5 Years, 5 Lies:
Cole in Salon
My fortnightly column for Salon.com is now up, commemorating the 5th anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq:
"Five years of Iraq lies:" How President Bush and his advisors have spent each year of the war peddling mendacious tales about a mission accomplished.
I posit that each year of the war has been characterized by a central lie by the Bush propaganda machine.
Year 1: "There is no guerrilla war."
Year 2: "Iraq is a model democracy."
Year 3: "Zarqawi is causing all the trouble."
Year 4: "There is no Civil War."
Year 5: "Everything is calm now."
I also suggest that John McCain is pushing for:
Year 6: "Total victory is around the corner."
Also, at Tomdispatch.com Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher magazine and author of So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, The Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq, writes on the brave journalists like Chris Hedges who got it right.
As for John McCain's bizarre assertion on Tuesday that Iran was actively training "al-Qaeda," the senator was just parroting the Pentagon line of a few years ago, which gradually was muted because even the gullible US press wouldn't swallow it.
Bottom line, if you are so ignorant or confused that you think Shiite ayatollahs in Tehran are training and arming radical Salafi Sunnis to blow up Shiites in Iraq, you really should not be president.
P.S. Glenn Greenwald demonstrates that McCain has repeatedly made this looney assertion and that it wasn't just a momentary slip. You wonder whether, if he had been corrected by anyone but Lieberman, he would even have backed off momentarily.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/19/2008 06:35:00 AM
16 Comments:
According to an advance report on Bush's speech I read on Yahoo news, if the US were to withdraw from Iraq, a) Al Qaeda would attempt to dominate the country to seize its oil resources, and b) Iran would attempt to dominate the country to spread its hegemony across the Middle East.
Therefore, it sounds to me like our withdrawal would ignite a war between our two arch-enemies, Iran and Al Qaeda.
Divide and conquer -- sounds like a plan.
Out Now!
Re anniversary articles: just sent the following to the Gray Lady.
Dear New York Times,
Writing from London. About the John Burns anniversary piece.
Just to say it was the final farthing. My New York Times "spend" over the years has never been much - needless to say - because of where I live. From "not much" it's gone to absolute zilch from here on out.
Wasn't born yesterday so I never for one second thought that matters of journalistic ethics - let alone common sense, fair play and basic human decency - would ever have any bearing on the way the NYT "covered" the story, but at the back of my mind I always sort of assumed that a healthy sense of self-preservation might temper things ever so slightly from time to time. You know, hedging your bets, that kind of thing.
Not a bit of it, though.
Which is by way of saying, the "long tail" isn't just about shifting music on the internet. It's seeping into everything. You can depend on it, it's gonna catch up with your outfit sooner or later. Would have thought someone there would have given that at least a few seconds' thought - and perhaps argued in favour of a teensy bit of sail trimming, of course correction.
What I'm saying is, you need to get out more - wet a finger and stick it up in the air.
Sincerely,
Dr. D. Tucker
This morning, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, ABC’s Good Morning America aired an interview with Vice President Cheney on the war. During the segment, Cheney flatly told White House correspondent Martha Raddatz that he doesn’t care about the American public’s views on the war:
CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/19/cheney-poll-iraq/
ya gotta hand it to the guy.
he may be one of the most Evil Psychopathic Murderous Cowardly War Criminal Bastards to ever walk the planet, but he is consistent.
The fact is, alas, that most Americans undoubtedly have a level of ignorance similar to John McCain's. They think that Iran is a sponsor of al Qaeda and that the Iranian regime is behind the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Remember that the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee (sorry, his name escapes me right now) didn't know the difference between Sunni and Shiite and thought that al Qaeda was Shiite. This is the level of ignorance and stupidity on which policy is made and political debate is held in this country.
