In May 2004, one year after the U.S. commenced a full-scale invasion of Iraq, the New York Times issued a half-baked apology for its abysmal coverage of the “intelligence” used to convince America that Iraq was a threat.
“Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge,” wrote the NYT editors. They also lamented their dependence on Iraqi defectors who made spurious claims to further the goal of regime change.
It was a grudging admission that the famous newspaper played a critical role in pushing lies and propaganda, to lead the U.S. into a ‘pre-emptive’ war of choice. Other corporate media outlets, including those in the neoconservative (i.e. The Weekly Standard) and liberal interventionist camps, apparently felt no remorse at betraying the public.
To be fair, it wasn’t all the fault of ‘patriotic’ American media. In Sept. 2002, the Bush-Cheney cabal installed a special Pentagon intelligence unit to create the web of lies and spin needed to bring forth the Iraq war drums.
The Office of Special Plans (OSP), led by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, used their imagination and hard-line neocon belief in “regime change” to create Iraqi WMD and ties to terror out of thin air. With the “war on terror” as an excuse and Dick Cheney as their cover, OSP bypassed normal intelligence routes and brought what they wanted straight to President Bush.
In January 2004, Mother Jones exposed the workings of this “secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department’s war-planning task force,” made up of “a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.”
An essential part of this operation was input from the infamous defector, Ahmed Chalabi, and the Iraqi National Congress.
Mother Jones reported:
According to multiple sources, Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress sent a steady stream of misleading and often faked intelligence reports into U.S. intelligence channels. That information would flow sometimes into NESA/OSP directly, sometimes through Defense Intelligence Agency debriefings of Iraqi defectors via the Defense Human Intelligence Service, and sometimes through the INC’s own U.S.-funded Intelligence Collection Program, which was overseen by the Pentagon. The INC’s intelligence “isn’t reliable at all,” according to Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA chief of counterterrorism. “Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice presidential speeches.
Fast-forward to 2017, and the U.S. is backing other “rebel” groups in other Middle Eastern countries long targeted for regime change – and using bogus intel.
The 2013 sarin gas attack that killed at least 281 Syrian civilians was immediately blamed on Assad, trumpeted by Establishment media as a “red line” meaning Assad should be forcefully removed. But it turns out the chemicals most likely came from Turkish intelligence and were fired from rebel-controlled territory.
Soon after President Trump made the comment that regime change in Syria was no longer the goal, the April 4, 2017 sarin gas attack took place in Khan Sheikhoun, killing at least 74 Syrian people. Yet again, American corporate media parroted the government line. No skepticism, no questioning.
With the Tomahawk missile response, Trump had finally come around to the neocon/liberal interventionist agenda – and the MSM were positively thrilled.
Pundits were quick to cement the narrative that ‘Assad did it’ before people could think too much, despite quickly mounting evidence that the official narrative was suspect. Former CIA agents were questioning the rationale, and then video proof emerged of evidence tampering at the chemical attack site.
In fact, an MIT weapons expert and former DoD science advisor released his analysis, saying the evidence for the April sarin gas attack was tampered with or staged. Theodore Postol stated that the White House’s supposed proof “does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun.”
The parallels are easy to draw between Syrian war propaganda and Iraq war propaganda, and no less troubling in their potential to draw the U.S. into launching another “regime change” invasion. Countless lives lost and unimaginable destruction.
Neocons and liberal interventionists are gnashing their teeth at the prospect of bringing Syria into the Western fold through military might.
The Wolfowitz of today appears to be National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster – a darling of the neocon cabal and “golden child” of disgraced General David Petraeus. It was recently revealed that McMaster is “manipulating intelligence reports given to President Donald Trump” and “seeking to involve the U.S. in a full scale war in Syria” with 150,000 American ground troops.
McMaster may not have the Office of Special Plans (or he may have something else entirely), but the threat of bogus intelligence to justify full-scale war is just as real.
If the mainstream media have an ounce of credibility, they will begin questioning the government narrative instead of immediately reporting it as fact. We cannot be led into another war based on government propaganda and the abandonment of skepticism.
Justin Gardner is a peaceful free-thinker with a background in the biological sciences. He is interested in bringing rationality back into the national discourse, and independent journalism as a challenge to the status quo. Gardner finds inspiration in the garden and people who promote peace and goodwill to all life. This article first appeared here at TheFreeThoughtProject.com
Image Credit: Anthony Freda Art
Truly scary how dumb the sheeple have become. Is it 70 or 80% of the populace now who believe EVERYTHING the MSM tells them? Does no one research alternate news sources anymore? Is the news ALWAYS taken at face value??? Such ignorance amongst my fellow Americans is frightening. Where are the voices of clarity and reason? Where is your gut feeling, or your suspicion that (just maybe) we’re being blindly led on a path toward destruction? Is there no one thinking logically any more? No one questioning the “authority”?
Follow the money, folks, follow the money and you’ll discover the answers to politics and political trends.
Do you believe that the general public was any wiser or more awake in the, say, 1950’s?
Definately not. It was so much easier to brainwash the masses then due to the limited media of print newspapers and a couple news channels. It is in fact the spread of news media that largely accounts for the schisms used to divide us. In the 50’s it was just the press, no mainstream vs. alternative.
