three facts: the total loss of representative and lawful government, the planned destruction of America’s constitutional republic, and the beginning of a new dictatorial order based on the total subversion of civil society to an Orwellian world state controlled and owned by the global private banking system and the monopolistic corporations that profit from this unfair system.
There is a globalist war against America, but the weapons are fear, propaganda, and disinformation, not bombs and cruise missiles. The political use of state terrorism and fear against the American people by the political, financial and military establishment in Washington means that the hijacked U.S. government is afraid of the American people. The rulers in Washington have not only betrayed the interests of the American people, but they are waging a full-scale war against the American people and against the constitutional institutions of America.
The English essayist William Hazlitt said that in times of tyranny the interests of the people and the interests of the government are separated and the government by nature becomes the main enemy of the people. Hazlitt:
That Government is instituted for the benefit of the governed, there can be little doubt; but the interests of the Government (when once it becomes absolute and independent of the people) must be directly at variance with those of the governed. The interests of the one are common and equal rights: of the other, exclusive and invidious privileges. (Hazlitt: “What Is The People” from ‘The Fight and Other Writings’; pg. 367).
Whenever the people are betrayed, robbed and murdered by their political leaders there is a need for a revolution. Putting off the inevitable solution to tyranny only makes the correction more painful and the suffering of the people more extreme. The terror of change is hard to overcome but survival depends on it. If the people do not act quickly and aggressively to recover their freedoms and retake their government then they will be destroyed by their political overlords. We are seeing this in America. The country is being deliberately brought down to its knees. A controlled demolition and collapse of America’s constitutional government and American society is under away.
II. The Deliberate Disintegration and Destruction of America: The Eight Phases of America’s Controlled Collapse
Below I will briefly list the eight phases of America’s controlled collapse and disintegration and the five fronts in the war against America. Some of these phases have already been completed but not all may come to fruition if the American people are informed of the threats to their liberty, life, and country by the hijacked federal government and if they collectively resist their enslavement. The same applies for the people of Canada, England, Australia, and other Western countries.
Phase One: Militarizing The Police And Turning The Police Against The People
In the beginning of the 1970s, after the Civil Rights movement achieved victories for the people, the U.S. government began infringing on the civil rights of the people all over again, and this time it was done under the cover of the “War on Drugs.” This war is not a faithful and honest war but a political war that was deliberately designed to take away the liberties of the American people, mostly black people, and unjustly imprison them in order to raise profits for a new prison industry.
Through the false and illegal war on drugs the police of every state has been brainwashed, militarized, brought under federal control, and received billions of dollars to chase around drug addicts and intimidate poor people. Naturally, this has created hostility between the people and the police. The police is seen as an occupying army on American streets which is an accurate representation because the government that they work for and defend has been hijacked and taken over by criminal bankers and globalist oligarchs.
Phase Two: Mercenary-Military Takeover of America’s Constitutional Government Through The CIA and Military-Industrial Complex
The biggest lie that the U.S. government tells the American people is this one: We work for you. Nothing could be more false. The federal government works for the American people today in the same way that the Soviet Union worked for the American people during the Cold War. The truth is that America’s chief political representatives and leaders are murderers and state terrorists, not protectors of America and the U.S. constitution. They are enemies of the public order and the common good of all.
Ever since President John F. Kennedy was murdered by the CIA the American government has not worked for the interests of the American people, but for a fascist clique and politically connected war racketeers who operate the CIA and the military-industrial complex. President Harry S. Truman correctly referred to the CIA as the “American Gestapo.” It is led by anti-American traitors and war criminals who would prefer America to be a dictatorship than a free society.
Phase Three: The Complete Banking Takeover and Financial Rape of America
By now most people realize that the big banks on Wall Street robbed America and fleeced the American people. Watch this great interview of author Nomi Prins by Alex Jones on May 16, 2011 called ” The Federal Reserve Holding America Hostage.” Also, read these three articles of mine: Banksters Raped A Blindfolded America, Private Global Bankers = The Priesthood of Modern Western Civilization, and Greg Palast: “Remove the Bloodsuckers.” And watch these videos by Alex Jones called The Banking Cartels Takeover: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.
