Syria vs. Iraq: truth vs. lies and the news media cover up.

 

 

Whether or not to launch a retaliatory attack on Assad for his use of chemical weapons and the killing of more than 1300 civilians with those weapons is a very simple and easy proposition. Do we punish him for doing it or not?

Yet to watch the debates on some of the cable news shows or read opinion pieces in newspapers, the complicating of a simple issue, the distortions, the inability or refusal to see a forest for a forest and a tree for a tree has turned a simple proposition into a debate where a debate doesn't even need to take place.

The biggest argument both chicken little type journalists like Wolf Blitzer and the other usual suspects who appear on these game shows passing for journalism, is supposedly the lessons learned from Iraq. But the more these journalists and politicians talk the more its clear they learned no lessons from Iraq because they still do not want to admit the truth about Iraq.

The Iraq argument is that the U.S. was wrong about Saddam having WMD and that the war based on that rationale was wrong. The argument goes that, supposedly the intelligence community got it wrong, the U.S. and its allies like the UK got bogged down in  a war they never should have gotten involved with in the first place for all the wrong reasons and no one wants to see that happen again in Syria.

But what the media and the politicians now discussing Syria and making comparisons to Iraq refuse to admit is that none of that is true. What IS true is that Bush, Cheney and Condoleeza Rice  outright lied the country into war with sheer fabrications because they had wanted an excuse to invade Iraq and topple Sadaam and 911 gave them that excuse. And the same collection of journalistic sycophants debating Syria now,  went along with the fabrications without questioning the validity of the claims or asking for proof of what the Bush administration was claiming.

In fact the likes of Wolf Blitzer, the New York Times and others were actually afraid to question it, afraid they'd be attacked by lock step Republicans who would accuse them of being unpatriotic.

Democrats who voted for the resolution to attack Iraq might also be put in that category and deserve to be, with a few exceptions like Democratic senator Bill Nelson who publicly, after the fact, pointed out, upon learning the truth,  that he was brazenly lied to by an Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who told him that Sadaam had drones that had the capability of launching a chemical attack on the east coast of the United States. They kept hidden a US Air Force intelligence report on Saddam's drones that said the drones were made of wood, had a maximum range of 250 miles and couldn't deliver a serious munitions attack of any kind. Nelson was furious when he found out, and called a press conference to expose it, something barely covered by the sycophantic news media who never made it an issue.

That the Bush administration lied the country into war in Iraq and like trained seals, the biggest names in mainstream media, led by bogus news stories on the front page of the NY Times fed to them by Dick Cheney, supported these lies, is something the news media even today refuses to admit. So we get comparisons between the disaster that was Iraq and possible intervention in Syria as if there was some equivalency.

Weapons inspectors inside Iraq stated repeatedly they did not believe Sadaam had WMD. Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector made the statement repeatedly and was repeatedly mocked by Republicans without protest by the news media.  Joe Wilson exposed Bush's claim about Sadaam trying to buy yellow cake in Niger as a lie. The presentation made by Colin Powell to the U.N. laying out the case for attacking Sadaam, was in Powell's words, the lowest day of his life now knowing that all the information he was given on which he based his presentation were 100% fabrications, known to be fabrications by Bush and Cheney, but kept from Powell.

And the news media, the Wolf Blitzer's of the world, those like Jill Abramson who was Judith Millers NY Times  Washington  bureau chief who approved stories of the certainty of Sadaam having WMD without demanding a single shred of proof or corroboration, and then rubber stamped by then New York Times editor Bill Keller, all went along with the lies and the charade and afterwards never held anyone accountable. Because to do so would be to hold themselves accountable for their  flagrant journalistic negligence, cowardice and incompetence in their reporting. And the dire consequences and massive loss of life and resources that resulted.

In a recent New York Times editorial questioning whether or not Assad actually used chemical weapons and making it clear it did not  now support a missile strike, an editorial that in and of itself is a parody of a NY Times editorial, the editors state, "Given America's gross failure in Iraq when the Bush Administration went to war over non-existent nuclear weapons, the standard of proof is now unquestionably higher". Nowhere do they mention that they, the New York Times and it's editors were the primary news organization that did not require any standard of proof before publishing their Dick Cheney fed stories on their front pages which the Bush Administration used to further make their case for war.

And so today, the debate over whether to launch a strike against Syria for the mass killing of civilians with chemical weapons is, by those who oppose it or want to tread lightly,  compared to Iraq and it's   failures, which in fact were not the result of a failure of intelligence by intelligence agencies  that got it wrong,  but a failure of  intelligence, honesty and integrity by the Bush administration and their sycophants in the news media who went happily  along.