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So much is going on these days, it is difficult to keep up. But, I thought this is worth mentioning even if it is a tad old.
Hillary Clinton, in her recent trip to Iraq, said exactly the opposite of what she should have said. Washington Post 4/26/09:
"I wanted to come today to repeat the commitment that President Obama and I and our government have to the people and nation of Iraq," Clinton said at a town hall-style meeting at the U.S. Embassy that was broadcast on Iraqi television.
This sounds nice, but it is just a shiny veneer on some real ugliness. Our country should be getting out of Iraq ASAP. Given what the war on Iraq is doing to hurt our economy and devastate the Iraqi economy while slaughtering the Iraqi people, we should talk about a commitment to withdraw from Iraq.
Talking about "the commitment" is disturbing, given the fact that "the commitment" has been to holding onto Iraq as an imperial colony and massacring Iraqis in the process. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis have made their desire to have our troops withdraw abundantly clear in opinion polls. This should surprise no one. Can you imagine what Americans would think if foreigners invaded our country, slaughtered over 5% of our population, and took control of our natural resources?
There also was a quote in the Post article which shows just how far corporate media outlets will go to keep us at war:
Violence in Iraq has dropped dramatically since the worst days of the war, from an average of 180 attacks daily in June 2007 to 27 a day in January, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. But the death toll has spiked lately, with insurgents demonstrating that they are still able to obtain explosives and outwit Iraqi security forces.
This is such a crock. The overwhelming majority of violence in Iraq during this war has been perpetrated by US troops against the Iraqi people. Since the Escalation began, arial bombardments have increased dramatically, causing even more violence and death.
When are the corporate media going to be honest and start including US on Iraqi violence when they talk about violence in Iraq?
The incessant propaganda, in the news, and in entertainment, has conditioned Americans into believing what we are doing is "necessary" to defeat the "enemy". That's why it was so easy to go from a terrorist attack on US soil to a war against a people that had nothing to do with that attack. And the defense contractors that own the media outlets, or advertise heavily on them, are making too much money to change that.
Hillary's an astute and ambitious enough politician to know that to actually point the finger at the US would be perceived and portrayed in the media as an attack on our troops. And that would be as politically suicidal as pointing out the influence of Aipac over US foreign policy.
Lew: You make an excellent point about military contractors advertising heavily on news and how it buys coverage favorable to their interests.
The God damned Borg Queen and her philandering husband are personally invested up to her camel toe in the military, industrial complex.
Just like Dianne "DiFi" Feinstein and Jane Harman -- two other liberal babes who are public Hawks because their family portfolios rest on America's killing machines.
These are very dangerous women and they have no place in national, elected politics. They belong on the boards of conservative Washington think tanks or the boards of GE, Halliburton, or Rockwell, but not in elected public office.
Christopher: None of the people you mentioned are liberals. They all are conservative Phonycrats. When we let the corporate media distort the meaning of words like "liberal," we help them shut out political views they don't want people to think about. One of those views is ours.
It's a pain in the ass, but it really is important to get in the habit of automatically deconstructing corporate media propaganda whenever we read or hear it.