Corporate Media Dumbs Down Foreign Policy

The new foreign policy team - Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates who will stay on as secretary of defense - are named.

And so do the networks use the occasion to comment on the lies of the Iraq War, the sham of the War on Terror, the obscene amount of money used on armaments? The deaths of 100,000s? Perhaps speculating on whether this will change?

No, the talk of the day is will Hillary get along with Robert and will Hillary get along with Barack? Will the U.S. be okay and recover from its mistakes?

If anyone doubts that Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky are spot-on in their institutional analysis of the corporate mass media in their Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon, 1988), I recommend reading the book or the transcript/video of Chomsky's talk delivered at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, March 15, 1989.

Thomas Friedman Knows Less

Thomas Friedman Iraq.

Stringing together this establishment NYT columnist's name and the obscenity that is the Iraqi invasion/occupation is like saying the C-word or the N-word.

You don't like to do it, it's yucky and offensive.

Friedman is the quintessential liberal hawk: Cheerleading, ignoring death and destruction, abiding lies, and incessantly calling for a US-installed self-sustaining, united and democratic Iraq, as though this were why we invaded the country.

[Friedman, sounds like the Post's Broder- per unbelievable vacuity of Bush-loving foolishness.]

Today's Friedman yuckiness:

Is the surge in Iraq working? That is the question that Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will answer for us next month. I, alas, am not interested in their opinions.

It is not because I don’t hold both men in very high regard. I do. But I’m still not interested in their opinions. I’m only interested in yours. Yes, you — the person reading this column. You know more than you think.

Gee, thanks Mr. Friedman for that prophet-posturing reassurance.

I'll give what I think that I know a try:

- That Bush and Co., with assists from you and most of the corporates media, flat-out lied about the threat of Iraq to us

- No one else, not Iraq's neighbors, not the Arab League, not Europe (young and old), not Russia, not China, was worried about this grave and gathering threat posed by Iraq

- Iraq did not have any part in the 9/11 attacks

- Saddam was anathema to OBL

- Saddam did not have WMD

- The invasion and occupation are illegal

- There is over one million dead, millions more grievously wounded, millions more psychologically scarred

- Finally, that war is horror, and that we should only commit this act as a last resort to the most immediate, grave threat

Thanks Tom for pumping us up. We'll take it from here now.

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