That John McCain wants to be president and is selling himself principally as the foreign policy expert in the mix, and that he could be so profoundly, shockingly ignorant of the most basic facts about the conflict on which he stakes his claim to the presidency ought to be shocking. Alas, our politics is so degraded that it's perfectly normal -- and he won't pay any price for it, because the corporate media is only interested in Obama's minister and who's having sex with whom and who's hanging from the trapeze.
The Guardian opens its story on the McCartney divorce with this sentence:
"Heather Mills presented a case based on 'make-believe' that was wholly exaggerated and at times 'devoid of reality', according to the judge who presided over her messy divorce from Sir Paul McCartney."
"Make-believe...wholly exaggerated...devoid of reality".
That's done it for me. Every time I see George Bush - or Cheney - or Rumsfeld or Powell - or Rice - or Perle - or Wolfowitz - or any of the rest of them it's going to be bugging me: is that Heather McCartney in a George Bush get-up.
Or indeed vice versa. If I see "Heather" is there any chance that that's Bush hiding his light under a...oh please.
The video really doesn't back up your claim as to what John McCain believes. At the very end, Lieberman points out that he said "Al Quaida" rather than "extremists" and McCain then corrects himself. So the video suggests that he misspoke and realized it.
I'm not a McCain supporter. But if we're going to (rightly) criticize the deceits of others, we should strive to be aboveboard ourselves.
Ol' Shooter performs his well-worn 'pull blatant bullsh*t outta my fat gout ridden ass' once again.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/19/AR2008031900779.html?sub=AR
VP: Iran May Have Resumed Weapon Program
jeebus is this cowardly VietNam draft dodging War Criminal EVER going to give his LIES a f***ing rest ????
All I care about is that John McCain will keep us in Iraq, while there is at least a chance Clinton or Obama will get us out. I want out. I want out now and I want out completely.
I am worried Obama means to stay, keeping troops along the border and possibly selectively elsewhere. Clinton seems more set on leaving. So, I favor Clinton right now.
I just want us out.
Britain has pulled out forces steaily, but the remaining forces are cost 72% more than before because they need the same sort of resources. Getting out means completely, or we are destined to spen $200 billion an more indefinitely; let alone the killing and wounding and destruction.
I just want us out.
anne
Patrick Cockburn: This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-this-is-the-war-that-started-with-lies-and-continues-with-lie-after-lie-after-lie-797788.html
It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.
I'm the 6:26pm anonymous commenter above. The issue made it to this evening's _All Things Considered_ on NPR. And they pointed out that McCain recently called into a radio station for an interview and said essentially the same thing -- that Iran is currently training Al-Qaeda. So that lends more credence to the idea that he's not cognitively making that crucial distinction.
Looks like the video clip was taken on the Amman Citadel, an archaeological site where USAID has paid thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars to have the Islamic remains expunged - though they are a fine architectural monument - and the few remaining fragments of Roman columns remounted. The fragments of Roman columns were recovered by demolishing the Islamic remains. King Abdullah won't object.
Come on! McCain knows exactly what he's saying.
He's not senile or ignorant. He wants to perpetuate a convenient lie. He is trying to deceive the American people.
As Media Matters so well demonstrates, McCain has made the claim that Iran is helping al Qaeda several times.
Those right wingnuts are surely stupid.
(dancewater)
No, those right wingnuts are not stupid, but they surely think that WE are stupid.
I thought McCain seemed more doddering than calculating. I feel bad for his hard experiences, but he has not aged well. (I'm thinking Reagan, post-Iran-contra.) Anyway, Lieberman has been as mendacious as anyone in support of War Without End, and the correction made McCain look indecisive as well as wrong.
Say, how many years do they say a U.S. presence will be necessary in Iraq? Didn't China escalate its occupation of Tibet in response to organized Tibetan opposition in 1959? How's that working out?
Blix, Acropolis Review and TPM highlight some of the key points for the 5-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq:
http://acropolisreview.com/2008/03/john-mccains-iraq-war-five-year.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/184135.php
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