Exactly my point.
Can’t really say, I was only five years old. I was apolitical for most of my youth as well.
Germany in 1935 was unwisely led down a dark path. Rome fell from their corruption and decadence. Does pointing a finger at those times somehow make us better?
The American people will never overcome their problems by deflecting or denial. We have enough information to make it perfectly clear what lurks in the halls of power. If we do not deal with the here and now we will be forever making excuses. We tend to look for explanations that make no demands on us ACTING today.
Escapism can be a detrimental practice, and we have actual results that prove that today.
“Is it 70 or 80% of the populace now who believe EVERYTHING the MSM tells them? ”
What is frustrating is it is the other 20-30% who aren’t doing anything to stop it. ?
There are barely parents informing and guiding upcoming generations let alone grand parents with a wealth of knowledge. So who fills that void? Social media, TV, perceived authority.
I believe this is why the family was broken up. A society will never miss what they never knew hence, they (perceived authority) can get away with tricks from the same old broken playbook on an ignorant populace.
“Govt And Media Doing Exact Same Thing It Did To Start Iraq War, And Americans Are Buying It”
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Hmmm
The solution here is very simple: Nuke Israel………
Ever hear of the Israel’s sociopathic Sampson Option? They’ve hidden, presumably under cloak of ambasador immunity, nukes in major cities worldwide.
It won’t get rid of every Zionist. Most of them are sitting in American “churches” fervently awaiting their “rapture” (for which there is NO Scriptural basis)!
Meanwhile, jihadis are being transported to the US, Europe-style, as refugees, including those from nations Trump said needed extreme vetting. No vetting is being done! Because these are refugees and not immigrants, the UN is involved and UN peacekeepers are being sent to some cities where the refugees are. The war on terror is insane and makes no sense unless it’s viewed through the eyes of psychopaths who want a global police state.
Whistleblower Reveals That A UN-Planned Invasion By Refugees Into The US Is Already Underway https://needtoknow.news/2017/04/whistleblower-reveals-un-planned-invasion-refugees-us-already-underway/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qXL6IB9YKE
Everyone is focusing on the little fireworks show in Syria. The NATO troop buildup around Ukraine has gone under the radar. No doubt they have a nice war planned with Russia in the near future!
The USA sheep, refuse to look at the truth. It is not that they can not see the truth, they refuse to look at it. If they admitted the evil of Washington DC, then they would be forced to do something about the evil, or admit to themselves that when they go the the church on Sunday, which approves of blowing babies up in foreign lands, prays for those murdering the innocent, and the war criminals who send them to do it, that they are helping to murder innocent people in foreign lands. They will not admit to themselves, their cowardliness. They think as long as they do not admit the truth, “God” can not hold the truth against them in the here after. They will find that the hereafter does not work like a zionist administrative “court”.
Agreed, although I do not believe the hereafter comes to mind with many as they do not see it as real.
We have nation of self-loving people who only think of themselves and right now.
Escapism has allowed them to create and live in their own little insulated and FAKE worlds.
They can just play games and watch TV like children without ever having to worry about the real world.
This is why we have so many college students ( young ADULTS) who require SAFE SPACES.
The real problem is we have very few REAL adults. Todays society is being cultivated to be children.
Retarded maturity means they require some form of parenting, and of course big brother will gladly step in.
I shared some knowledge with a young man once. I found myself, in one of the USA’s zionist international war crimes in the Middle East. Young man was not from my outfit, but i could tell this boy was dazed and confused. So i asked him, whats wrong.
He related to me that he was not “supposed to be here”.
Asked him, someone cut you the wrong orders?
He; I just joined for the college funds.
Me; putting my arm around him in big brother fashion, “Well son, you going to get an education now”.
As a consumer of NEWS, I find it terrible that the whole of the “news” is all propaganda. Yes, even this independent NEWS site. There is no such thing as independent, we are all biased in one way or another depending on the information we have been subjected to. I have read that we didn’t land on the moon, that Obama was out to destroy the U.S., that Trump is going to start World War three, Assad didn’t gas his own people (the Turks, Russians, Untied states did it), that it never happened. Of course I have seen (read) the opposite of all that.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You can either believe that the united states is the most evil country that ever existed or that it could do no wrong. In either case you would be wrong. News today is entertainment, it is scripted by the corporate that gets it’s marching orders from the advertisers. If say Fox News ran a story about vaccines causing Autism, the vaccine advertisers might want to pull advertising from that market. Hence no story’s that could hurt the advertisers. Then you have the “Independent” news sites that believe that everything is FAKE NEWS. Even I could dream up a scenario that put into question just about anything. After all I have seen giant space ships hovering our largest cities (movie). It is getting to the point that Genghis Khan, Attila the hun, Jesus, Hittler, will all be presented as myths in the “Independent” media.
The things I look for in the news, is things that will affect me or my family In order to do that I have to consume what is presented either in MSM or independent news. I attempt to keep a skeptical eye on all of it. I want my country to prosper (that affects my family), I don’t want WWIII (same reason), etc..