Lies, damn lies and the Pentagon
By Amir Arfa, Press TV, Tehran
“Days later, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum distilling their collective guidance into bullet points. Two were underlined:
‘Focus on the Global War on Terror - not simply Iraq. The wider war - the long war.’
‘Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.’ ”
On April 25, just 5 days after the New York Times tipped the “Pentagon’s hidden hand” behind the Bush Administration’s “message machine”, top US military officer Adm. Michael Mullen brandished “potential military courses of action” as one of several options against Iran’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq.
David Barstow’s 7670-word-or-so exposé is the story of Pentagon’s “information apparatus” “Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity”.
It’s about an “effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day”.
It’s about all the lies, damn lies and Pentagon statistics that the world has been hearing, watching and reading via major American news outlets from TV to radio to the so-called “papers of record” including the Times itself.
It’s about Guantanamo the paradise, Iraq the victory and Iran the trouble-maker.
It’s about military analysts most of whom “have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.”…”in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance”.
It’s about Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst revealing, “It was them [Pentagon officials] saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ”.
The article is key to making heads and tails of General Petraeus’s Iraq “progress report” against the bloody backdrop of unspeakable mayhem, unemployment and starvation that has totally paralyzed the occupation-torn country.
It is also key to making heads and tails of myths about Iran destabilizing its fellow Shia-majority neighbor.
Indeed “The full dimensions of this mutual embrace” between the Pentagon and its “surrogates”/”message force multipliers”/military analysts, “were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several of Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals - none of them network military analysts - went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some called for his resignation.”
“On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the “Generals’ Revolt” dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show.
“Days later, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum distilling their collective guidance into bullet points. Two were underlined:
‘Focus on the Global War on Terror - not simply Iraq. The wider war - the long war.’
‘Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.’ ”
Yes, Rumsfeld stepped down in 2006 but only to stick his hands up the back of his successor.
The show must go on, Dem. or Rep. makes no difference.
Just listen to Hillary her-husband-signed-Iraq-liberation-act-herself-authorized-the-war talk about her ability to “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel.
Just look at her investment record in the Iraq war business along with other democrats in congress.
Center for responsive politics (CRP), a nonpartisan research group recently revealed as much as $196 million of investment by members of US congress Democrats and Republicans alike in companies doing business with the Defense Department, earning millions since the onset of the Iraq war.
The center’s review of the lawmakers’ 2006 financial disclosure statements suggests that the very same congressmen and women who won control of both House and Senate by promising Americans to “End This War” have invested millions the very same war they promised to end chief among them 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry who according to CRP has earned the most - at least $2.6 million between 2004 and 2006 from investments worth up to $38.2 million in the war business.
Yes, indeed General Betraeus is not alone.
Where there is profit, there is war. And where there are profiteers, there are the puppeteers’. In the Bushland’s economic “difficult times” Martin-Lockheed, the world’s largest “defense contractor” reports record profit margin. The big oil is getting bigger and bigger and media tycoons fatter and fatter.
Yes, let’s
“Focus on the Global War on Terror - not simply Iraq. The wider war - the long war.”
Let’s,
“Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.”
But linker beware. You may link all you want but you may also want to listen to alarm bells sounded by the likes of Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) who told CNN’s Late Edition that Iran is not Iraq. And going in there militarily would be, from my perspective, a huge mistake.
As far as linking is concerned, it didn’t help Rumsfeld keep his job, how could it ever help his bosses keep Iraq with their hands tied behind someone else’s back up against the clenched fists of millions of disenchanted Americans and Iraqis who didn’t need it for The New York Times to tell them whose pants are on fire.
And as far as the admiral’s “lots of potential courses of military action” are concerned, Dear Mike, you may want to mull it over before you speak next.
Just put your broken army where your mouth is. Will ya?
May 2nd, 2008 | Category: Bush Lies, Lies of the U.S. Administration, Rumsfeld
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