CNN
Sold Us The War. Now It Sells Us The Heartbreak With Unctuous Consoling,
"Heroic! Brave!"
By Jay Janson
11 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org
CNN Anderson Cooper's Monday
evening, March 5th, heartbreaking documentary traces the lives of young
American members of a 'Striker' armored car/tank unit through to their
deaths at mealtime in an Army facility in Mosel, Iraq. CNN sold us on
the War, and no matter how often CNN praises our dead and wounded as
brave and heroic, we remember that CNN sold us the war on Iraq. It currently
sells continuing the war of occupation. Soon CNN might openly begin
selling us a pull back. It is slowly becoming too costly for some of
the business community that has overriding prerogatives in influencing
how entertainment/news is presented.
CNN, more than the other
conglomerate owned TV networks or print media, is responsible for the
deaths of the American soldiers of the 'Striker' group who perished
when an Iraqi dressed in police uniform blew himself up in that mess
tent in Mosel. Why is CNN more guilty than the other war eulogizing
channels? Because viewers remember the time, back when founder Ted Turner,
husband of Jane Fonda, was still its owner and president, and CNN was
independent of the entertainment/news industry's united front of uncritical
support for all violent U.S. foreign policy.
In a way, Ted Turner set
the public up. Because now when present owner Time-Warner advertises
CNN as being the most trustworthy news source, millions of viewers believe
it, having the memory of a previously more honest and semi-independent
Cable News Network still in mind.
Why is conglomerate owned
media, and CNN in particular, guilty for our tragic war casualties and
guilty for the tenfold or hundredfold more tragic loss of life and limb
within the country our boys have been sent to bomb, invade and occupy?
Firstly, because in the lead
up to war, CNN temporized and equivocated, misinformed and disinformed
by presenting facts out of context, colored its reports with unwarranted
fears, exaggerated the capacity and capability of Iraq to endanger a
superpower, featured sensationalist pro war arguments uncritical of
their source, blacked out any reference to the U.S. complicity with
the crimes of Saddam especially during the Reagan administration, subtly
cast doubt on the veracity of UN inspectors by quoting and giving undue
exposure and credence to voiced suspicions and the opinions of those
wanting war, presented outrageously unproven accusations as apparent
possibilities, distorted the case for peaceful negotiation, ignored
the findings of reputable investigative historians, and presented unsubstantiated
evidence as gospel truth enabling unscrupulous war mongers and weak-minded
large corporation beholden establishment politicians to successfully
dupe enough of the public as to allow this nation to go forward with
what is now finally recognized as an illegal war by a majority of the
U.S. and world opinion.
Secondly, because CNN presented
the long awaited visually spectacular pyrotechnical display of the initial
night time murderous bombing of Baghdad as surgically sparing of civilian
life and the Pentagon's descriptions of super amazing pin-point accuracy
weaponry, hiding from American audiences the enormous Iraqi civilian
casualties which much of the rest of the world WAS able to see on TV
screens outside of the U.S. CNN and all media leapt to demonize the
Iraqi soldiers in the Jessica Lynch false story of mistreatment promoting
Pentagon 'patriotic' lore similar to the 1990 Pentagon PR planted story
of Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwaiti babies out of their hospital ward incubators
and letting them die.
Thirdly, because CNN repeated
ad infinitum, the photo-op of the scene in the square at the tearing
down of a statue of Saddam, as representative of the sentiments and
feelings of all Iraqis regarding this second devastation by U.S. bombing
of their beloved Baghdad, to the exclusion of coverage of any American
remorse or Iraqi grief for the dead and wounded; There had to have been
some gentlemen's agreement among media CEOs. Even the NY Times, which,
during the Afghan invasion provided a special section "Nation at
War" with lots of photos of Afghan children in hospital, had only
a few innocuous photos of the massive Iraqi civilian casualties, suffered
in the invasion and jittery shooting in the months following.
Fourthly, because when no
weapons of mass destruction were found - as most informed Americans
expected, believing as we did in the U.N. inspectors' testimonies -
CNN dragged the possibility of finding them on and on, dutifully echoing
the faked consternation of the president and his spokesmen. Thereafter,
CNN made a smooth transition to redirecting viewers attention to the
ever more horrendous crimes of Saddam, never permitting mention of President
Reagan's funding and acceptance of these crimes. This Reagan-Saddam
relationship was not forgotten by many outside the U.S. This consistent
omitting mention of Saddam having been a tool of Reagan, especially
helping and supporting his war on Iran, which caused a million deaths,
is reminiscent of Nazi press blackouts of news unfavorable to Hitler's
government.
