Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Pompous Perfidious Politicized Presidential Prostitute Puppets Press Pimping Pundit Propagandists On Prime Time, Criminals In The White House And A Fear-Petrified Self-Inflicted-Castration Public Sitting Impotently On Their Asses With Terminal Laryngitis Awaiting The Hoisting Of A Fascist Flag Over America.
America has been played, is being played and if YOU do nothing the game is going to continue!
The Rise of Fascism in America; A Little Repeat Reminder and Review
Yesterday, the New York Times exposed a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the media with pro-war propaganda.
The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of "military analysts" to spread favorable views of the war via every major news channel -- without revealing they were working from Pentagon scripts and often lobbying for major military contractors.
Spreading "covert propaganda" is illegal under federal law. Congress must investigate these military pundits and their ties to the Bush administration, defense contractors and our national news media.
Tell Congress: Investigate the Propaganda Pundits
Signing this letter does work. If we can get 50,000 people to join this call to Congress, they will likely take action to stop government propaganda.
The more than 75 analysts exposed by the New York Times have become fixtures of war coverage on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. The front-page article reveals the many ways that the Pentagon fed them pro-war talking points and misinformation. The White House even has a name for these covert propagandists: "message force multipliers."
The pundits trade on their access to the media and the White House to secure high-paying jobs as lobbyists, consultants and contractors -- vying for hundreds of billions of dollars in military business generated by the war.
Take Action: Investigate White House Propaganda
An administration secretly forcing favorable views via the press is not a partisan issue. This is a violation of every conceivable standard of journalism -- and possibly of federal law.
It's time the truth about the selling of this war came out. You can help make this happen.
Take action and then forward this e-mail to all of your friends.
Onward,
Josh Silver
Executive Director
Free Press Action Fund
www.freepress.net
P.S. Read the New York Times' front-page exposé: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html.
P.P.S. Help us spread the word. Tell your friends and join us on Facebook.
Behind Analysts, the Pentagon's Hidden Hand
Hidden behind an appearance of objectivity in reporting about the occupation of Iraq is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used certain analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance. (Rent A General)
David Barstow, New York Times
Free Press Calls for Congressional Investigation into Pentagon Pundits
Government-sanctioned propaganda violates every conceivable standard of journalism. That it has been allowed to continue unquestioned and undisclosed for years is an indictment of both this White House and a docile American media.
Free Press
Pentagon's Media Manipulation on War Extended to Newspapers
What may go overlooked in the aftermath of the New York Times article about the Pentagon propaganda machine's control of TV news is that all of the leading newspapers also use the same cabal members.
Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher
New York Times Investigation Exposes Pentagon Pimps and Propaganda Operation
The New York Times used 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records, accessed through suing the Pentagon, to expose the Pentagon's control over access and information.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, The Nation
Pentagon Propaganda & Antiwar Analysts
Detailing the massive, secret coordinated campaign by the Pentagon and all the leading television news channels to sell and defend the administration's Iraq policy is a critical piece of investigative journalism.
Ari Melber, The Nation
With a redesigned Wall Street Journal, mogul Rupert Murdoch is launching an old-fashioned newspaper war against the New York Times. Not since William Randolph Hearst took on Joseph Pulitzer have we seen such a fight.
In an April 20 New York Times article, investigative reporter David Barstow reported that "the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform" media military analysts "into a kind of media Trojan horse -- an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." He also wrote: "Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance." Prior to the Times' report, Media Matters for America had documented misinformation, falsehoods, and smears of progressives, including Sen. John Kerry in 2004 when he was running against President Bush, by several of the analysts identified in the Times article.
Following each analyst's name are excerpts from the Times report about that person followed by the Media Matters items documenting the analyst's misinformation, falsehoods, or smears of progressives.
Retired Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney
Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, "the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world." Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many -- although certainly not all -- faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.
"Good work," Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. "We will use it."
The group was heavily represented by men involved in the business of helping companies win military contracts. Several held senior positions with contractors that gave them direct responsibility for winning new Pentagon business. James Marks, a retired Army general and analyst for CNN from 2004 to 2007, pursued military and intelligence contracts as a senior executive with McNeil Technologies. Still others held board positions with military firms that gave them responsibility for government business. General McInerney, the Fox analyst, for example, sits on the boards of several military contractors, including Nortel Government Solutions, a supplier of communication networks.
That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld.
Following Rumsfeld, supporters asserted that criticism of defense secretary helps America's enemies
O'Reilly again suggested employing Saddam's methods in Iraq
NY Post, Fox News touted flawed GOP poll to claim "America Says Let's Win [Iraq] War"
Retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely
Many also shared with Mr. Bush's national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation's will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war.
This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from "enemy" propaganda during Vietnam.
"We lost the war -- not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped," he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars -- taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach "MindWar" -- using network TV and radio to "strengthen our national will to victory."
Back in Washington, Pentagon officials kept a nervous eye on how the trip translated on the airwaves. Uncomfortable facts had bubbled up during the trip. One briefer, for example, mentioned that the Army was resorting to packing inadequately armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets. Descriptions of the Iraqi security forces were withering. "They can't shoot, but then again, they don't," one officer told them, according to one participant's notes.