Part Four: Instituting a Regime of Repression and Terror, Enacting Emergency Law, Suspending the Constitution, Enlarging Executive Power, And Creating New Federal Agencies like Homeland Security to Spy on the American People and Treat Them Like Cattle
This phase speaks for itself. Professor Peter Dale Scott and others have written about the plan by Dick Cheney and the treasonous faction in the U.S. government to go ahead with Continuity of Government plans. I call this the COG in the War Machine. Read Professor Scott’s article, Supplanting the United States Constitution: War, National Emergency and “Continuity of Government.” And watch John Whitehead’s informative interview of constitutional scholar and author Bruce Fein about his book ‘ American Empire Before the Fall ‘: Part 1; Part 2.
Phase Five: Stage False Flag Attacks To Increase The Power of The Government and Frighten The People
The tactic of false flag operations is a no-brainer if you’re a tyrant. And it is self-explanatory so I won’t go into much detail. Articles to read: ‘America: A State of Terror’ – ‘Governments ADMIT That They Carry Out False Flag Terror’ – ‘Top Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001, 9/11 A False Flag.’
Phase Six: The Criminalization of Patriotism and Dissent
Alex Jones has talked about the fact that the U.S. terror state is now demonizing and targeting people inside America. The myth of the “White Al-Qaeda” is now being spread in the U.S. media in anticipation for future attacks against political resisters. The American white man is being called a domestic terrorist, a racist, and an extremist for refusing to submit to the criminal government in Washington. Expressing patriotism in ways other than supporting the troops and being informed about the Constitution is viewed as a threat to the treasonous establishment in D.C.
Phase Seven: The U.S. Government’s War on Questioning and Human Reason
Another part of the government’s demonization campaign is the oppressive use of language. Terms like “conspiracy theorist” and “domestic terrorists” are invented to isolate political resistance and make the general public believe that questioning the government is an act of delusion and a crime. Calling political dissidents mentally ill and conspiracy theorists for questioning the policies and statements of the U.S. government is a trick that the Soviet Union also used against its own political dissidents. A good article to read on this subject is ‘The Psychologisation of Dissent: The Global Warming Skepticism Mental Disorder’ by Brendan O’Neill, the editor of Spiked Online. O’Neill writes:
Psychologising dissent, and refusing to recognise, much less engage with, the substance of people’s disagreements – their political objections, their rational criticisms, their desire to do things differently – is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes.
Phase Seven: Rounding Up Political Dissidents Into Concentration Camps, Disarmament, Torture, and Wiping Out The Enemies of The New Authoritarian Regime
To understand what America’s concentration camps might look like and what they will be used for, watch this 18 minute video of Chile’s concentration camps under General Pinochet ‘s regime.
The government threat of disarming the American people to prevent them from fighting for their freedoms is very real, but some threats cannot be carried out. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto said near the beginning of World War II that “You cannot invade America. There is a rifle behind every blade of grass.” This fact hasn’t changed in seventy years.
Phase Eight: Total Slavery For The People, Acceptance of New Government Structure, New Currency, And New Way of Life.
If all goes according to plan, America will be no more. A North American Union with a whole new political system and laws is being planned for North America, and it will then be connected with the European Union and other global bodies to form a unified and authoritarian world state.
Many people believe a new world state is necessary for humanity to survive and for the global community to prosper in these challenging times. The people who are involved in the conspiracy against America, Canada, and Mexico do not believe that they are committing evil by lying to the people and keeping the agenda for world government a secret. They honestly believe they are doing good. Obviously, they are mistaken because good deeds are transparent. Secrecy breeds corruption and tyranny. A global government controlled and owned by a ruthless and cunning private international banking establishment along with multinational corporations will be an absolute disaster for the human race, much like the Soviet Union was a disaster for Russia in the last century.
