“Or Your Lying Eyes…” Truth and Fiction in the News Business
Alex Cockburn
Counterpunch, Weekend Edition February 10-12, 2012
If you want a sense of what could well lie in store for Syria, go no further than Anthony Shadid’s report from Libya in the New York Times for February 9. Shadid, a good reporter, describes a dismembered country, rent by banditry.
EXTRACT:
As Byrne reported,
“Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations – the pillars of the narrative – all are part of the ‘regime change’ alliance. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money (Saudi Arabia alone has, according to Elliot Abrams allocated US$130 billion to ‘palliate the masses’ of the Arab Spring).
What appears to be a nondescript British-based organization, the Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the narrative of the mass killing of thousands of peaceful protesters using inflated figures, ‘facts’, and often exaggerated claims of ‘massacres’ and even recently ‘genocide’.”
“We interrupt this broadcast for an important News bulletin…. We take you to reporter Manfred Smith on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf for this special report.” (Reporter Smith) “I’m here on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln where casualties are being taken from the USS Carl Vinson which sustained damage earlier today in a shocking pre-dawn attack on US Naval forces here in the Persian Gulf. At least one hundred body bags are now housed in a makeshift morgue below decks, and casualties are running in the hundreds. Radar tracking shows evidence of sea-skimming missiles, likely shoulder-fired, possibly as many as three launched from the coast of Iran, that struck the Vinson amidships. You can see in the distance smoke billowing from the USS Vinson now some six hours after the sudden surprise attack. US Navy authorities said the close proximity of the ship to the coast made it impossible to defend against this missile attack. The USS Eisenhower remains positioned 30 miles further away from Iran’s coast than the USS Vinson. US military authorities are saying a swift and decisive retaliatory blow against Iran is now underway and US military aircraft are now attacking pre-determined military targets with full force. Iranian authorities in Tehran issued a denial of their involvement in the attack, but an Iranian mullah is claimed to have said, I quote: ‘This should serve the Great Satan notice they don’t belong here.’ Iranian President Ahmadinejad had previously warned Iran would retaliate against sanctions imposed by the US on his country. This is Manfred Smith with XXX News aboard the USS Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf.”
If the American public were suddenly shocked by the news that three shoulder-fired missiles launched from the coast of Iran had hit a US aircraft carrier in the Straits of Hormuz and killed 200 navy personnel, would even one American question whether this report was accurate in its assumption that the regime in Iran was behind the missile attack?
How easy it would be for any party that wanted to instigate war to place saboteurs on Iran’s coast to aim shoulder-fired missiles at a US aircraft carrier positioned near the Straits of Hormuz where a third of the world’s oil tankers pass every day.
Arab League Report Shows that Syria Has Been Mischaracterized
While the Western media act like the Syrian government is wantonly and indiscriminately killing its own people without provocation, an independent investigation has found a different reality on the ground.
Specifically, over 160 monitors from the Arab League – comprised of both allies and mortal enemies of Syria – toured Syria and published a report on January 27th showing that the situation has been mischaracterized.
Initially, the report noted general cooperation by the Syrian government:
The Mission [i.e. the Arab League investigative team] noted that the Government strived to help it succeed in its task and remove any barriers that might stand in its way. The Government also facilitated meetings with all parties. No restrictions were placed on the movement of the Mission and its ability to interview Syrian citizens, both those who opposed the Government and those loyal to it.
The report noted that the media has greatly exaggerated the amount of violence in Syria:
The Mission noted that many parties falsely reported that explosions or violence had occurred in several locations. When the observers went to those locations, they found that those reports were unfounded.
The Mission also noted that, according to its teams in the field, the media exaggerated the nature of the incidents and the number of persons killed in incidents and protests in certain towns.
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Since it began its work, the Mission has been the target of a vicious media campaign. Some media outlets have published unfounded statements, which they attributed to the Head of the Mission. They have also grossly exaggerated events, thereby distorting the truth.
It may have been the one and only thing which prevented an attack on Iran during the Bush years. Chairman of the Judiciary Committee John Conyers spent years fending off nationwide calls to impeach George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq, the shredding of the Constitution after 9/11, and other high crimes and misdemeanors culminating in a summer of 2008 “non-impeachment impeachment hearings,” in which witnesses such as Rep. Brad Miller, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, Rep. Walter Jones, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, Vincent Bugliosi and many others came together to implore the committee to bring articles of impeachment.
At one point Conyers closed to the committee room to any further audience members, prompting calls of “shame! shame! shame!” from the packed halls of the Rayburn Building to which people had traveled from across the country, but established numerous closed-circuit television viewing rooms for the public in other parts of the Hill.
Conyers refused to impeach, but did in fact draw one hard line in the sand, saying that if Bush attacked Iran, it would guarantee impeachment proceedings. George Bush must have believed him. Now as the crazies beat the drums for war with Iran, driving Obama almost irresistibly to war, Conyers has fallen silent. As recently as January 25, Obama said no options were “off the table.”