Fifthly, because CNN passed
on administration and pentagon propaganda through 'imbedded' reporters
and journalists, as opposed to Turner's CNN in 1990 having had Peter
Arnett reporting independently from Baghdad on civilian damage caused
by the bombing while the Bush administration was projecting an image
of "smart bombs, surgical precision, little civilian life lost",
and accusing Arnett and CNN of "unpatriotic journalism". In
the present war CNN's Wolf Blitzer has been the administration's mouthpiece,
conspiring to confuse the American public about the duplicity of the
U.S. Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance Paul Bremer's
role in selling off Iraq's assets and postponing elections, provoking
a Shiite rebellion which cost many lives on both sides. When elections
were finally allowed, CNN hyped them with an infantile hailing of the
birth of a democracy, oblivious to the political trauma and U.S. policies
of interference and power brokering exacerbating Iraqis without basic
needs while large U.S. corporations were making a fortune unethically
on creeping, slow and inept reconstruction projects as Iraq oil revenues
continued to be confiscated for war debts. When the heavy use of missiles
and large bombs was costing great loss of civilian life, and the torture
stories of Abu Greu, Afghanistan and Guantanamo disgusted ordinary viewers,
CNN practiced damage control and managed to contain criticism and deflect
it from reaching upward to President Bush or even Congressional Oversight.
Sixthly, because in covering
Saddam's trial, CNN successfully smothered any idea of possible testimony
on U.S. complicity in providing Saddam with weapons and gas components
coming to outside public attention. Consistently, CNN sold us new excuses
for staying in Iraq to replace the discredited pretexts of weapons of
mass destruction, Saddam (now dead), and that of doing the Iraqis a
good deed by bringing them democracy at the barrel of a gun. CNN now
emphasizes al Qaida's presence as a reason for continued occupation
WITHOUT emphasizing that al Qaida was NOT in Iraq BEFORE the invasion,
which gave al Qaida a cause celebre to nurture and new recruiting possibilities
world wide.
Seventhly, because CNN has
been obfuscating all efforts of decent Americans to call a spade a spade
in this whole sordid affair, purposely allowing some connection between
Iraq and 9/11 to exist in the minds of the less literate sector of the
population which furnishes gullible recruits courageously wishing to
protect us in the wake of 9/11.
At the same time CNN has
never exposed the connection between 9/11 and the Carter administration's
secret funding, arming and training the fundamentalist Mujahadeen uprising
against a modern, women liberating, Kabul government, in order to sucker
the Soviets into intervening six months LATER, and then continuing to
fund, with the Saudis, thousands of extremist Wahabi sect Islamic schools
in Afghanistan, helping Osama bin Ladin and producing the fervently
religious Taliban, favored by the Reagan and Bush I administrations
prior to 9/11.
CNN and the other networks
are continually taking us all for a ride, much in the way U.S. media
did with Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, from Truman's decisions all the
way through to those of Gerald Ford. CNN permits no mention of Carter,
Bush I, and Reagan's relations with the Taliban - not even the truth
about the condition of women's lives in Kabul BEFORE Brzezinski had
Carter begin secretly aiding the arming the fundamentalist Mujahadeen
attack from the hills in July of 1979, when NO Russians were in Afghanistan.
Eighthly, Ah the grand confusion,
perfect for CNN Big Brother media! U.S. soldiers, marines and airmen,
Pentagon 'contractors' and mercenaries, CIA operatives, Sunni insurgents,
Shiiti militias, al Qaida, Shiite police and 'government' troops, Sunni
police and 'government' troops, EACH and ALL having splintered off renegade
groups, death and torture squads with suicide bomb volunteers ad infinitum
available for all to use. How many U.S. dollars flow into whose hands
and for what purpose? Divide and conquer? Keep everyone from ganging
up on us? CNN currently explains how containing Iranian influence is
now a higher priority than fighting al Qaida and the Bathist insurgents.
Swallow as fast as one can; a new threat to American corporate interests
is surfacing on CNN continually. CNN does not see itself as a threat
to America or anyone else. We know now from experience that CNN is not
just a threat, but agency of mortal harm and destruction.
Given all the above mentioned,
what grim fairy tales do we hear from lovely CNN commentators explaining
the 'news' to us, at CNN round table discussions and CNN simple minded
talk shows where the obvious entertainment value is to chew everyone
else's comments and opinions about this ongoing sham presentation of
selected 'news' from the urban killing fields of our latest recognized
mistake of a war. Never doubt that many corporations are still making
good on their investments in this war, about which CNN will let us see
only the tip of the iceberg.
