They wanted to get Americans on board in their paranoid grab for power with a campaign of propagandized fear.
In January 2006, top Army general Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, speaking at the American Enterprise Institut said that 21st century warfare is more about "will and perception, than taking territory or enemies killed." (
http://www.blackanthem.com/World/military_2006011903.html)
He mused that information is critical as 'firepower' in 'long war'. The American people must remind themselves every day that the United States is at war, the general said.
Fighting the 'war on terror' was the Bush White House militarists' bread and butter. They had a vested interest in seeing enemies everywhere. Anyone who they regarded as an obstacle to their cabal's consolidation of power was the enemy.
Rumsfeld spoke on the need to control information surrounding their expansive wars. "U.S. military public affairs officers must learn to anticipate news and respond faster, and good public affairs officers should be rewarded with promotions," he said.
"The Pentagon's propaganda machine still operates mostly eight hours a day, five days a week while the challenges it faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week." he lamented. He then complained that the "vast media attention about U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq outweighed that given to the discovery of "Saddam Hussein's mass graves."
However, he was just upset that there were pictures, proof of their crimes. That's the control they wanted with the press that surrounded their imperialism. Their concern with the news wasn't just about protecting soldiers or catching al-Qaeda, although there were those things going on in the military planning room that may have involved legitimate security. The thrust of their efforts was to create a zone of 'good news' that would permeate the airwaves and print media, and obscure the bloody images and alarming reports which provide the public with a clear view of the realities of the disaster in Iraq.
Bush revealed his own desire to shade the news to reflect his rosy outlook on Iraq: (
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060321-4.html)
"It's -- confidence amongst the Iraqis is what is going to be a vital part of achieving a victory," he said, "which will then enable the American people to understand that victory is possible. In other words, the American people will -- their opinions, I suspect, will be affected by what they see on their TV screens . . .
The Pentagon and Bush expected for the images that they paid for and fed into their purchased press in Iraq to trickle into the mainstream media to be quoted and disseminated around the world as a counter to the realities expressed by the daily images of violence and despair coming from the occupied nations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Woodrow Wilson was also obsessed with good press during the war. He urged legislative action against those who had "sought to bring the authority and 'good name' of the Government into contempt." He worried in his declaration of war, about "spies and criminal intrigues everywhere afoot" which had filled "our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government."
During his presidency more than 2,000 American citizens were jailed for protest, advocacy, and dissent, with the support of a compliant Supreme Court.
The Wilson-era assaults on civil liberties; Schenck v. U.S.; Frohwerk v. U.S.; Debs v. U.S, Abrams v. U.S., were ratified by Supreme Court decisions which asserted that free speech in wartime was a hindrance to the efforts of peace. Justice Holmes, in upholding the 1919 Schnek case, in which leaflets were distributed that expressed opposition to the draft, wrote of the words of protest: "Their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight" (referring to the war), and that "no court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."
Justices Brennan and Holmes wrote the majority opinion which was phrased as the new "clear and present danger" test in which they argued: "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree."
Justice Holmes said, "We think it necessary to add to what has been said in Schenck v. United States . . . only that the First Amendment while prohibiting legislation against free speech as such cannot have been, and obviously was not, intended to give immunity for every possible use of language. We venture to believe that neither Hamilton nor Madison, nor any other competent person then or later, ever supposed that to make criminal the counseling of a murder within the jurisdiction of Congress would be an unconstitutional interference with free speech."
The Court wanted to draw a clear line between free speech and harmful speech, but their reasoning was blunt. The effect of the ruling was a stifling of protest and dissent.
In the case of Frohwerk, the Supreme Court used the Schnek decision to uphold the convictions of two newspaper workers for publishing articles which condemned the war. The Schnek decision was also used by the Supreme Court in 1919 to uphold the conviction of Eugene Debs under the Espionage Act for giving a public address condemning capitalism, advocating socialism, and speaking in defense of those who had been imprisoned for exercising their free speech rights. Similarly, in the case of Abrams, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction for distributing antiwar leaflets.
Eventually Holmes would move away from his ruling on Schnek in his dissent in the Court's upholding of Abrams. Justice Holmes worried in his minority opinion that, "A patriot might think that we were wasting money on aeroplanes, or making more cannon of a certain kind than we needed, and might advocate curtailment with success."
In the 1917 case of Masses Publishing v Patten, at the beginning of WWI, Masses Publishing had argued against the postmaster general's refusal to allow the distribution of its journal which attacked capitalism. Justice Learned Hand had ruled that the draft violated the First Amendment. Hand said that, ". . . the government may prosecute words that are "triggers to action" but not words that are "keys of persuasion." A reversal promptly followed his decision.
Not until 1969, would the Supreme Court unanimously abandon Schnek standard to overturn the conviction in the case of Brandenburg v. Ohio; in support of the free speech rights of a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Brandenburg ruling braided the "clear and present danger" standard with Justice Hand's 'incitement test."
A footnote for the majority opinion observes that, "Statutes affecting the right of assembly, like those touching on freedom of speech, must observe the established distinctions between mere advocacy and incitement to imminent lawless action," for, it stated, ". . . the right of peaceable assembly is a right (related) to those of free speech and free press, and is equally fundamental."
The reversal of the Klanman's conviction affirmed the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
The broad decision in Brandenburg gave future courts room for the passage of the many protections of public expression and advocacy which we rely on today in our dissent and protest. As Justice Douglas wrote in 1958: "Advocacy that is no way brigaded with action should always be protected by the First Amendment. That protection should extend even to the actions we despise."
That's the real danger in allowing the Pentagon and the WH to control the news. The reactions of Yoo and the Bush regime to the press was a direct response to the wave of initial protests against the Bush wars, as they worked to change public attitudes and erode support for the occupations; as they began to actually thwart what the WH and Pentagon had been insisting were matters of national security.
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