"I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south," General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.
The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.
"You can't believe the progress," General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be "down to a few numbers" within months.
On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the "Generals' Revolt" dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show. When an aide urged a short delay to "give our big guys on the West Coast a little more time to buy a ticket and get here," Mr. Rumsfeld's office insisted that "the boss" wanted the meeting fast "for impact on the current story."
That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld.
"Starting to write it now," General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. "Any input for the article," he added a little later, "will be much appreciated." Mr. Rumsfeld's office quickly forwarded talking points and statistics to rebut the notion of a spreading revolt.
"Vallely is going to use the numbers," a Pentagon official reported that afternoon.
Following Rumsfeld, supporters asserted that criticism of defense secretary helps America's enemies
Retired Col. William V. Cowan
Information and access of this nature had undeniable value for trip participants like William V. Cowan and Carlton A. Sherwood.
Mr. Cowan, a Fox analyst and retired Marine colonel, was the chief executive of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group. Mr. Sherwood was its executive vice president. At the time, the company was seeking contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. In addition, wvc3 Group had a written agreement to use its influence and connections to help tribal leaders in Al Anbar Province win reconstruction contracts from the coalition.
"Those sheiks wanted access to the C.P.A.," Mr. Cowan recalled in an interview, referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Mr. Cowan said he pleaded their cause during the trip. "I tried to push hard with some of Bremer's people to engage these people of Al Anbar," he said.
"We could not be more excited, more pleased," Mr. Cowan told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. There was barely a word about armor shortages or corrupt Iraqi security forces. And on the key strategic question of the moment -- whether to send more troops -- the analysts were unanimous.
Mr. Bevelacqua and another Fox analyst, Mr. Cowan, had formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military and national security contracts.
On Aug. 3, 2005, 14 marines died in Iraq. That day, Mr. Cowan, who said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the "twisted version of reality" being pushed on analysts in briefings, called the Pentagon to give "a heads-up" that some of his comments on Fox "may not all be friendly," Pentagon records show. Mr. Rumsfeld's senior aides quickly arranged a private briefing for him, yet when he told Bill O'Reilly that the United States was "not on a good glide path right now" in Iraq, the repercussions were swift.
Mr. Cowan said he was "precipitously fired from the analysts group" for this appearance. The Pentagon, he wrote in an e-mail message, "simply didn't like the fact that I wasn't carrying their water." The next day James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, presided over another conference call with analysts. He urged them, a transcript shows, not to let the marines' deaths further erode support for the war.
FOX's Cowan denied that interrogators participated in Abu Ghraib abuse
Vietnam Veteran Carlton A. Sherwood
Information and access of this nature had undeniable value for trip participants like William V. Cowan and Carlton A. Sherwood.
Mr. Cowan, a Fox analyst and retired Marine colonel, was the chief executive of a new military firm, the wvc3 Group. Mr. Sherwood was its executive vice president. At the time, the company was seeking contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq. In addition, wvc3 Group had a written agreement to use its influence and connections to help tribal leaders in Al Anbar Province win reconstruction contracts from the coalition.
Retired Col. Timur J. Eads
"We knew we had extraordinary access," said Timur J. Eads, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and Fox analyst who is vice president of government relations for Blackbird Technologies, a fast-growing military contractor.
Like several other analysts, Mr. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that "some four-star could call up and say, 'Kill that contract.' " For example, he believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq's security forces. "I know a snow job when I see one," he said. He did not share this on TV.
"Human nature," he explained, though he noted other instances when he was critical.
Fox News hosts go off-message in hyping N. Korea missile tests
Retired Lt. Col. Robert L. Maginnis
Another analyst, Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, attended the same briefing and recalled feeling "very disappointed" after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being "manipulated" to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public.
Retired Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales Jr.
Some e-mail messages between the Pentagon and the analysts reveal an implicit trade of privileged access for favorable coverage. Robert H. Scales Jr., a retired Army general and analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio whose consulting company advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq, wanted the Pentagon to approve high-level briefings for him inside Iraq in 2006.
"Recall the stuff I did after my last visit," he wrote. "I will do the same this time."
In interviews, several analysts reacted with dismay when told they were described as reliable "surrogates" in Pentagon documents. And some asserted that their Pentagon sessions were, as David L. Grange, a retired Army general and CNN analyst put it, "just upfront information," while others pointed out, accurately, that they did not always agree with the administration or each other. "None of us drink the Kool-Aid," General Scales said.
Ignoring reports of poor performance, Fox analyst touted presence of Iraqi forces on Haifa Street
Yoo's on First? And The Team Management Doesn’t Want To Let Us Or Any “Honest Press” Into The Game. (Neutral Press=Kosher Pig=0) Grade “F”
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA Director George Tenet could not get their people to torture folks without written, signed authorization by the president. And a copy of that authorization has been available for years. You have to download it to believe it, says Ray McGovern.
