Congressman Kucinich: Republican Iraq “Withdrawal” Resolution Is A Fraud
Washington, Nov 19 – Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) gave the following speech tonight on the House floor on the House Republican Leadership’s plan to play politics with the war in Iraq and present a phone “withdrawal” bill:

“I have spent three years making the case against the war in Iraq, trying to convince Congress to avoid war, working with other members in leading nation-wide opposition to the war, developing an exit strategy once we got in, working with colleagues on both side of the aisle on plans to withdraw from Iraq and bring our troops home.

“I will vote against this resolution because it is a fraud. What more does anyone need to know, but that the sponsor himself has called for the defeat of his own proposition? If his real intention were to bring our troops home right now, why would he vote against his own resolution? Wake up America.

“The American people are fed up with politicians who say one thing and do another. Every one of conscience and intelligence knows the magnitude of withdrawing 150,000 troops requires a plan, and a sincere legislative effort.

“The American people deserve a real debate on Iraq: Where are the WMDs? Where is Osama Bin Laden? What did Iraq have to do with 9/11?

“This Congress, which is a coequal branch of government, which has the War Power and which has oversight responsibility, has the moral obligation to find out why almost everything of significance we were told about the war turned out to be false.

“Instead those who raise questions have their military service, or their honor impugned. They took John Kerry on a swift boat. But we will not let them take John Murtha on a swift boat, nor will they do it to the American people any longer as we are ready to stand up and to expose fakery when we see it.” Check it out at: http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=37191

QUOTE OF THE DAY ... The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. Thomas Jefferson

The Corporate Media’s Threat to Freedom
Mike Whitney, Counter Currents
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/1981

There is no similarity between the corporate media and a “free press”. The corporate media operates according to its structural make-up, which requires it to serve the interests of ownership and maximize profits. Its top-down style of management ensures that it will align itself with the political centers of power which create the opportunity for greater prosperity. This explains why the media giants have consistently concealed the Bush administration’s attacks on civil liberties, supported the expansion of executive power, and paved the way for global war. After all, they are just acting in their own best interest, accommodating the political establishment to allow for more consolidation and expansion. One hand washes the other. The cozy relationship between the administration and the media has made it nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. In fact, the media is the primary instrument of state policy. Its task is to shape the public’s perception of government and to project a benign image of the US to the world beyond.

Naturally, this symbiotic relationship has intensified as the needs of the administration have increased. Now, the media crafts the storyline of American magnanimity while the US military carries out war crimes in Falluja or torture in Baghdad. It showers praise on the Dear Leader while thousands wallow in squalor in New Orleans or are cluster-bombed in Tal Afar. It waves the flags and sings the patriotic anthems that prepare the nation for war. The media has become indistinguishable from the political establishment; executing its duties in a manner that best serve the objectives of the state.

Confidence in the media has never been lower. A broad section of the public doesn’t believe anything they read in the papers nor do they see reporters as impartial observers of world events. This should be no great surprise. The model of a privately-owned media ensures that the facts are massaged to suit ownership; a practice that inevitably undermines credibility. The marriage between the media and the state increases the danger to the public interests. This is especially true when the media becomes a marketing tool for the government, promoting its vastly unpopular wars, its attacks on the social safety-net, and its vicious assault on civil liberties.

The media has become an adversary to the people it is supposed to serve. It now functions exclusively as a weapon in the imperial arsenal; exalting the state and its wartime agenda, while savaging the institutions of democracy and personal liberty. Its role as state-propagandist is conspicuous in everything from its blind devotion to the president to its obfuscation of facts that discredit the administration. If we consider a few of the critical stories the mainstream media suppressed, we get a clearer idea of its overall agenda.

The media refused to cover the allegations of irregularities in the 2004 presidential election; dismissing the anomalies as conspiracy theories. Independent investigations have cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the balloting, and just last week, the GAO confirmed suspicions that widespread voter fraud may have taken place. Whether or not the elections were fairly conducted is immaterial; given the suspicious results of the 2000 election, this was a story that should have been covered. Instead, it was purposely ignored to silence critics and divert attention from the dysfunctional electoral system.

The media has refused to cover the massive and devastating siege of Falluja; an assault that displaced 250,000 civilians and intentionally destroyed water lines, electrical power, sewage treatment plants, government buildings, hospitals and schools. Even now, a full year later, journalists have been kept from entering the city or photographing the largest single war crime of the ongoing conflict. And, even though news services around the world are confirming the use of banned weapons, including napalm and other “unidentified” substances during the attack, the American media refuses to give details or demand an independent investigation. It is interesting to compare the media’s silence on the carnage in Iraq to its front-page coverage of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Lavish attention has been devoted to Hariri’s death because it advances the administration’s foreign policy goals. Once again, the media is clearing the path for future imperial conflicts by building the case for war against Syria.

