Iraq War Propaganda

Robert Parry writes for Consortium News:

When Obama argued that the reasons for the dip in violence were more complicated than simply “the surge worked,” he was hectored by media questioners, including CBS anchor Katie Couric and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, demanding to know why he wouldn’t just admit that Sen. John McCain had been “right” about the surge.

Finally, Obama chose to retreat in the face of this Washington conventional wisdom, regardless of how misguided it was. Finally, he admitted to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that the surge "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

The ‘Surge’ Truth

Obama’s cave-in then allowed the neocons and their sympathizers to further ridicule anyone who wouldn’t go along. The reversal also was an early sign that Obama would rather finesse than fight over issues of fact, even an important question regarding national security.

By Dave Lindorff

Most Americans are blissfully in the dark about it, but across the
Atlantic in the UK, a commission reluctantly established by Prime
Minister Gordon Brown under pressure from anti-war activists in Britain
is beginning hearings into the actions and statements of British
leaders that led to the country’s joining the US invasion of Iraq in
2003.

Even before testimony began in hearings that started yesterday,
news began to leak out from documents obtained by the commission that
the government of former PM Tony Blair had lied to Parliament and the
public about the country’s involvement in war planning.

Britain’s Telegraph newspaper over the weekend published
documents from British military leaders, including a memo from British
special forces head Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, saying that he had been
instructed to begin “working the war up since early 2002.”

Marcy Wheeler writes,

At least according to the Senate narrative, they started discussing torture plans for Abu Zubaydah after February  22, 2002--when DIA first questioned Ibn Sheikh al-Libi's claim of a tie between Iraq and al Qaeda that derived from torture. And they signed the Bybee Memo the day after the second DIA report questioning al-Libi's Iraq-al Qaeda ties. 

How to connect these dots? Easy.

Most evils have a name. War crimes include torture, genocide, and aggressive war. The seven deadly sins are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride.

But what do you call the evil of horrifically torturing people to manufacture specific false confessions (i.e. lies) to launch a completely unprovoked war of aggression that kills, traumatizes, corrupts, and impoverishes a nation of 25 million people?

There is no word for this evil. But that's exactly what Bush and Cheney did. And there needs to be a word so we all understand it, decide on the appropriate punishment, and make sure it never happens again.

Any suggestions?

Condi Rice signed a $2.5 million 3-book deal with Crown, a division of Random House.

Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House and as America's top diplomat, and her role in protecting American security and shaping foreign policy during the extraordinary period from 2001-2009.

Of course Condi was the National Security Advisor during the campaign of propaganda and lies that defrauded Congress into authorizing the invasion of Iraq. She was one of the most prolific liars, infamously warning Americans "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." At the time, Condi knew full well that Iraq had no nuclear weapons or even a nuclear weapons program.

By Dave Lindorff

Vice President Dick Cheney has cultivated the image of a serious
tough guy, with his grim, scowling vissage, his dismissive "So?"
comments when things go badly, his unrepentant defense of torture,
including waterboarding, and his brash statements confirming that he
approved the interrogation measures that clearly violated US criminal
statutes and the Geneva Conventions.

But it appears we willl in a few days get to discover whether Cheney
really is a tough guy, or whether he is in truth just the same
corpulent, self-centered hypocrite and gutless coward that he was back
in the 1960s when, despite being a vocal backer of the Vietnam War, he
ducked the draft not once but five times by arranging for student and
marriage deferments, which he later defended by saying he had "other
priorities" than serving his country.

By Dave Lindorff

We Americans got a graphic illustration of the demise of any
independent American corporate news media these past few days as the
coverage on TV and in print was saturated with reports about John
Edwards’ infidelity and, equally important, Russia’s invasion of
Georgia.

Ron Suskind's explosive new book has the Busheviks so terrified that they deployed their designated liar, Condi Rice, to lie through her teeth to Karl Rove's personal stenographer, Politico's Mike Allen.

Here's the video link, at least until they scrub it because Condi's lies (in bold) are so obvious:
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=9160921

By Dave Lindorff

Reuters may be “satisfied” with the Pentagon’s investigation
concluding that US troops were “justified” in their slaying of the news
organization’s working journalist Waleed Khaled back in 2005, but the
rest of us shouldn’t be.

Khaled and his driver were killed by US troops when they came on a
firefight involving US troops and Iraqi police who were allegedly under
attack. The Pentagon report into the incident concluded that the two
men came onto the scene, and American forces, seeing Khaled’s videocam
and tripod, thought it was a rocket launcher. They reportedly fired
warning shots. When Khaled’s driver did the logical thing, backing
slowly from the scene, US troops “assumed it was an insurgent tactic”
and fired to “disable” the vehicle, killing the two men.

By Dave Lindorff

The last couple of weeks have brought confirmation—as if it were needed—even in the corporate media, that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the gang of thugs and sycophants around them in the White House, engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie the country into a war in Iraq.