If we attack Iran, it will be an excuse to pour millions of rounds of utterly demonic – there is no other word – depleted uranium ammunition into a country which has done us no harm, which acknowledges the right of navigation in international waters but merely insists that it will not be bullied. The U.S. is determined to impose sanctions no matter what Iran says about its weapons programs, in a perfect replay of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Then as in Iraq, this will kill and maim entire generations of the most innocent life imaginable, that which sits and will sit in their mothers' wombs.
When governments separate themselves from the truth, they are betraying the public trust. Those who lie to Congress are committing impeachable acts. Those who lie to the public are in violation of their Oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
Below are several sources focused on Syria. It appears that the truth about the situation in Syria is not to be found among US or NATO sources, a distressing condition that goes back to the CIA sponsorship of false flag terrorism in Italy, and of fascist leaders “re-born” in Japan and Germany as CIA “assets.” All of this is now well-documented in open sources, but history has been “lost” and continues to be buried to the point that the US Department of State cannot publish its own accurate history for lack of cooperation from the CIA in fulfilling the presidentially and congressionally mandated obligations to declassify files from the far past.
When the guns fell silent and it was possible for our colleagues and friends to go on the spot, they noted with astonishment that the “propaganda was not on both sides.” No, NATO’s version was entirely false, while that of the local journalists turned out to be entirely true.
Camille Otrakji, a contributing editor with Syria Comment online magazine tells RT that many members of the opposition have little to do with Syrian people as they have been living abroad for decades… ‘Outside meddling fuels Syria fire'www.youtube.com
The real reason for the Russian and Chinese vetoes is that they were duped by NATO’s involvement in Libya. What should have been the enforcement of a no-fly zone and a total embargo on military goods for the protection of civilian life was distorted beyond recognition by the alliance. Without Security Council authorization, rebels were armed and trained, a stable prosperous society was bombed into poverty and insecurity, atrocities were committed, much of the infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, the regime was overthrown and armed bands were left on the streets to fight among themselves and to kill and loot with impunity. Having been fooled once, Russia and China cannot, and will not allow any authorization which could serve as an excuse for a US-led colonial project in Syria.
The state provides free education up to university level, free medical care and subsidized housing for all its people. Adoption of an IMF structural adjustment program in 2006 has compromised some of these benefits. These services have also been adversely impacted by the presence of 1.5 million Iraqi and 500 000 Palestinian refugees victims of the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948.
Gunboat diplomacy was the essence of military power projection for centuries. Want to coerce a country? Sail a aircraft carrier battle group into their national waters.
However, carrier battlegroups are hideously expensive, increasingly vulnerable to low cost attack, and less lethal than they appear (most of the weapons systems are used for self-defense).
What are nation-states replacing them with? Drones. You can already see it in action across the world as drone staging areas are replacing traditional military bases/entanglements. Further, drones already account for the vast majority of people killed by US forces.
Of course, the reason for this is clear. Drones are relatively cheap, don't require many people to deploy/operate, don't put personnel directly at risk, can be easily outsourced, can be micromanaged from Washington, and are very effective at blowing things up.
The final benefit of Drone Diplomacy: drones make it possible to apply coercion at the individual or small group level in a way that a blunt instrument like a carrier battle group can't.
What does this mean?
It allows truly scalable global coercion: the automation of comply or die.
Call up the target on his/her personal cell (it could even be automated as a robo-call to get real scalability — wouldn't that suck, to get killed completely through bot based automation).
Ask the person on the other end to do something or to stop doing something.
If they don't do what you ask, they die soon therafter due to drone strike (unless they go into deep hiding and disconnect from the global system).
With drone costs plummeting, we could see this drop to something less thanWhat can we look forward to?
The mid term future of a national security apparatus in secular ($$) decline?
Drones, drones, and more drones. Shrink the headcount. Cut training. Put manned weapons systems in life support mode. Cut mx.
All the money is on cyber intel (to generate targets based on “signatures”) and drones to kill them. When domestic unrest occurs in the US due to economic decline, these systems will be ready for domestic application.
Most discussions of possible United States military operations in the Persian Gulf, should Iran try to prevent maritime traffic from going through the Strait of Hormuz, generally say that while it would not be a cakewalk, it would not be an enormously difficult task either.
But that conventional wisdom is wrong, according to a recent report issued by an independent, non-profit public policy research institute in Washington DC. The report found that the traditional post-Cold War US military ability to project power overseas with few serious challenges to its freedom of action may be rapidly drawing to a close.
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It stressed that “a Strait of Hormuz closure could trigger a much larger price spike, including by limiting offsetting supplies from other producers in the region”.
Phi Beta Iota: Two themes are emerging in the open source world. First, the depth and breadth of Israel's clandestine agreements with its Arab neighbors is not clearly understood–a National Intelligence Estimate is required, but the collection, processing, and analysis capabilities are simply not there, and the management will to do this as a multinational task is not there either. Second, as the US loses its ability to actually project force, the finance of war is being replaced by the theater of war, such that oil prices can still be manipulated, but at a fraction of the blood, sweat, and tears previously mobilized – financial fraud on the cheap, as it were.