III. The Deliberate Disintegration and Destruction of America: The Five Fronts In The War Against America
There are many fronts in the globalist war against America besides the five listed below such as the biological front and the cultural front, but I believe these are the most important.
Front One: Psychological Front – Psychological Warfare
There is a concerted, deliberate, and systematic effort to psychologically condition the American people into accepting the war on terror as a justified war, and the attack on their freedoms as reasonable and good. The brainwashing of the American citizenry began long before September 11, 2001, but the neocon gang and Bush administration took it to an extreme, which has backfired against the dark establishment in Washington.
Dutch-American psychoanalyst Joost A.M. Meerloo, author of the 1956 book, “The Rape of the Mind,” wrote in a chapter called ‘The Cold War Against the Mind’ that totalitarian regimes act irrationally in order to fool their enemies, both foreign and domestic, and to keep people terrorized with panic and confusion. Meerloo:
There is another important weapon the totalitarians use in their campaign to frighten the world into submission. This is the weapon of psychological attack. Hitler kept his enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval. They never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he knew that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot–it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counter-argument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another. (Meerloo: ‘The Rape of The Mind’; pg. 101)
Psychological tricks and disinformation campaigns are being directed against the American people because undermining the psychological health of the American people is one of the goals of the traitors in power.
Front Two: Economic Front – Economic Warfare
Simply put, a poor population is more likely to be dependent on the government to meet the basic needs of life than a self-sufficient and wealthy population. Besides tyranny, poverty is the greatest enemy of freedom. The economic war against the American people has led to massive unemployment, housing foreclosures, homelessness, and general impoverishment. It is important to know that the economic crash in 2008 did not happen by accident but a result of government policy. And the bank bailouts were not intended to provide jobs but save the dysfunctional and corrupt banking system. America’s political and financial ruling elite is beyond ruthless. They will stop at nothing from crushing the American people and turning America into a bankrupt, poor, and miserable police state.
Front Three: Terror Front – Political Warfare
State terror and the political use of fear is common in authoritarian and unpopular regimes. A government staged terrorist attack keeps the people in a state of panic and confusion, afraid for their lives, and pleading for security from the government. What more can tyrants ask for? Using state terrorism to resolve social and political problems is a win-win-win formula. Nothing else equals the magical spell that is cast on the people through the instrument of fear.
Front Four: Illegal Immigration Front – Demographic Warfare
Immigration is good. America was built on immigration. But an excess of anything is bad. The problem with America’s immigration system today is that it has been hijacked by globalist conspirators who are using immigration as a political weapon to weaken the American people’s resolve to deal with tough economic and political issues, and to further divide the country into the rich and poor, white and Mexican, citizen and non-citizen, etc. A wise and just policy is not being taken to address the immigration problem by the establishment in Washington because they do not want to do anything about it. Their goal is to destabilize and ultimately destroy America, not protect and save it.
If Mexico’s economy was not destroyed by NAFTA and other corporatist policies that benefit a small financial and political elite in Mexico, America, and Canada then there would be more jobs for the Mexican people in Mexico and less incentive to migrate to America to work. It is important to understand that both the Mexican people and the American people are the victims in the illegal immigration crisis which is connected to the larger economic crisis.
Front Five: Media Front – Information Warfare
There is not much that needs to be said here. It is self-evident that the mass media is interested in propaganda rather than informing the people about what their government is doing in their name. I view the deliberate withholding of information that proves that America is controlled by traitors who murdered Americans on September 11, 2001 as a crime against humanity. It is the greatest betrayal of the people’s trust.
IV. The War For The Hearts And Minds of The American People
“Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed–and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment– the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply “give the public what it wants”–but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.” – President John F. Kennedy, The President and the Press: Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961.
The murder of John F. Kennedy was a tragedy and a crime against humanity, but it is nothing compared to the murder of an entire nation. America is being lined up to be killed and destroyed just as JFK was on November 22, 1963.
