The US Media: A Weapon of Mass Deception
by Gordon Arnaut
Reading the US media's reporting on the Iraq question is very informative.
Not because the coverage is so fact-filled, but because it so clearly
illustrates just how propagandized and subservient the US press has become.
Headlines everywhere scream of Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction," and
television talking heads endlessly repeat the word "threat," in relation to
Iraq. Even the New York Times, which has been less enthusiastic about saber
rattling than much of the rest of the media, offers plenty of rhetoric about
alleged Iraqi "arsenals," and supposed links to terrorism.
Rivers of ink have been spent hyperventilating about the supposed Iraqi
threat, but how much actual evidence has been presented? Where are the
facts?
Very few have been forthcoming. Rarely if ever has rhetoric so
disproportionately outweighed facts in what is supposed to be an independent
press. In Saturday's Times, for example, several pages of coverage were
devoted to the case the Bush administration is now presenting for an
unprovoked attack on Iraq. A front page headline mentioned Iraqi "Arsenals
of Weapons," while an inside headline mused about why Iraq stands out in
Bush's "Axis of Evil."
But if a reader was hoping to see any actual facts revealed, he was in for a
letdown. After extensive quoting and paraphrasing of Vice President Dick
Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, and, to a
lesser extent, Secretary of State Colin Powell, all of whom repeated the
well-worn, stock accusations against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, the Times
finally weighed in with the "evidence." It seems that Iraq had attempted to
buy thousands of aluminum tubes. Yes aluminum tubes. Fortunately, the forces
of good were able to intercede and stop the shipment before it ever
happened.
Whew! Close call. I guess we better annihilate Iraq right now to make sure
it doesn't happen again. I mean, one of these days Saddam might actually
succeed in getting his hands on aluminum tubes, and then what? Then we'll
all be up the river without a paddle, and facing certain annihilation, as
the Bush team is now warning. "Imagine a Sept. 11 with weapons of mass
destruction," the Times quoted Rumsfeld as saying. "It's not 3,000, it's
tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children."
If you are wondering how aluminum tubes will lead to this doomsday scenario,
the Bushites are happy to explain. You see those are "specially designed"
aluminum tubes, which can be used as components of centrifuges, which are
machines that can be used for enriching uranium. Really? Or, just maybe, as
Freud might have said, sometimes an aluminum tube is just an aluminum tube.
And if that "evidence" wasn't enough to convince you, the Times followed the
aluminum tubes revelation with another hard-hitting piece of journalism:
Dick Cheney says there is a "credible, but unconfirmed" intelligence report
that Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had met "at least once"
with a senior Iraqi intelligence official, in Prague.
Now just how stupid do Dick Cheney and The New York Times think the American
people are? I guess we are supposed to take this bit of innuendo at face
value? From a guy whose trigger finger has been twitching in plain view for
months now?
And this, in a nutshell, was the Times' big bushel of facts on the Iraqi
threat: Aluminum tubes and a completely unsubstantiated report of an alleged
meeting between a hijacker and an Iraqi-says Dick Cheney. In all, these
"facts," took up about one inch of newsprint real estate, while several
yards were devoted to the drum beating of Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest.
This says a lot about the kind of press that America now has. Even more
revealing are the questions that the media have chosen to suppress. For
example, why do you see hardly any mention of the ongoing air raids that the
US and Britain have been inflicting on the Iraqi people for more than a
decade? Is this just business as usual? And I would like to see just one
article explaining the legal basis for those no-fly zones in the first
place. (There is none; they have never been approved by the UN.)
Another big question that has been swept under the rug has to do with the
CIA spies that were exposed as part of the last weapons inspections team.
Clearly, this was a deception that should have been enough to completely
discredit the entire US position on Iraq, but the whole thing was shrugged
off by the media like so much confetti. In the current debate-such as it
is-this inconvenient little episode is never even mentioned any more.
And what about the most crucial question of all? Is Iraq a threat, or not?
The media refuses to even allow this into the debate. By not asking this
question, the media is saying, in effect, "The question of Iraq being a
threat is beyond debate. So let's move on to the how and when of this war."
This is completely opposite to what the objective facts in the case tell us.
There is indeed much to debate as to whether Iraq poses any threat or not.
Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has brought to light key facts that
point in the direction that Iraq is no threat at all. But Scott Ritter is
only one man. In a truly independent-minded media, reporters would be
falling over themselves to pick up this story and run with it. Thousands of
questions could be asked, hundreds of sources unearthed, and dozens of
revelations brought to light. The only trouble is, it might expose as so
much rubbish the Bushites' entire yarn about Iraq.
And we couldn't have that could we? Not in a media culture where kowtowing
to the ruling class takes precedence over honest reporting and journalistic
duty.
Mr. Gordon Arnaut contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from Canada. He is an independent journalist who is currently making a documentary film on the
breathtaking dishonesty of the Western media.
by the same author:
