Even though I pegged the ‘Syria has North Korean nuclear weapons’ story as horsecrap from the get-go, it’s nice to get some confirmation. Nonetheless, the surfeit of stories that were seeded throughout the British and neo-con press shows that something is afoot. Perhaps Seymour Hersh put it best in a recent interview with Jewish Journal:
JJ: You turned 70 this year. Why keep working so hard?
SH: I don’t work that hard. I write four or five pieces a year. Secondly, what do you want me to do? Play professional golf? I can’t do that. You do what you can do. And I’m in a funny spot because I have an ability to communicate with people I have known for a number of years. They trust me, and I trust them, so I keep on doing these little marginal stories.JJ: That’s all they are? Marginal?
SH: With these stories, if they slow down or make people take a deep breath before they bomb Iran, that is a plus. But they are not going to stop anybody. This is a government that is unreachable by us, and that is very depressing. In terms of adding to the public debate, the stories are important. But not in terms of changing policy. I have no delusions about that.
Hersh also has some good advice for Democrats.
JJ: Bush recently compared Iraq to Vietnam in a positive way. What do you think he learned from the Vietnam War?
SH: He seems to have learned from lessons that were not very valid. Nobody wants to be a loser. Bush is going to disengage to some degree, and he’s going to claim the country is more stable. He’s just going to say whatever he wants, and he’s going to get away with it because who knows what is going on in Basra. Nobody I know in their right mind would go down there. You’d get whacked.
And the Democrats have fallen into the trap of saying, “We shouldn’t get out.” As far as I am concerned, there are only two issues: Option A is to get out by midnight tonight, and Option B is to get out by midnight tomorrow.
With Israel attacking chemical weapons sites in Syria and Cheney seeding the press for war with Iran, I somehow think the debate over what to do in Iraq is about to be overtaken by other, ahem, events.
This is a government that is unreachable by us, and that is very depressing.
Contrary to popular belief, Hitler’s invasion of Poland was tremendously unpopular in Germany, despite the fake cross-border attack that had been arranged by the Nazis. No one was buying it, and hardly anyone came out to see the troops off. The majority of Germans were quite content with what Hitler had already gained for them more or less bloodlessly — a unified pan-German state and the return of most of what was lost under the Treaty of Versailles.
The problem for Hitler was that the German economy had been propped up by pure bullshit for quite some time by 1939, and the only way to avoid an economic collapse was to keep feeding the military-industrial complex. And the only way to do that was to start a war.
It did not matter that the people did not want that war. Like our government, the Hitler regime was not reachable by the people. And once the war was actually underway, it mattered even less.
The moral of the story is that when a government ceases to be responsive to the people, it leads inevitably to ruin. While I don’t think we’re on the verge of WW3 — the Bushies are nowhere near as competent as the Nazis were — it does look like we’ve passed the point of no return, and like the Germans, we will not have another opportunity for reform until the established order has destroyed itself.
Reality is such a nonexistent entity, isn’t it? But you would think that in a democracy that cherishes the first amendment, we could at least get a close approximation. Not so, it seems. Cheney learned quite a bit from the Nazis.
well, we have a free press. Distorted maybe, but free.
Press? Not, ministry of propaganda.
and, yet, you and I can publish anything we want.
Ya but I’m only talking to like three people while OFalafelman is in charge of millions of zombinals.
ya, but the Nazis would have hanged us before 2002 rolled around.
A free press is only an aid to democracy inasmuch as it contributes to an informed an engaged citizenry. A free press that is used to confuse and alienate the electorate is useless to democracy.
This is the brilliance of the conservative strategy in the US and why the Chinese attempts to control their citizens’ access to information is not only futile by unnecessary. We have a completely free press in this country – with the Internet we have a press that is freer than ever before – but because anyone can publish anything the person who throws the most money into their operation has the loudest voice. You’re allowed to publish anything you want, Booman, but you’ll never be able to influence the number of folks that Rupert Murdoch can just by virtue of the amount of money he has to throw at reaching those people.
Yes. I think that’s what he means. You are free to publish whatever lies and propaganda you want. Does anyone who lived through the past seven years of government by the people doubt it? Afterall, the Nazis didn’t do fuck their own peoples’ minds by the gun. It was through the press.
take a look at the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran due to be up for a vote mid-week.
Laura Rozen suggests a read of Section (5).pdf in the Operation portion. …. how many Members will oppose…?
with the current Mahmoudapalooza I bet passage is a done deal.
To what extent is it really free? If the press and the government are largely under the control of the same large monied interests, then the press is hardly in any position to oppose its own paymasters, much less the government. It’s not enough to have a free press if it isn’t also an independent press, and even an independent press isn’t much good if it caves before an incurious public that would rather hear sunshiny lies than unpleasant truths.
It’s true that you and I can say pretty much anything we want, but our audience is negligible compared to a television network, and if you attempt to insert yourself in front of the television cameras, you may well find yourself restricted to a “free speech zone”.
I didn’t actually bring up Hitler to make a direct comparison between Hitler’s Germany and Bush’s America; I was mainly trying to make a point about the irrelevance of protest once the war machine has started rolling. That the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t come knocking on your door for speaking your mind may be more of an indicator that they know they don’t have to more than it indicates lack of malice.
As far as I am concerned, there are only two issues: Option A is to get out by midnight tonight, and Option B is to get out by midnight tomorrow.
Amen!