U.S. Media Shamed By British Journalist

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
June 9, 2005

About the Downing Street Memo...
US Media Shamed by Brit Journalist
By DAVE LINDORFF

At this stage, it seems almost pointless to say it, but once again, the corporate media in America have been exposed as a cowardly mass of toadies who cannot bring themselves to publish or air anything remotely critical of the administration unless compelled to do so by cattle prods...or a reporter from a foreign news organization doing what reporters are supposed to do routinely.

The current example of this pathetic behavior is the page-one treatment finally accorded--after a fashion--to the damning memorandum delivered to British PM Tony Blair back in the summer of 2002 by his chief of intelligence, informing him of a meeting with U.S. officials, where he learned that the US planned to invade Iraq, and that the reasons for doing so, and the intelligence would be "fixed" to justify the action.

Although this devastating memo surfaced in the UK nearly a month and a half ago, and has been the lead story in Britain for some time, where it has thoroughly destroyed whatever credibility the prime minister still had, it has been largely buried in the U.S. media if it was mentioned at all, and in every case it has been presented not as evidence of President Bush's criminal behavior in lying to the American public to create a war, but as a problem for Blair.

Now, thanks to Blair's visit to Bush, and to the presence of less deferential British journalists at a joint White House press conference--instead of the usual White House press corps stenographers and TV airheads--Bush was forced to address the question of the memorandum, and the American media were forced to mention it. (The New York Times did so on page 7, the Philadelphia Inquirer, for the first time, on page 1). The question was asked by a Reuters reporter, Steve Holland

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff06092005.html

[acmavm]

1. Whoa, nice indictment of our crap American media and the whores that

pretend to be journalists.

[jaxx]

2. Give the Brit the Medal of Freedom, at least he tried.

and dubya dodged

Bush himself chose not to respond directly to Holland's question, which was whether the `02 memorandum presented to Blair was "an accurate reflection of what happened" at the White House. Instead, Bush said that the memo was "not credible" because of how it had surfaced--in the middle of Blair's re-election campaign.

as usual.

[EVDebs]

3. Practice to Decieve

"...In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future....

There is a startling amount of deception in all this--of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves. "

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html

So, Bolton has already spelled it out. And Congress is about to ratify and sanctify this course of action. Not that 'dealing' with those countries is a bad thing, just that stupidity and arrogance aren't the tools to do the job...

[TWiley]

4. Ding, Ding, Ding Here Here !

It is a sad day indeed when "the example of free press and democracy" has to be shown the way by other nations. But, thank god they are doing it.

[Pacifist Patriot]

5. I'd like to buy that man a pint.