| Author | Message | | Guest-400c | | Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2003 7:12 am Post subject: Selling A War |
| Selling A War
In five weeks it is likely that United States soldiers will be fighting and dying in Iraq. While there is no doubt that we can defeat Sadam Hussein there is much debate on whether we should go to war and what will be the ultimate costs to Iraq and the United States.
Americans want to believe that our government officials tell the truth and don’t intentionally mislead us. Other governments manipulate the truth not ours.
It is hard for Americans to accept that at times we are lied to or intentionally misled in order to build support for a foreign policy decision. While this may be disturbing it is our duty as citizens in a democracy to be open to this reality. We are the strongest military in the world and ultimately decide which governments will fall or stand.
Gulf War I
If you followed the first Gulf War you remember the infamous story of how Iraqi soldiers removed babies from incubators in Kuwait city; left them to die and shipped the incubators back to Iraq. This was front page news in every newspaper in the U.S. and the lead story on every major news station as the public was deciding whether to support going to war.
This story was repeated by President Bush senior in a number of speeches saying that such "ghastly atrocities," were like "Hitler revisited."
There is only one problem with this story. It never happened! It was a complete fabrication!
Months after the war ended TV Guide reported in Feb., 1992 that both 20/20 and Sixty Minutes interviewed doctors in Kuwait and determined no such incident ever happened.
Another example from the first Gulf war, according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor was a report by Pentagon officials, citing top-secret satellite images. Pentagon officials estimated that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border of Saudi Arabia, threatening the major supplier of oil for the US.
The St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time which showed no Iraqi troops visible near the Saudi border - just empty desert.
Jean Heller, the Times Journalist who broke the story asked Secretary of Defense Cheney (now Vice President) for evidence refuting the Times photos, offering to hold the story if proven wrong. The official response: "Trust Us." To this day the photos cited by Pentagon officials remain classified.
Hill & Knowlton
When the invasion of Kuwait took place in August, 1990 US public opinion was not predisposed to the government of Kuwait. Only a few weeks before Amnesty International accused the government of Kuwait of jailing dozens of dissidents and torturing them without trial.
To help build support for the war "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," which was the Kuwait government in exile, hired the Washington based public relations of Hill and Knowlton for $10.7 million to devise a campaign to win support for the war. The CEO of H & K at the time, Craig Fuller, had access to the power elite in Washington, as he had served as the President’s chief of staff when Bush was Vice President under President Reagan.
One aspect of their campaign was to coach a young woman Nayirah, who appeared Oct. 10, 1990 in front of a Congressional committee. She testified to the committee that she saw Iraqi soldiers come into a hospital, remove babies from incubators and leave them "on the cold floor to die."
It later came out long after the war was over that she was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States and hadn’t actually seen the incident she described taking place - an incident which was later proven to be a fabrication. Hill & Knowlton also coached a team of witnesses who appeared a few weeks later at the United Nations about atrocities in Iraq.
Gulf War II
In a September 7, 2002 news conference President Bush said that Iraq in 1998 was "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon citing a report from The International Atomic Energy Agency.
On Friday, Sept. 27, in a news interview Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA’s chief spokesman said, "There’s never been a report like that issued from this agency."
When questioned, the White House said the President was referring to a 1991 IAEA report.
Mr. Gwozdecky said no such report was ever issued by IAEA in 1991. "I don’t know where they have determined that Iraq has retained this much weaponization capability because when we left in December 1998 we had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment," he said.
Civic Responsibility
It would be cynical to believe that every statement by our government leaders is a lie or distortion. It would be just as foolish however, to blindly accept every statement our government leaders make.
As citizens of the world’s most powerful country we have an obligation to critically examine
the position of our government regarding the merits of going to war and each come to our own conclusion.
If we are to be true to those who die defending our freedom this is our patriotic responsibility.
Peter Wirth
CEO of GW Associates, a Syracuse public relations firm
pwirth@accucom.net | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2003 10:34 am Post subject: White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer |
| http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0121-09.htm
White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 12:30 PM
by Russell Mokhiber
Mokhiber: Ari, UPI reported last week that Prime Minister Sharon of Israel has given the green light to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, to engage in targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries. The report says that Mossad has in the past engaged in assassinations in Belgium, Norway, and other European countries, but never in the United States. Is the administration aware of this new Israeli policy and has the administration agreed to it?
Ari Fleischer: That's the first I've heard of it, so I have no comment to offer on it. Mokhiber: Could we get comment from you? Ari Fleischer: I'll see if there is something on it.
