The real picture, on the ground in Iraq - Will Pitt

[JRob]

Wow.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051105A.shtml

Editor's Note: The following remarks were delivered Tuesday night by William Rivers Pitt at an event hosted by the North Bridge chapter of the Alliance for Democracy in Concord, Massachusetts. The topic under discussion was corporate control of the mainstream news media. -to

One of These Days
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 11 May 2005

Whenever I get asked to speak about the media and its role in our world, I always remember something that happened to me in the fall of 2002. My book on Iraq had been out for a few weeks, I was writing for truthout, and I was also carrying a full teaching slate of high school classes. Needless to say, I was busy.

I was driving home from a long day of teaching back in the fall of 2002, and my cell phone rings. Now, and this is kind of a funny aside, I had always resisted getting a cell phone. Didn't like them, didn't want them. But all of a sudden I had all these radio interviews to do because of the Iraq book, and I did not want to do those interviews on the school phone for obvious reasons. So I went down to the phone store and got the cheapest one there. That meant, of course, that the phone was huge.

So the phone rings and I answered it while trying to navigate Memorial Drive in Cambridge - yes, at that moment I was the jerk on his cell phone who almost kills you with his car - and on the line is a producer from MSNBC who wanted me on the Connie Chung show. Hot damn, I thought. This is getting serious. The producer wanted me on the show to talk about Hans Blix and the weapons inspections taking place in Iraq. Great, I said. Yeah, she went on, we want you to talk about how the inspectors are doing a really bad job...

[Carolab]

1. Fantastic report.

Makes me sick to read it.

[mike_c]

2. nice-- Will and I have argued about the necessity of invading...

...Iraq and the conduct of the war-- I won't try to summarize the arguments, they're available for the searching and I'm almost too tired to type-- but this essay presents some of the points that Will once opposed, at least in my experience (sorry Will, I don't mean to speak for you, and I realize that I'm terribly over-simplifying matters-- it's way past my bedtime). I'm very happy to see this essay. I think it speaks the truth, both about the role of the media in manipulating public consensus and about the essential immorality of the invasion of Iraq. It's a powerful piece indeed.

Here's a personal testimony: I killed my TV two decades ago (with a couple of brief, dismayed lapses along the way). That piece of advice from this essay is the best that it offers, IMO. If you own a TV, or subscribe to cable media, you are being manipulated. We're all being manipulated to some extent, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that the primary means of selling the pig bastard neocon vision of the future is through your cable television and its corporate masters. Want to do something positive for America? I believe that the single most important thing you can do right now, today, is disconnect that cable. Life is plenty entertaining, and much more meaningful, once you get used to living through your own experiences again rather than vicariously through the least common denominator of cable programming. And the propaganda that cable deliveres is both constant and insidious. It permeates every instant of corporate media programming.

[Carolab]

3. ABSOLUTELY. Just disconnected last month.

And it feels great. Best part was telling Comcast WHY.

Now we talk, read, spend time together. Rent a movie if we're bored, take a walk.

[mike_c]

5. congratulations....

Welcome back to the land of the red pill. My exprience was that turning off my television was like quiting smoking-- at first there's this huge hole in your life, but after a while you can't imagine ever going back and doing that again. You become healthier.

[JRob]

8. 2 problems...

The biggest of which is that my broadband is through my cable...

The second is that I like to keep tabs on how the Cretans are spinning things first hand. I certainly don't watch as much and what they say has no impact on my opinion on anything but their character.

[mike_c]

11. oh, I have cable broadband too-- I just don't have cable TV...

...service. I pay an extra $10 monthly for the broadband connection because it's not bundled with TV programming, but that's preferable to paying an additional $40 for programming that I don't want (and can't use because I don't own a TV).

As for your second reason-- well, I simply find doing that a waste of time!

[TexasLawyer]

4. What's really going on

Thanks for the article. I know that if the media was truly doing its job, Americans would put an end to this gruesome and senseless war.

I thought that many of the observations and quotes in the article posted below illustrate a number of your points.


http://www.islamonline.net/english/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2004/11/article_07.shtml

Crimes in Iraq

How America Wages War in Iraq

By Firas Al-Atraqchi
Freelance Columnist
18/11/2004


<snip>

Step 1: The Media.

This has to fully comply with our strategic goals by ensuring that key words are repeated thoroughly when referring to a certain subject matter. In Fallujah’s case, we will allow the media to repeat words like “bastion,” “stronghold,” “insurgent base,” “insurgent center of Iraq,” “terrorist heart of the Sunni triangle,” and so on, until all semblance that this was once a city bustling with civilian life is erased from the psyche and the reader is fully engrossed in the mandated logic that the US military is fighting insurgents in their terrorist base.

