How BUSH/Pentagon Told YOU What to Think via The News (Corrupt FOX NEWS, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN)
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Date: 2008-05-08, 12:48AM EDT
This article (excerpts from it) discusses the NY Times Investigation into HOW the media have screwed over the US public in regards to the Iraq War: please repost!
U.S. news media's latest disgrace
Though there are still good journalists, the central reality is that corporate journalism is rotten at the core.
By Robert Parry
After prying loose 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents, the New York Times has proven what should have been obvious years ago: the Bush administration manipulated public opinion on the Iraq War, in part, by funneling propaganda through former senior military officers who served as expert analysts on TV news shows.
Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former Fox News analyst, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’” [NYT, April 20, 2008] (trust me, they were threatened with repercussions if they didn't play along...read the article)
Fox News may have been the prototype of the flag-waving “news” outlet that fawned over pro-war retired military officers and mocked anti-war citizens....But the same imbalance could be found at the major networks, like NBC where then-anchor Tom Brokaw spoke in the first person plural as he sat among a panel of retired brass on the night of the Iraq invasion – March 19, 2003 – and said: "In a few days, we're going to own that country."
....the urgent question is what must be done if the United States is to reclaim its status as a functioning constitutional Republic in which a reasonably honest news media keeps the public adequately informed.
HERE'S THE GENESIS OF GOVT MINIPULATED MEDIA....
Behind the scenes, the Reagan administration had constructed a domestic framework modeled after CIA psychological warfare programs abroad. The main difference this time was that the psy-op took aim at the American people with the goal of managing how they perceived events, what insiders called “perception management.”
So, Ronald Reagan’s team made it a high priority to rein in troublesome journalists and to reverse the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome,” the American people’s revulsion over any more foreign military adventures....The documents revealed that the domestic operation took shape in the early 1980s under the guidance of CIA Director William Casey...
The crowning achievement of this decade-long effort came during the first Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. President George H.W. Bush believed that a successful U.S.-led ground offensive could finish the job of bringing the American people back from their post-Vietnam malaise...
When the ground war ended, Bush offered an insight into his central motivation. In his first comments about the U.S. victory, he declared: “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.”
In the investigation of how the Pentagon used TV military analysts to sell the Iraq War – thus allowing George W. Bush to “complete the job” left unfinished by his dad – the New York Times also traced the administration’s P.R. theories back to the Vietnam War and to the early days of the Reagan era.
...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...He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars – taking aim not just at foreign adversaries but at domestic audiences, too. “He called his approach ‘MindWar’ – using network TV and radio to ‘strengthen our national will to victory.’”
With the U.S. taxpayers now looking at an open-ended Iraq War with the total cost possibly reaching $3 trillion, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who the “winners” were in this “MindWar.”
The “losers” should be equally apparent. Besides the fleeced American taxpayers, there have been more than 4,000 US soldiers dead, another 30,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Iraqis.
..."But the danger of “MindWar,” aimed by the U.S. government at the American people, is that it turns inside-out the concept of a democratic Republic in which a well-informed people exercise meaningful control over their government.
Instead, you end up with a duplicitous government using propaganda, fear and intimidation to whip the people into line. Rather than the government being the servant of the people, the people become the servant of the government.
Then, as undemocratic regimes have shown throughout history – with the voice of the people silenced – insiders get a free hand to carry out foolhardy policies and to line the pockets of their friends..."
Location: Corrupt FOX NEWS, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN
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