the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 11, 2004
The new CIA report showed clearly that the Iraqi regime had no weapons of mass destruction since their stock-piles were destroyed under U.N. supervision after the first Gulf War. Nor did they have the capability to make nuclear weapons. And none of this was new information; it was widely known by U.N. weapons experts and U.S. intelligence analysts as far back as 1993, and confirmed ever since.
So the Bush administration justifications for going to war were lies, lies and more lies. Well, we knew that.
So why did all the big media in this country–television, newspapers, radios–repeat the lies without question? There were experts willing to refute the lies–like Scott Ritter, on the U.N. inspection team. The CIA itself briefed the media, exposing the lies. Yet only a few independent or left newspapers disputed the lies being repeated over and over again.
The Congress, which had access to this information, supported the Bush administration’s plan to go after Saddam Hussein. On the basis of lies, challenged by weapons experts inside and outside of the government, Congress nonetheless voted the president the authority to go to war.
Where were all the Democrats who today pretend they oppose Bush’s policies? Where were the moderate Republicans? All were beating the drums for war.
Where was the New York Times–with its motto "all the news that’s fit to print." It was pushing for the war also. In this land of the supposedly "free" press, the press is free so long as it prints what suits those in power.
This is supposedly the country of the right of "free speech," but the anti-war movement was photographed by the FBI and sometimes arrested for challenging the rush to war. The media raised not a protest.
In this land of equality, young people are forced into the army in great part because they see no other opportunities. More than a thousand of them have already died in Iraq. And the tens of thousands more who are war-wounded are hidden from view by this supposedly free press. In the U.S. there are few photos or videos of the tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and wounded.
First and foremost, the politicians in Washington bear responsibility for all this blood. But the media are nothing but hypocrites. When it really counted, when it might have made a difference, they simply repeated the lies.