But America is not going down without a fight. The war for the hearts and minds of the people is being fought every day. One of the great generals in the infowar is Alex Jones. People wonder why Alex Jones is angry at the U.S. government and why he is always ranting. They say Alex is eccentric and psychotic for being mad but I think this criticism is stupid, backward and crazy because anger is a natural reaction to treason and grand deception. The American people are treated like fools and cattle. Alex Jones is passionate and mad for good reason. “Passion,” said William Hazlitt, “is the essence, the chief ingredient in moral truth."
If you are not angry then you are not informed. And when you are not informed you make it easier for tyrants to lie to you, rob you, enslave you, and kill you.
A blog which is dedicated to the use of Traditional (Aristotelian/Thomistic) moral reasoning in the analysis of current events. Readers are challenged to reject the Hegelian Dialectic and go beyond the customary Left/Right, Liberal/Conservative One--Dimensional Divide. This site is not-for-profit. The information contained here-in is for educational and personal enrichment purposes only. Please generously share all material with others. --Dr. J. P. Hubert
Showing posts with label Media Propaganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media Propaganda. Show all posts
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Why Are Wars Not Being Reported Honestly?
The public needs to know the truth about wars. So why have journalists colluded with governments to hoodwink us?
By John Pilger
December 10, 2010 "The Guardian" -- In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander General David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a "war of perception . . . conducted continuously using the news media". What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where "the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences". Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. "We had a secret weapon," he boasted. "We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media."
Never has so much official energy been expended in ensuring journalists collude with the makers of rapacious wars which, say the media-friendly generals, are now "perpetual". In echoing the west's more verbose warlords, such as the waterboarding former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who predicated "50 years of war", they plan a state of permanent conflict wholly dependent on keeping at bay an enemy whose name they dare not speak: the public.
At Chicksands in Bedfordshire, the Ministry of Defence's psychological warfare (Psyops) establishment, media trainers devote themselves to the task, immersed in a jargon world of "information dominance", "asymmetric threats" and "cyberthreats". They share premises with those who teach the interrogation methods that have led to a public inquiry into British military torture in Iraq. Disinformation and the barbarity of colonial war have much in common.
Of course, only the jargon is new. In the opening sequence of my film, The War You Don't See, there is reference to a pre-WikiLeaks private conversation in December 1917 between David Lloyd George, Britain's prime minister during much of the first world war, and CP Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian. "If people really knew the truth," the prime minister said, "the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know."
In the wake of this "war to end all wars", Edward Bernays, a confidante of President Woodrow Wilson, coined the term "public relations" as a euphemism for propaganda "which was given a bad name in the war". In his book, Propaganda (1928), Bernays described PR as "an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country" thanks to "the intelligent manipulation of the masses". This was achieved by "false realities" and their adoption by the media. (One of Bernays's early successes was persuading women to smoke in public. By associating smoking with women's liberation, he achieved headlines that lauded cigarettes as "torches of freedom".)
I began to understand this as a young reporter during the American war in Vietnam. During my first assignment, I saw the results of the bombing of two villages and the use of Napalm B, which continues to burn beneath the skin; many of the victims were children; trees were festooned with body parts. The lament that "these unavoidable tragedies happen in wars" did not explain why virtually the entire population of South Vietnam was at grave risk from the forces of their declared "ally", the United States. PR terms like "pacification" and "collateral damage" became our currency. Almost no reporter used the word "invasion". "Involvement" and later "quagmire" became staples of a news vocabulary that recognised the killing of civilians merely as tragic mistakes and seldom questioned the good intentions of the invaders.
On the walls of the Saigon bureaus of major American news organisations were often displayed horrific photographs that were never published and rarely sent because it was said they were would "sensationalise" the war by upsetting readers and viewers and therefore were not "objective". The My Lai massacre in 1968 was not reported from Vietnam, even though a number of reporters knew about it (and other atrocities like it), but by a freelance in the US, Seymour Hersh. The cover of Newsweek magazine called it an "American tragedy", implying that the invaders were the victims: a purging theme enthusiastically taken up by Hollywood in movies such as The Deer Hunter and Platoon. The war was flawed and tragic, but the cause was essentially noble. Moreover, it was "lost" thanks to the irresponsibility of a hostile, uncensored media.
