In the process of researching the latest news regarding the Plame Affair, I came across this link to a late 2003 article. It lays out, in considerable detail, 50 false stories that were planted in the media in the lead-up to and first days of the war in Iraq.
It’s fascinating, depressing, and frightening. I remember most of the stories, but many of them I had forgotten.
This one is particularly troubling, and sheds new light on Galloway’s recent appearance before Senator Coleman’s committee:
The White House claimed that these aluminum tubes were proof that Iraq was attempting to produce nuclear weapons. US intelligence agents knew the
truth: the tubes were useless for nuclear processing.
In Britain, Labor Member of Parliament George Galloway became an open skeptic of Tony Blair’s rhetoric. In a bold attempt to avoid war, Galloway
had gone to Iraq to interview Saddam Hussein in hopes of promoting a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
Galloway’s skepticism began to gnaw away at Bush-and-Blair’s broad-brush claims that Hussein was only months away from building a nuclear bomb or that he was capable of launching a WMD attack within 45 minutes.
Galloway soon found himself under attack. Government officials leaked a packet of supposedly “classified documents” to the Daily Telegraph. The
papers, which were represented as having been seized from Iraq’s Foreign Ministry, suggested MP Galloway had accepted “payoffs” from the Iraqi
government.
At he same time, in the US, a “retired general” contacted the Christian Science Monitor on April 25, with similar documents showing that Hussein had given Galloway $10 million.
Galloway’s reputation was seriously sullied. It wasn’t until June 20, that the Monitor disclosed that the “general’s” incriminating documents were
forged. The documents released in Britain also turned out to be forgeries.
Update [2005-7-3 15:34:29 by BooMan]: Thanks to Paul Rosenberg for this link to the original article.
What bothers me the most about this country’s fall into neo-fascism is the in your face complicity of the media. I swear, is there not one journalist left who has the courage and willingness to bring into the open what they must surely all know to be the truth? Is the Bush Administration that potent? The bottom line for me is that journalists are Americans first, and if they loved their country the way I do and I believe most of us do, you’de think they would understand what is happening here and find a little backbone because after all, they are losing thier freedom to do their jobs as well. Or are they all content to sacrifice their professional and personal integrity for the money, and comfort. It’s always all about the money.
it’s also sources and access. It’s very hard to write articles about the Pentagon if no one at the Pentagon will take your calls or give you usable quotes or background information.
The Bushies are very adept at rewarding and punishing jounalists, and it has a major effect.
I remember reading an anecdote about Bob Dole back when he was running for President in 1988. A journalist interviewed him, but no article appeared. A few months later the journalist wanted another interview, but Dole figured he must be writing a book since nothing had come of the earlier interview.
What this shows is that if a reporter decides not to use an interview because he thinks he is being lied to, the source will become suspicious and uncooperative in the future.
There is a lot of pressure to print what a source wants you to print.
And it’s apparently quite easy to game the system.
Before Watergate (and believe me, I don’t know why that’s the watershed, but it is), reporters were much less dependent on people taking their calls… they didn’t feel they had to suck up to sources, but that, with the power of the press behind them, the sources needed to suck up to them.
Our press has been cowed–and it has gotten lazy.
When Rudi G (my least-favorite mayor) took over in NYC, he reduced the pressroom at city hall dramatically. When reporters complained, ole’ Rudi told them they should be out looking for stories, not waiting around for him to give them to them.
He was right.
And a reporter doesn’t need “access” to get a good story.
I wish the members of the press would learn that. Then the pressure you mention would ease.
You aren’t kidding that that’s troubling! “Forgeries” is a continuing theme, isn’t it? I would imagine there will come a time when historians will say in disbelief, “Didn’t anybody think it at all odd that one forgery after another kept cropping up?”
I just discovered this take on the underlying document Truth From These Podia, by Sam Gardiner Colonel, USAF (Retired)–published October 8, 2003, via it’s posting at afterdowningstreet.org. (Available in 6 pdf’s here).
It should be noted that Gardiner worked closely with Mark Fineman at the LA Times over a period of serveral months putting this together. Fineman died of an apparent heart attack in Baghdad on September 23, 2003. We can only wonder what kind of coverage the Times might have given it had Fineman not died just before it came out.
Of course, this is only a medium-angle view of things. The wide-angle view includes similar corruption of discourse across every aspect of public policy. A good slice of this can be seen at Politics and Science, produced for Congressmember Henry A. Waxman, by the Democratic staff of the Government Reform Committee.
It is clear that we are observing a fully integrated attack on the media and on contolling opinion.
Who knows what we are not aware of yet? What is clear is that we have to question the veracity of any statement made by this administration and its supporters. We need to use the L-word more often, in fact, I like Galloway’s meme – “a pack of lies” – and its coming from a pack of liars.