Lastly, we have the usual
CNN subterfuge of not reporting impeachment efforts throughout the nation
and dissimulating instead of informing us on what is known of the lying,
pretended ignorance, hypocrisy and cover-up within a media harnessed
to corporate greed and the pseudo democracy of a limited two party system
in which both parties supported and still support the war, one party
finding itself now in a quandary, supposedly representing the larger
part of the voting public which wants out, yet beholden to the same
corporate influence as the other party which follows orders to stay
in.
CNN, faithful to its masters,
the corporations which wanted the war to make money, now protects the
president and vice-president from impeachment, ostensibly saving face
for our nation, a type of protection all media withheld when impeachment
was allowed to go forward over the nationally embarrassing, intromissive
to family values, public issue of just exactly where our former president's
penis had penetrated.
Within the serious multi-billion
dollar corporate entertainment/news industry, CNN, with its prestige
rising as the prime news outlet, and as Time-Warner has moved it away
from its previous center left position, CNN has become a trusted disseminator
of Bush administration propaganda and disinformation when public opinion
manipulation it is needed, while pretending great openness of opinion.
For us, its subservient audience,
CNN poses as an semi-populist alternative to Fox, the mouthpiece of
the extreme right, and the ABC, NBC, CBS trio, which support war from
a more center right position, with the sole brief exception of MNBC
having had an uncensored Phil Donahue talking sense for a few months
in 2005. CNN never informs us of the huge overlap between ownership
of arms industry and of ownership of media. Those of us who know about
this are not naive enough to assume that no chairman of a board would
allow interest in weapons and armament production profits to influence
the slant, spin or creative selection in the presentation of the news
on the network it happens to have a controlling interest in.
Both Simon Harak of the War
Resisters League and David Korten, author of "When Corporations
Rule the World" and "The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth
Community" do slide presentations factually illustrating the revolving
door between the arms industry, government and media. In "Manufacturing
Consent", Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman explained the many categories
of media methods for misrepresentation of news events and their import,
and have since written extensively
on the subject.
Now that the nation no longer
wants the war which CNN "The Most Trusted Name in News" sold
us more than four years ago, you can trust CNN to present more and more
of the tragic side of this war. When the biz community wanted out of
Vietnam, as Japan was buying up Rockefeller Center and other parts of
the U.S., our corporate media showed us previously shelved photos of
My Lai and began emphasizing the sorry amount of U.S. casualties.
In Iraq, our boys most sincerely,
bravely, and more importantly, ACTUALLY, died for their country. CNN
only programmed it. We can say with advertising certainty, 'WE SAW IT
ON CNN!" If CNN and company had not been able to convince enough
of us to buy the war on Iraq? No war. No war? No killed children and
no killed soldiers. And no worry of Iraqi WMD pushed in our heads. And
Iraqis take care of their Saddam problem, without us helping Saddam,
nor punishing Iraqis. And CNN might stop pretending that it loves democracy,
and let us count, on our hands and feet, the violence the CIA has been
ordered to do whenever democracy has been able to raise its head anywhere
in our business client nations of the formerly colonialized third world
where most of humanity resides.
Addendum: Do CNN anchors
and commentators remember their arithmetic multiplication table? Multiply
our thousands of American broken hearts by ten and hundred to get the
number of how many Iraqi broken hearts CNN shows little interest in.
Is it possible to conceive of the brave and heroic hearts of the parents
of thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi children - their mothers,
fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, little and big brothers and sisters,
uncles, aunts, cousins, and dear friends? No, it is not possible, even
if CNN showed some compassion and mentioned them. "The loss of
one life is a tragedy, the loss of thousands is a statistic." On
TV, statistics lack human-interest projection.
Funny! So many killed and
maimed. For what? We all die soon enough. Why so much apathy for, and
disinterest in, stopping our government from hastening so many toward
the exit? Isn't life miraculous and wondrous? All for a few bucks?
We just don't enjoy our having
freedom of speech and assembly - nor the responsibility of free men
for the actions of their government and military - nor being attentive
to behaving democratically toward the rest of humanity. We don't have
time for a quick call to our congressmen and media - but we have time
to watch CNN - often enough to be fooled.
Open question: Who is guilty
of these 'mistaken' war deaths? Bush, Congress, Saddam, huge mindless
corporations driven by the profit motive, gullible you and I, or conglomerate
media led in duplicity by CNN?
We can leave aside any accusation
of criminal complicity for now, but posterity will surely have its say
when all the present personalities in powerful and controlling positions
are deceased, and radically so, if there is ever meaningful political-economic
reform of the corporate dominated governance that has kept increasing
its grip during the modern history of our republic and that of most
industrialized nations.
REQUEST READERS TO
Call CNN. Say we hold CNN
responsible for tricking us into war and for war deaths.