Although the opposite of the truth, such false realties became the "lessons" learned by the makers of present-day wars and by much of the media. Following Vietnam, "embedding" journalists became central to war policy on both sides of the Atlantic. With honourable exceptions, this succeeded, especially in the US. In March 2003, some 700 embedded reporters and camera crews accompanied the invading American forces in Iraq. Watch their excited reports, and it is the liberation of Europe all over again. The Iraqi people are distant, fleeting bit players; John Wayne had risen again.
A statue of Saddam Hussein is pulled down in Baghdad on 9 April 2003. Photograph: Jerome Delay/AP The apogee was the victorious entry into Baghdad, and the TV pictures of crowds cheering the felling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. Behind this façade, an American Psyops team successfully manipulated what an ignored US army report describes as a "media circus [with] almost as many reporters as Iraqis". Rageh Omaar, who was there for the BBC, reported on the main evening news: "People have come out welcoming [the Americans], holding up V-signs. This is an image taking place across the whole of the Iraqi capital." In fact, across most of Iraq, largely unreported, the bloody conquest and destruction of a whole society was well under way.
In The War You Don't See, Omaar speaks with admirable frankness. "I didn't really do my job properly," he says. "I'd hold my hand up and say that one didn't press the most uncomfortable buttons hard enough." He describes how British military propaganda successfully manipulated coverage of the fall of Basra, which BBC News 24 reported as having fallen "17 times". This coverage, he says, was "a giant echo chamber".
The sheer magnitude of Iraqi suffering in the onslaught had little place in the news. Standing outside 10 Downing St, on the night of the invasion, Andrew Marr, then the BBC's political editor, declared, "[Tony Blair] said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating, and on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right . . ." I asked Marr for an interview, but received no reply. In studies of the television coverage by the University of Wales, Cardiff, and Media Tenor, the BBC's coverage was found to reflect overwhelmingly the government line and that reports of civilian suffering were relegated. Media Tenor places the BBC and America's CBS at the bottom of a league of western broadcasters in the time they allotted to opposition to the invasion. "I am perfectly open to the accusation that we were hoodwinked," said Jeremy Paxman, talking about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction to a group of students last year. "Clearly we were." As a highly paid professional broadcaster, he omitted to say why he was hoodwinked.
Dan Rather, who was the CBS news anchor for 24 years, was less reticent. "There was a fear in every newsroom in America," he told me, "a fear of losing your job . . . the fear of being stuck with some label, unpatriotic or otherwise." Rather says war has made "stenographers out of us" and that had journalists questioned the deceptions that led to the Iraq war, instead of amplifying them, the invasion would not have happened. This is a view now shared by a number of senior journalists I interviewed in the US.
In Britain, David Rose, whose Observer articles played a major part in falsely linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida and 9/11, gave me a courageous interview in which he said, "I can make no excuses . . . What happened [in Iraq] was a crime, a crime on a very large scale . . ."
"Does that make journalists accomplices?" I asked him.
"Yes . . . unwitting perhaps, but yes."
What is the value of journalists speaking like this? The answer is provided by the great reporter James Cameron, whose brave and revealing filmed report, made with Malcolm Aird, of the bombing of civilians in North Vietnam was banned by the BBC. "If we who are meant to find out what the bastards are up to, if we don't report what we find, if we don't speak up," he told me, "who's going to stop the whole bloody business happening again?"
Cameron could not have imagined a modern phenomenon such as WikiLeaks but he would have surely approved. In the current avalanche of official documents, especially those that describe the secret machinations that lead to war – such as the American mania over Iran – the failure of journalism is rarely noted. And perhaps the reason Julian Assange seems to excite such hostility among journalists serving a variety of "lobbies", those whom George Bush's press spokesman once called "complicit enablers", is that WikiLeaks and its truth-telling shames them. Why has the public had to wait for WikiLeaks to find out how great power really operates? As a leaked 2,000-page Ministry of Defence document reveals, the most effective journalists are those who are regarded in places of power not as embedded or clubbable, but as a "threat". This is the threat of real democracy, whose "currency", said Thomas Jefferson, is "free flowing information".