Mokhiber: You and the President have repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people. The biggest such attack was in Halabja in March 1988, where some 6,800 Kurds were killed. Last week, in an article in the International Herald Tribune, Joost Hiltermann writes that while it was Iraq that carried out the attack, the United States at the time, fully aware that it was Iraq, accused Iran. This was apparently part of the U.S. tilt toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. The tilt included billions of dollars in loan guarantees. Sensing he had carte blanche, Saddam escalated his resort to gas warfare -- graduating to ever more lethal agents. So, you and the President have said that Saddam has repeatedly gassed his own people. Why do you leave out the part that the United States in effect gave Saddam the green light?
Ari Fleischer: Russell, I speak for President George W. Bush in the year 2003. If you have a question about statements that were purportedly made by the administration in 1988, you need to address those somewhere other than this White House. I can't speak for that. I don't know if it is accurate, inaccurate, but you have all the means to ask those questions yourself.
###
Hiltermann's article can be accessed at: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2692 | | | | Guest-98a3 | | | | Guest-400c | | | | Guest-400c | | | | Guest-400c | | Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2003 9:32 pm Post subject: Ex-Israeli envoy accuses Sharon of escalating Mideast confli |
| Ex-Israeli envoy accuses Sharon of escalating Mideast conflict
Berlin, Jan 22, IRNA -- Former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi
Primor, on Wednesday accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of
intentionally escalating the Mideast conflict, citing Zionist
"ideological" motives.
"Sharon's message is clear: There is no solution to the
(Palestinian) crisis. We have to hit back," Primor said in an
interview with the daily Berliner Zeitung.
"Sharon is of course not willing to relinquish lands. I think
Sharon is really ideologically motivated," the ex-envoy added.
Primor pointed out that according to Sharon, all Palestinian
territories, occupied after the 1967 war, are "God-given" lands which
need to be safeguarded.
He said that Sharon is not interested in a "sovereign Palestinian
state".
Primor added that Sharon is pursuing a peace policy "according to
"his own conditions, hoping to shape the Middle East the way he
wants".
Source: IRNA | | | | Guest-98a3 | | | | Jefferson Davis | | Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2003 1:51 pm Post subject: |
| http://www.msnbc.com/news/862778.asp?0si=-
I suspect that when you have to bring up Communist and Stalinist name calling to make your point, then I suspect that the poll numbers must really be falling for Bush and Co. to go it alone. | | | | Anglo Thug | | Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2003 2:40 pm Post subject: |
| | Guest-18a7 wrote: | http://www.msnbc.com/news/862778.asp?0si=-
I suspect that when you have to bring up Communist and Stalinist name calling to make your point, then I suspect that the poll numbers must really be falling for Bush and Co. to go it alone. |
"What was the left going to do? A pretty straightforward call, you might say. America has its flaws. But war involves choosing sides, and the American side - which was, after all, the side of liberalism, of progressivism, of democracy, of freedom, of not chucking gays off rooftops and not stoning adulterers and not whipping women in the town square, and not gassing minority populations and not torturing advocates of free speech - was surely preferable to the side of the "Islamofascists,"
The "right" continually wants to press these two common myths that sustained support for war and the crackdown on civil liberties in the early days since 11/9. Firstly, it is only "the left" that is opposed to Bush and his plans. We all know that's not true. The anti-war movement that is growing daily consists of people from all walks of life and all political persuasions. This fact is very damaging for a regime that prefers to use tried and tested propaganda techniques to move its agenda and crystallise unthinking support. So what better way to disguise a reality than by concentrating on those elements of the opposition that provide a stereotype of the peace movement long pushed in the media. "Hippies! Hippy alert! Commie, hippy, sonofa.. America haters!"
Which brings me to the second common myth - you can only be for America or against America. If you ain't with us you're with them darned terrorists. Or communists in this case. You don't have the option to examine both sides of the debate and therefore the whole issue. That type of rational behaviour would be 'unpatriotic' and a dereliction of your 'duty' to the country. We stick together in times of war, right? We support the troops, no matter what. Right indeed, even when we are wrong. Hell, just send the troops anyway and that'll win unquestioning obedience. And if it doesn't, give me the number for the FBI - there's this hippy on my block that's been acting real suspicious.
To be a true American, at least in the opinion of the well rehearsed bigots, you are compelled by 'patriotic duty' to demonise your opponent. Any attempt to point out that there must be a reason behind the attacks on 11/9 provokes the stock "They hate us 'cause we're free" response." It's all mindless rhetoric, designed to stifle debate, to conceal key facts, to bend the will of the majority by deception in a media and briefing blizzard coordinated to appeal to the worst part of our natures. It's fear. The promotion of fear.
To start winding up the "Reds under the bed" debate (without any embarrassment, considering the "We whooped them commies" celebrations are still ongoing) is less of a desperate measure and more of a phased assault on the reason and intelligence of people who are short on fact but hyped on fear. Some will succumb.
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