The media has also refused to cover the Downing Street Memo; the damning document written by a member of Tony Blair’s national security team who verified that Bush planned to “remove Saddam through military force” as early as July, 2003 (even though the administration was saying that that it would “exhaust all peaceful means”) The unprovoked attack would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Even though the memo provided the first piece of irrefutable evidence that the administration deliberately manipulated the facts, no American newspaper referred to the memo for more than 7 weeks after its discovery. The details of the Downing Street Memo are still unknown to many Americans, allowing Bush to continue to deny the cherry-picking of pre-war intelligence. The memo proves that Bush is lying.

The media has also refused to provide any coverage of the mercenaries who were deployed to the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. This is the first time in American history that a foreign (corporate) army has carried out operations on US soil. The media made sure that no photos of these corporate warriors appeared in any of the newspapers or TV programs. The absence of coverage raises serious questions about censorship in Bush’s America.

The media refuses to provide news of the Iraq war and the devastation of Sunni heartland. Al Qaim, Husbaya, and Tel Afar have all been attacked with the same ferocity as Falluja; forcing the townspeople to flee and then destroying the water, electricity, sewage and other critical parts of the infrastructure. The Pentagon is now engaged in a scorched earth strategy knowing full well that its policy of killing journalists will keep the story from being reported. The obliteration of these cities shows that the military has abandoned the idea of achieving a political solution in Iraq. The present strategy is aimed at “destroying the resistance’s ability to wage war”, by systematically laying to waste one city after another. This is the Rumsfeld solution, but you won’t find it in the media. The news from Iraq focuses entirely on the random acts of violence which perpetuate racial stereotypes of Islamic extremists. This provides the justification for the continuing American occupation. The media has worked in conjunction with the Pentagon to create the story of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; the embodiment of a ruthless Muslim fanatic who kills simply because he “hates freedom”.

No one can categorically deny that Zarqawi may exist. The fact is, however, that there has never been a positive identification of him, nor has anyone ever provided concrete proof of his whereabouts. Reporters are responsible to provide the facts to their readers, not to promote a narrative that suits the Pentagon’s agenda.

These are just a few of the stories that the media has refused to cover because they conflict with the goals of the administration. If we look deeper we see that the Cheney Energy papers, the 9-11 “whitewash, the corporate scandals, the “Able Danger” program, and the attacks on civil liberties, have all met a similar fate. Stories that are incompatible with the aims of ownership or administration policy are usually left on the cutting room floor.

Freedom is impossible where the information systems are monopolized by private industry. Democracy requires that people have access to divergent points of view so they can form opinions free from coercive influences. The corporate model aims at uniformity in order to limit the range of debate and promote a business-friendly agenda. In America, the news has become a study in uniformity; presenting the very same topics from precisely the same perspective. This creates the impression that the facts are generally agreed upon, which is not the case. 65% of the American people do not support the media’s pro-war stance, and yet, the anti-war position is nowhere to be found on commercial TV.

The war on terror is not simply a misguided crusade against non-state actors like Al Qaida. It is a sweeping plan for global corporate domination. Managing information is vital to that effort. Knowledge is power, and there is a deliberate attempt to seize that power by controlling the sources of information. In effect, it is the privatization of the truth; standardizing information through greater media consolidation and disseminating it through its own filtering systems. Its inhibiting effects on our democracy have already been seen in the curtailing of civil liberties and the twisting of facts that led to the Iraq war. The further merging of the state and the media portend a strengthening of autocratic government and a loss of personal liberty. The multi-headed dragon of corporate media must be confronted and defeated. Al Qaida may pose a threat to our security, but the alliance of state and media poses a clear and present danger to our freedom.

CLINTON SAYS IRAQ INVASION WAS A BIG MISTAKE
Associated Press
The United States made a "big mistake" when it invaded Iraq, former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday, citing the lack of planning for what would happen after dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown. "Saddam is gone. It's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done, " Clinton told students at the American University of Dubai. "It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors ... one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country." Clinton did however say that the United States had done some good things in Iraq: the removal of Saddam, the ratification of a new constitution, and the holding of parliamentary elections.

[Duchess Note ... "Personal News" will be back this coming week. Sincere apologies to all my regular Net readers for the delay.]