In my film, I asked Assange how WikiLeaks dealt with the draconian secrecy laws for which Britain is famous. "Well," he said, "when we look at the Official Secrets Act labelled documents, we see a statement that it is an offence to retain the information and it is an offence to destroy the information, so the only possible outcome is that we have to publish the information." These are extraordinary times.
By John Pilger
December 10, 2010 "The Guardian" -- In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander General David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a "war of perception . . . conducted continuously using the news media". What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where "the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences". Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. "We had a secret weapon," he boasted. "We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media."
Never has so much official energy been expended in ensuring journalists collude with the makers of rapacious wars which, say the media-friendly generals, are now "perpetual". In echoing the west's more verbose warlords, such as the waterboarding former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who predicated "50 years of war", they plan a state of permanent conflict wholly dependent on keeping at bay an enemy whose name they dare not speak: the public.
At Chicksands in Bedfordshire, the Ministry of Defence's psychological warfare (Psyops) establishment, media trainers devote themselves to the task, immersed in a jargon world of "information dominance", "asymmetric threats" and "cyberthreats". They share premises with those who teach the interrogation methods that have led to a public inquiry into British military torture in Iraq. Disinformation and the barbarity of colonial war have much in common.
Of course, only the jargon is new. In the opening sequence of my film, The War You Don't See, there is reference to a pre-WikiLeaks private conversation in December 1917 between David Lloyd George, Britain's prime minister during much of the first world war, and CP Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian. "If people really knew the truth," the prime minister said, "the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know."
In the wake of this "war to end all wars", Edward Bernays, a confidante of President Woodrow Wilson, coined the term "public relations" as a euphemism for propaganda "which was given a bad name in the war". In his book, Propaganda (1928), Bernays described PR as "an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country" thanks to "the intelligent manipulation of the masses". This was achieved by "false realities" and their adoption by the media. (One of Bernays's early successes was persuading women to smoke in public. By associating smoking with women's liberation, he achieved headlines that lauded cigarettes as "torches of freedom".)
I began to understand this as a young reporter during the American war in Vietnam. During my first assignment, I saw the results of the bombing of two villages and the use of Napalm B, which continues to burn beneath the skin; many of the victims were children; trees were festooned with body parts. The lament that "these unavoidable tragedies happen in wars" did not explain why virtually the entire population of South Vietnam was at grave risk from the forces of their declared "ally", the United States. PR terms like "pacification" and "collateral damage" became our currency. Almost no reporter used the word "invasion". "Involvement" and later "quagmire" became staples of a news vocabulary that recognised the killing of civilians merely as tragic mistakes and seldom questioned the good intentions of the invaders.
On the walls of the Saigon bureaus of major American news organisations were often displayed horrific photographs that were never published and rarely sent because it was said they were would "sensationalise" the war by upsetting readers and viewers and therefore were not "objective". The My Lai massacre in 1968 was not reported from Vietnam, even though a number of reporters knew about it (and other atrocities like it), but by a freelance in the US, Seymour Hersh. The cover of Newsweek magazine called it an "American tragedy", implying that the invaders were the victims: a purging theme enthusiastically taken up by Hollywood in movies such as The Deer Hunter and Platoon. The war was flawed and tragic, but the cause was essentially noble. Moreover, it was "lost" thanks to the irresponsibility of a hostile, uncensored media.
Although the opposite of the truth, such false realties became the "lessons" learned by the makers of present-day wars and by much of the media. Following Vietnam, "embedding" journalists became central to war policy on both sides of the Atlantic. With honourable exceptions, this succeeded, especially in the US. In March 2003, some 700 embedded reporters and camera crews accompanied the invading American forces in Iraq. Watch their excited reports, and it is the liberation of Europe all over again. The Iraqi people are distant, fleeting bit players; John Wayne had risen again.