<snip>

Step 2: Public relations. Tell the world the city we are about to storm has been emptied of civilians:

Mohammed Abboud said he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death at their Falluja home yesterday, unable to take him to hospital as fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down. “My son got shrapnel in his stomach when our house was hit at dawn, but we couldn't take him for treatment,” said Mr Abboud, a teacher.
“We buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go out” (Fadel al-Badrani for the BBC in Fallujah, November 10, 2004).

Make sure our soldiers know that they aren't fighting for the people of Iraq but for cold revenge:

<snip>

Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it. We need to demonstrate our strength of will to the world, to show that there is only one possible result when madmen take on America (Ralph Peters, New York Post, November 4).

“This is for the Americans of Blackwater that were murdered here in 2004 Semper Fidelis (always faithful),” is scrawled in black print on a section of the bridge across the Euphrates where the remains of two out of four Americans, killed by a mob in Fallujah at the end of March, were hung.
The graffiti is signed “3-5”, an abbreviation of the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, one of the units that is taking part in a massive US-Iraqi assault on the rebel stronghold to regain control of the city.
It finished with: “PS, Fuck You” (AFP, November 14).

“I see the little kids in the cars and I feel sorry for them, but when they turn 16 they’re evil.” (Lindsey Hilsum, with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallujah, November 14, 2004)

Tell enough lies to our troops until even our own spokesman starts to believe them:

The goals are simple: to win the gratitude of Fallujah civilians who will no longer have to cope with Iraqi and foreign fighters in their midst; and to demonstrate to other insurgent-dominated towns and cities what can happen if they refuse to participate peacefully in the Iraqi political process (John Diamond, Steve Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY, November 12).

Let our troops know that God wants them to kill Iraqis in Fallujah, that US President George Bush received direct orders from the Divine that war was sanctioned in Fallujah:

"The marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy," said Colonel Gareth Brandl. "But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him." (Paul Wood, BBC News, embedded with US Marines near Fallujah, November 7). (Note the British press is actually doing its job by reporting this outrageous statement)

"We must not be afraid to make an example of Fallujah. While we always seek to fight humanely, the most humane thing we can do in that tormented city is just to win, to burn out the plague of fanaticism and prove to Iraq's people that the forces of terror will not be allowed to enslave them." (Ralph Peters, New York Post, November 4).

<snip>

[JRob]

9. Chilling. nt

[mainer]

6. I almost can't bear to read it

The truth is just too painful.

[sendero]

7. Well I'll be....

... Chomsky was right after all. As if it wasn't obvious.

[Jack Rabbit]

10. Will is a witness

Will Pitt is a witness to the mendacity of the American mainstream media. He was refused a microphone simply because he gave voice to views that the powerful did not want to be heard.

The corporate control of the media is one of many forces, either public and private, that today threatens American democracy. The media today is in fewer and more homogeneous hands than ever before. It is the owners of these homogeneous hands who determine who is to be heard, for how long and in what context. The message is to serve the rule of the power elite over the people, not the right of the people to make informed decision about public affairs.

We ask only for truth and a wide diversity of opinion. It will not do to propagate loudly the Bush regime's lies and later print or broadcast a muted correction. It will not do give Ann Coulter air time and replace reasoned discourse with invective and facts with unfounded accusations while more reasonable and informed voices go unheard. It will not do on a national broadcast to ignore hard news and waste the entire day with stories about a missing child in Utah, a domestic hostage situation in New Jersey or a bride with cold feet in New Mexico.

I have this dream. In my dream, I turn on my TV and CNN is on. Some talking head is there to do the top of the hour report. In my dream, the talking head says, "Today in Iraq, the 26,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, the 500 tons which is one million pounds of sarin, mustard and VX gas, the 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, the mobile biological weapons labs, the uranium from Niger and the robust nuclear weapons program that George W. Bush told us about in his January 2003 State of the Union address were, once again, not found anywhere. Now here's Flappy with the weather."

In contrast to Will's dream, I have a nightmare. In this nightmare, a taking head is there at the top of the hour and says, "Today in Iraq, in sites near Baghdad and Tikrit, mass quantities of anthrax, botulinum toxin and 500 tons of nerve gas were found along with long range missiles capable of hitting targets in the Midwest." Except it wouldn't be true and there would be no one to say that it isn't.

"Now here's Nancy to tell us why that scumbag in Waycross, Georgia who murdered his wife and kids yesterday should be arrested and hanged."

[TexasLawyer]

12. kick n/t