> You couldn't possibly be saying that United States foreign policy is a > high-handed double standard, could you? > > Well.....you'd be right (or if your "left," you'd be right on target too).
Todd, you tickle my funny bone but like I said, I don't really won't to hear this but some of the Vets mentioned the author William Blum who wrote http://www.killinghope.com and when I asked they said he was credible. This article also looked interesting -- The Disinformation Age: How George W. Bush and Saint Colin of Powell are lying America into an unnecessary war � and what honest journalists can do about it By Dennis Hans Tuesday, 4 March 2003 http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0303/S00011.htm A few excerpts -- There is a lying leader, a bit closer to home, to whom our news media should apply Rummy�s good advice. Not only does the leader lie, but so too do his top aides. And the news media, with rare exceptions, routinely pass along their lies as fact. The result is that the people of America are out of touch with the people of the world. Thus we�re far more willing than any other populace to launch an unprovoked attack on Iraq. Whereas the German and French people � and the populations ruled by governments siding with Uncle Sam � are reasonably well-informed and overwhelmingly opposed, Americans are reasonably well-disinformed. More and more Americans are beginning to see just how crooked our straight-shooting president is. To further this awareness, and to caution citizens inclined to follow him into war, I review below 23 �techniques of deceit� of Bush and his foreign-policy team. Some of these techniques I address at greater length in �Lying Us Into War� (http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0302/S00061.htm). Powell And Bush�s �Techniques Of Deceit�...... 5) Withholding the key fact that destroys the moral underpinning of an argument. Powell condemned Saddam�s �use of mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988� that killed �Five thousand men, women and children.� True, but he did so with the blessing at the time of many Reaganites who now serve Bush � including Powell. In 1988, �Secretary of State Colin Powell was then the national security adviser who orchestrated Ronald Reagan�s decision to give Hussein a pass for gassing the Kurds,� says former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith in the Boston Globe ( http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2002/1215/coverstory_entire.htm). 7) Exploiting the fact that the U.N., unlike the U.S. military you served for most of your life, doesn�t have a Code forbidding lying: Activist Jimmy Walter (walden3.org), who has taken out full-page �Powell Lied?� ads in the New York Times and other publications, reminds Powell what could have befallen him if he had been an active-duty general when he addressed the U.N. Walter cites Section 907, Article 107 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which addresses �False Statements�: �Any person subject to this chapter who, with intent to deceive, signs any false record, return, regulation, order, or other official document, knowing it to be false, or makes any other false official statement knowing it to be false, shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.� It�s a good thing Powell is retired. But what about his boss, Commander-in-Chief Bush? Is the man who gives orders to the generals free to lie? Is he as immune from military justice as he appears to be from media justice? We now turn to Bush�s techniques, noting that Powell used some of these as well in his U.S. presentation. 11) Passive lying (doing nothing to prevent what you know to be a vile slander from lodging in the brains of unsuspecting citizens as truth): a) Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC�s Hardball, made the following important point a few weeks back (click here for transcript: http://www.msnbc.com/news/859673.asp), addressing retired general William Perry Smith: �According to the [January 2003] Knight Ridder poll . . ., the people that know the most about the situation in Iraq are least supportive of the war. The ones who are most ignorant, particularly those who believe that half the people who attacked us September 11 included Iraqi citizens, are for the war. So isn�t �more education� something that stops support for the war, General? I mean, the president is not winning on the facts. He�s winning, according to the polls, on those who don�t know the facts�. Well, don�t you think the president ought to make the case, General, that the American people, tell the American people, �You�re wrong, half of you out there who think that there were Iraqis who attacked us September 11. They weren�t Iraqis. I�ve got some other reason why I want to attack Iraq.� He�s never said that. Should he? Or should he allow himself to benefit from people�s ignorance?� Straight-shooting Bush prefers to benefit from the people�s �ignorance,� though �ignorance� is not quite the correct word. People are misinformed because they�ve been deceived by the Prague Connection lie countenanced by Bush and spread by his henchmen. 18) Misrepresentation/Invention. On Sept. 7, 2002, Bush claimed that the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report in 1998 that Saddam was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. No 1998 IAEA report made any such claim. Then a presidential spokesperson said Bush had referred to a 1991 report. Wrong again. Here�s what the IAEA actually reported in 1998: �There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance� (http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020927-500715.htm). 19) Withholding the key fact that would alert viewers that the purported grave threat is non-existent. Bush said in his October speech that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could target the United States. The president neglected to tell Americans that Saddam would have to transport these limited-range UAVs � undetected � across the ocean all the way to our coast. The odds of that happening start at a billion to one. 20) Creating in the public mind an intense but unfounded fear: �Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof � the smoking gun � that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.� (October speech) No nukes, no long-range missiles, no Saddam-delivered �mushroom cloud� over America. ________________________________ Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