Is it because John Yoo, the former Justice Department's hired hand, is such an easy target? Is it because of the cheeky, in-your-face way in which Yoo argues that the president has the authority to have your eyes poked out and your sons' testicles crushed, because we are "at war" and he is commander in chief?
Or is it because our press is STILL reluctant to go after Yoo's guys – first and foremost his ultimate client – President George W. Bush? Oh, but that would be hard, you say.
Nonsense.
Available on the Web, in its original format, is a 7 Feb. 2002 action memorandum that the president signed to implement the dubious advice he was getting from Yoo and those at Justice who hired Yoo – and from the vice president's office which guided Yoo.
Yoo did their dirty work (and now he takes the rap).
Weren't Yoo's co-conspirators careful to keep their fingerprints off the more blatantly offensive memoranda? Sure they were.
But there was one problem. Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-CIA Director George Tenet could not get their people to torture folks without written, signed authorization by the president.
And we have a copy of that authorization? Yes, it's been available for years. You have to download it to believe it.
In his Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum, Bush wrote: "I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees." (Common Article 3 bans "torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.")
Then, drawing on the lawyerly legerdemain, Bush did something really dumb. Using words drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, for a memo dated Jan. 25, 2002, signed by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the president ordered that detainees be treated, "humanely ... to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity."
Tacked onto the end of that sentence is a classic circumlocution: "in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva." But that is not what Geneva says, and there is no way to square that circle.
This is the giant loophole through which Rumsfeld and Tenet drove the Mack truck of torture ... yes, signed by the president. The rotten apples were – demonstrably – at the very top of the barrel.
Typical of the timid treatment accorded this issue is what initially seemed to be a straightforward article by Don Eggen in Sunday's Washington Post. It spotlighted scapegoat-of-the-hour Yoo, noting that he advised that in time of war the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief trumps laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes by military interrogators.
In focusing on Yoo's legal advice, however, Eggen joined his "mainstream" journalist colleagues in omitting the smoking gun – Bush's implementing memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002. That document already had cleared the way for waterboarding, stress positions, forced nudity and other abuse of detainees – as well as for further legal musings about the unlimited powers of a wartime president, like Yoo’s newly disclosed March 14, 2003, memo.
The omission was all the more conspicuous in that a listing of nine memoranda relevant to the story sits side by side with Eggen's article. Guess which memo did not make it onto that list?
Again, I urge you to download the president's Feb. 7 smoking gun from the Web and read it yourself. The Jan. 25, 2002, memo bearing Gonzales's signature is also available – in its original form.
Supreme Court Has a Problem
On June 29, 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court ruled that Geneva DOES apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.
One senior Bush administration official is reported to have gone quite pale at the time, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy raised the ante, warning that "violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes,' punishable as federal offenses."
That threw a real scare into Bush as well, who pressed Congress hard to give administration officials retroactive immunity from prosecution. That came just three months later when Congress passed the "Military Commissions Act."
Ironically, the fact that those violating Geneva have been granted immunity within the US makes it easier for foreign courts to prosecute for torture.
Remember how former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to sneak out of Paris last October? He was not about to wait until a Paris prosecutor decided how to handle a fresh criminal complaint against him.
That complaint cited the failure of US authorities to investigate the role of Rumsfeld and other top officials in torture, despite a documented paper trail of official memos implicating them in direct as well as command responsibility.
The complaint argued that countries like France have a legal obligation to prosecute under the 1984 Convention Against Torture, approved by 145 nations, including the United States.
The Convention states that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
It also provides for “universal jurisdiction,” meaning that every signing country has a duty to prosecute torturers who are found in their territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.
One of the Bush administration's favorite slogans is that evildoers must be "brought to justice." It will be interesting to watch how this all plays out in the months and years to come.
[For more on Yoo’s memos and Bush’s powers, see Consortiumnews.com’s “All Power to the President” and “Yoo’s Memo Hints at Bush’s Secrets.”]
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early sixties, then a CIA analyst under seven presidents. He is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Keeping Things Well Oiled!
Oil: How High from Here?
BusinessWeek - USA
Then impeach their main apologist, GWB [George W. Bush]." Indeed, some oil-company stocks rose along with crude on Apr. 21, with Hess (HES) closing up 7% at ...
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Fascism in America won’t come with jackboots, book burnings, mass rallies, and fevered harangues, nor will it come with black helicopters or tanks on the street.
It won’t come like a storm—but as a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: Everything is the same, but everything has changed.
Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality will have taken its place. All the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns—plenty of bread and circuses.
But “consent of the governed” will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small and privileged group who rule for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.
The change in America is taking place as I write, and Sinclair Lewis prophetically said” “That when Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
The rulers will act in secret, for reasons of “national security,” and the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name.
Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, state murder of “enemies” selected by the leader, undeclared wars, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new “security structures” targeted at the populace.
In time, this will be seen as ““normal”,” as the chill of autumn feels “normal” when summer is gone. It will all seem “normal”.
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
-Herman Goehring-
If you say something long enough and loud enough and often enough, the people will believe it.
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
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