A statue of Saddam Hussein is pulled down in Baghdad on 9 April 2003. Photograph: Jerome Delay/AP The apogee was the victorious entry into Baghdad, and the TV pictures of crowds cheering the felling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. Behind this façade, an American Psyops team successfully manipulated what an ignored US army report describes as a "media circus [with] almost as many reporters as Iraqis". Rageh Omaar, who was there for the BBC, reported on the main evening news: "People have come out welcoming [the Americans], holding up V-signs. This is an image taking place across the whole of the Iraqi capital." In fact, across most of Iraq, largely unreported, the bloody conquest and destruction of a whole society was well under way.
In The War You Don't See, Omaar speaks with admirable frankness. "I didn't really do my job properly," he says. "I'd hold my hand up and say that one didn't press the most uncomfortable buttons hard enough." He describes how British military propaganda successfully manipulated coverage of the fall of Basra, which BBC News 24 reported as having fallen "17 times". This coverage, he says, was "a giant echo chamber".
The sheer magnitude of Iraqi suffering in the onslaught had little place in the news. Standing outside 10 Downing St, on the night of the invasion, Andrew Marr, then the BBC's political editor, declared, "[Tony Blair] said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating, and on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right . . ." I asked Marr for an interview, but received no reply. In studies of the television coverage by the University of Wales, Cardiff, and Media Tenor, the BBC's coverage was found to reflect overwhelmingly the government line and that reports of civilian suffering were relegated. Media Tenor places the BBC and America's CBS at the bottom of a league of western broadcasters in the time they allotted to opposition to the invasion. "I am perfectly open to the accusation that we were hoodwinked," said Jeremy Paxman, talking about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction to a group of students last year. "Clearly we were." As a highly paid professional broadcaster, he omitted to say why he was hoodwinked.
Dan Rather, who was the CBS news anchor for 24 years, was less reticent. "There was a fear in every newsroom in America," he told me, "a fear of losing your job . . . the fear of being stuck with some label, unpatriotic or otherwise." Rather says war has made "stenographers out of us" and that had journalists questioned the deceptions that led to the Iraq war, instead of amplifying them, the invasion would not have happened. This is a view now shared by a number of senior journalists I interviewed in the US.
In Britain, David Rose, whose Observer articles played a major part in falsely linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida and 9/11, gave me a courageous interview in which he said, "I can make no excuses . . . What happened [in Iraq] was a crime, a crime on a very large scale . . ."
"Does that make journalists accomplices?" I asked him.
"Yes . . . unwitting perhaps, but yes."
What is the value of journalists speaking like this? The answer is provided by the great reporter James Cameron, whose brave and revealing filmed report, made with Malcolm Aird, of the bombing of civilians in North Vietnam was banned by the BBC. "If we who are meant to find out what the bastards are up to, if we don't report what we find, if we don't speak up," he told me, "who's going to stop the whole bloody business happening again?"
Cameron could not have imagined a modern phenomenon such as WikiLeaks but he would have surely approved. In the current avalanche of official documents, especially those that describe the secret machinations that lead to war – such as the American mania over Iran – the failure of journalism is rarely noted. And perhaps the reason Julian Assange seems to excite such hostility among journalists serving a variety of "lobbies", those whom George Bush's press spokesman once called "complicit enablers", is that WikiLeaks and its truth-telling shames them. Why has the public had to wait for WikiLeaks to find out how great power really operates? As a leaked 2,000-page Ministry of Defence document reveals, the most effective journalists are those who are regarded in places of power not as embedded or clubbable, but as a "threat". This is the threat of real democracy, whose "currency", said Thomas Jefferson, is "free flowing information".
In my film, I asked Assange how WikiLeaks dealt with the draconian secrecy laws for which Britain is famous. "Well," he said, "when we look at the Official Secrets Act labelled documents, we see a statement that it is an offence to retain the information and it is an offence to destroy the information, so the only possible outcome is that we have to publish the information." These are extraordinary times.
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