Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
24, 2003
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
June 23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
June
19, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
June
18, 2003
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
Elaine
Cassel
Dark Star Chambers: Secret Trials,
Nameless Defendents, Veiled Threats to Defense Lawyers
Col.
Daniel Smith
Iraq's WMDs: Integrity, Ethics and
Intelligence
Chris
Fagen
Ignoring the World's Bloodiest War
Rick
Fantasia and Kim Voss
Bush's Low Intensity War on Labor
Sam
Hamod
Theater of Deception: Bush, Sharon,
Abbas
M.
Shahid Alam
Illuminating Tom Friedman
Jon
Brown
Greens & Dems: a Reply to Publius
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/18
June
17, 2003
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
Elaine
Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
Roger Burbach
Brazil Under Lula
Dan
Bacher
The WTO's War on Salmon
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation
The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Larry
Kearney
Starlight
Steve
Perry
The Bush Administration
Lies Marathon, Day 3
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
June
24, 2003
WMD Damage Control
at the Times
Many
Presidents Have Lied, But This Time the Press Went Along for
the Ride
By
DAVID LINDORFF
As evidence mounts of the Bush administration's
gross prevarications regarding evidence of so-called "weapons
of mass destruction" in Iraq, and of a never-demonstrated
link between Hussein and Al Qaeda, the New York Times has taken
the lead in the media at damage control.
Instead of trying to deny the lying,
which would be a hopeless venture, the Times in the lead story
of this past Sunday's "Week in Review" section written
by David E. Rosenbaum, went with the argument that Bush "exaggerated"
and that in any event, many presidents have lied.
Rosenbaum selectively examines some Bush
whoppers--his claim on Oct. 7, 2002 that Iraq had "a massive
stockpile of biological weapons" and "thousands of
tons of chemical agents," and that it was "reconstituting
its nuclear weapons program," and his claim on March 17
that "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments
leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and
conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Rosenbaum
concludes  that the president may
have "believed what he was saying," and adds for effect
that that most reliable of sources, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton,
says the intelligence briefings she received a week ago "justified
Mr. Bush's statements." (He didn't mention that Sen. Clinton
has good reason to say this, having voted for giving Bush the
authority to go to war last fall.)
For good measure, Rosenbaum also cites
Bush's claim, made in his last State of the Union address and
on later occasions, that his latest tax cut would benefit "everyone
who pays income taxes." Here, Rosenbaum concedes that the
claim is factually incorrect--some 8.1 million taxpayers will
get no break in the tax cut as designed by the administration
and passed by Congress in May. But Rosenbaum goes on to say that
since 90 percent of taxpayers will get at least some minimal
tax break, the president would have been correct had he said
"almost all" people who pay taxes would get a cut.
But Rosenbaum only scratches the surface
of Bush's and his subordinates' lies. He doesn't mention that
the president, his defense secretary, and his secretary of state
lied blatantly in citing evidence of Iraqi purchases of uranium
from Niger--evidence that the government knew to have been a
gross forgery. He doesn't mention Bush's false claim that an
economic study showed that his tax cut would produce a 3 percent
growth rate in the U.S. economy, when in fact no such study exists.
He didn't mention the lie put forward by the Bush administration
that the reason the president had vanished on 9/11 was because
of a terrorist threat to Air Force One--a total fabrication.
Nor did he mention literally dozens of other documented lies.
It's true that there are lies, and there
are evasions and distortions.
The effort to white-wash the latest Environmental
Protection Agency report on the environment by censoring comments
about global warming was not a lie. It was a distortion and evasion.
Likewise many of the administration's claims about Iraq--for
example the many claims that the Pentagon and the White House
had planned ahead for the post-war situation in Iraq.
It is also true that other presidents
have lied, and lied grotesquely.
But in the end, the real point is not
whether what the Bush administration has done is a lie, or whether
Bush and his cronies have been slick enough to toss in weasel
words that can allow them to later claim that what they said
was "just an exaggeration."
Thousands of people have died and continue
to die because of these distortions, in the case of the war in
Iraq. Millions will end up losing vital services because of the
lies about the tax cut. This administration's lies about health
policy, education policy, about environmental policy, about labor
policy, about its judicial appointments, about communications
regulatory policy, business regulatory policy, etc., etc., will
have profound negative consequences on the lives of tens of millions
of real people.
None, or little, of this, has been or
will be subject to any real democratic debate.
But don't blame the White House, though.
If is, after all, true that there is nothing new, except perhaps
in terms of quantity and audacity, about the Bush administration's
lies.
What's new is the acquiescence of the
media in the lies and distortions by government.
Granted that the American media have
never been the noble Fourth Estate of popular mythology, but
there was always, in the past, at least a kind of "gotcha"
mentality. Even if they shied away from challenging the underpinnings
of empire, reporters and editors--and readers--thrived on the
excitement of catching politicians in a lie. Now, there seems
to be little stomach for, or even interest in doing this kind
of thing at the big media conglomerates. Instead, we have the
Times--the self-styled national "newspaper of record"--
offering an appalling apologia for Bush Administration deception
and lying, an apologia made all the more grotesque because the
Times sets a tone that is widely followed, lemming like, by smaller
newspapers across the nation. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, in
my community, ran an almost identical analysis in its "Sunday
Review" section the same day as Rosenbaum's "Week in
Review" piece, headlined "Truth is, presidents have
often bent facts." (At least the Inquirer mentioned the
citing of forged evidence with regard to the uranium purchase,
and a few other blatant lies.)
What's also new is the timidity of the
political opposition. Not only are few Democrats openly challenging
this administration's lies and distortions; those that do, like
Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, are then dismissed
by the media as inconsequential "dark horses". Even
Vermont Governor Howard Dean, by any standard a leading contender
at this point for the Democratic nomination, and a Democrat who
has accused the president of lying about the war, is now being
savaged by the media, most recently by Meet the Press, which
sandbagged him with questions about inconsequential minutia (such
as the number of U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan), questions
which the current famously ill-informed and inattentive president
would never be able to answer.
The best hope for American democracy
is that the public will not be satisfied with the ongoing cover-up
of Bush administration lying and distortion.
That may seem a vain hope, but I'm not
so sure. As long as the president remains the subject of ridicule
on the comedy circuit, it suggests the public is onto what's
really going down.
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|