liars and media muffins

[realthog]

An appalling tale has just appeared on the ever-excellent Consortium News site (http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/012808.html). Here's a taster:

CBS Falsifies Iraq War History

By Robert Parry
January 28, 2008

There’s a cynical old saying that the victors write the history. CBS’s “60 Minutes” demonstrated how that process works on Jan. 27 in airing Scott Pelley’s interview with the FBI agent who de-briefed former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In a world of objective reality, a reporter might say that the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, even after Iraq had repeatedly – and accurately – announced that its WMD had been destroyed in the 1990s.

On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq even sent to the United Nations a 12,000-page declaration explaining how its WMD stockpiles had been eliminated. In fall 2002, Hussein’s government also allowed teams of U.N. inspectors into Iraq and gave them free rein to examine any site of their choosing.

Those inspections only ended in March 2003 when President George W. Bush decided to press ahead with war despite the U.N. Security Council’s refusal to authorize the invasion and its desire to give the U.N. inspectors time to finish their work.

But none of that reality is part of the history that Americans are supposed to know. The officially sanctioned U.S. account, as embraced by Bush in speech after speech, is that Saddam Hussein “chose war” by defying the U.N. over the WMD issue and by misleading the world into believing that he still possessed these weapons.

In line with Bush’s version of history, “60 Minutes” correspondent Pelley asked FBI interrogator George Piro why Hussein kept pretending that he had WMD even as U.S. troops massed on Iraq’s borders, when a simple announcement that the WMD [were] gone would have prevented the war.

“For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking,” Pelley said in introducing the segment on the interrogation of Hussein about his WMD stockpiles. “Why did he choose war with the United States?” . . .

Is it any surprise that more and more of us are in desperation seeking our news from non-mainstream and/or overseas sources?

Comments

liars

[guidoeekhaut.livejournal.com]

But then again, most Americans will believe this sort of stories, because it may well fit in with their believe in God and The Nation. And I guess most of them have no access to other than mainstream media. I myself, while living in Europe, am relying more and more on alternative news sources, not because the official ones are telling lies, but because the news programs (on TV) have narrowed down to local items, sports etc. The younger generation had understood the relative value of media: my (grown-up) kids seldom watch TV-news any more, of any other broadcast media. They're relying on the internet for info and entertainment.