New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday, because it is the most mundane thing that could ever happen, yet it happens to all of us, great and small- can't stop time, gotta move along, turn the page. What I especially like is the bookmark it affords: a stopping place to look back at the way we thought things were just a short while ago. The Golden Oldie diary got me started thinking maybe I'd just share the rest of my
Top Ten ways the media has not covered the history leading to our possible war, something I wrote in late Feb-early March of 2003. Five years later, it was #5 that inspired me to dig this out today, but number ten is still my starting point to explain why I think what I think. For a trip down memory lane, skip over the fold if you please.
Top Ten ways the media has not covered the history leading to our possible war:
1.) During the Bush/Cheney campaign, I heard Sam Donaldson ask Dick Cheney point blank if he had done any oil deals with Iraq. Cheney said "No," and that "that would be wrong." I believe Donaldson knew it was a lie, yet he didn’t press the issue. Why not? Whose face was he saving? This may have had a direct effect on the election.
2.) Spring 2001, I saw Bush/Cheney on CNN News mention several times about "protecting our interests ‘over there.’[Caspian Sea area]" Then they drop this and eclipse it with non-stop coverage of possible drilling in ANWAR. To this day, Americans may still wonder what Cheney is hiding from the GAO. Is this a calculated "lesser of two evils" scenario for the administration?
3.) I’m pretty sure I heard on the radio about the American, Bill Browder, suing Gazprom as an unhappy shareholder, but only recently, and without the context that not only did they invest everyone’s money in an apparently random, haphazard and un-businesslike manner, but also that the contracts that were ‘supposed to’ have gone to American firms went to European companies instead. Hmmm. Need to hear that story again, but can’t find it.
4.) As far as the London Telegraph reporting that Unocal executives wined & dined the Taliban in Houston in order to secure pipeline contracts in Afghanistan-
You can’t say that! It’s libel. Unless it’s true. Then to not say that is a travesty.
Where was the American press?
5.) At the United Nations long awaited evidence hearing, Colin Powell said, "every statement I make today is based on sources. Solid sources." Then he said, "I recall my colleagues’ attention to the fine paper the UK distributed yesterday [sic] which describes, in exquisite detail, Iraqi deception activities." About this document, Tony Blair said: "the document published today is based, in large part, on the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The JIC is at the heart of the British Intelligence machinery...Its work, like the material it analyses, is largely secret." Both of these statements appear to me to imply that the info is recent, current, on-the-ground work by their own actual agents- not pure cut and paste plagiarism (which is what it was, word for word) from an American paper published on the net, which in itself was largely based on the books and articles of others. Now it is true that this paper was a good, accurate, and succinct analysis of what went on during the 1980s and ‘90s, but their handling of it implies an up-to the minute account of secret evidence. This does not give us any reason to believe we are receiving the truth from our own people when they play us phone conversations and show us photos. If they can cut and paste and call it their own intelligence, why should we believe they’re not concocting all the rest of the ‘info’? Note- I heard this story in full on NHPR’s rebroadcast of the Canadian show, As It Happens, (2/7/03) and once on Fox News (lamely).
6.) Sunday evening, 2/9/03, 8:10 pm, on Fox News Network, Hannity & Colmes (sp?) asked Dick Armey about ‘the prospect of war.’ I was elated to think this story [that we are the ones beating the drum for war] might finally break- then I realized he was only referring to France. Meanwhile, the mini-headline underneath was reading, "Putin: France, Germany, and China in broad agreement on Iraq."
Did that mean that they all agree with the way things should be handled or is there actually a pipeline plan?
7.) As far as entertainment is concerned, I had to stop watching O’Reilly when he wouldn’t let go of the Michael Jackson issue. Enough already about that, let the authorities handle him. And please, cover the Caspian Sea and stop calling people who want a reasonable discussion of the commerce issues "leftists." And I thought I had found someone to trust to stop the spin. But now he’s gone massively "patriotic." Fox’s own morning news (on the ground in Kuwait visiting our soldiers) has noted that O’Reilly has left the no-spin zone behind : "Even in re-runs O’Reilly’s an angry guy." Now this might not matter- just skip O’Reilly, right? So why does this matter? Because these re-runs are what our troops are being fed,
"for breakfast."
8.) Newsweek magazine, our mirror of American culture, (?!) carried a several page, cover story all about ‘who is Condoleeza Rice?’ that insists she either has no opinions, or else keeps them to herself. The only thing they say about her tenure at Chevron is that it began by the time she was 40, and that she had an oil tanker named after her. Now what must you do to receive that honor? and- did they miss the part that the Bush administration later felt that was too flashy and had them rename the ship the ‘Altair Voyager’? (That’s really ‘bad luck’- the only other oil tanker that needed to be renamed was the Exxon Valdez.) Anyway, leaving her directorship from 1991-2001 pretty much unmentioned, they immediately went on to her career at Stanford... Certainly her jobs ran concurrently, but ten years at Chevron is a lot to leave out of the resume when her National Security job was in Russian Affairs. They spent all these pages specifically not explaining what she thinks and tells the president and why. Talk about mis-impressions.
9.) [The College Newspaper] has been running opinions and articles about how obnoxious the anti-drug commercials are. I agree. I’m still waiting for the one that says, "This is Bob, the CIA agent, who bought-and-sold the drugs and guns, that supported the Contras and flooded the streets of America..."
10.) Last but NOT least, the GAO completely wimps out and nobody cares anymore? It’s "too expensive" to go on to the Supreme Court? Excuse me, the price of America’s soul is worth more than that. Oh, I forgot, "only seven senators and congressmen had expressed support for the efforts to get the information." That’s right. And that’s just about how many senators and congressman on both sides of the aisle who did not take Enron money for their campaigns... Not only that, but Lieberman knew Cheney was lying during the campaign and did not press the issue. Now look who’s in charge of investigating this stuff. (This too, is all documented.) As one of my sources in the notes says, "the largest bankruptcy in American history may well connect with the greatest political scandal in American history." What more can be said except,
where the hell is everybody?
I can come back with links for all that stuff, which was harder to prove five years ago, but I think most of this is/was common knowledge, now. Daily Kos' D-I-Y hyperlinking, has done wonders for my spirit as I've found a place and a voice to share my thoughts these days.