Tuesday, October 14, 2008

US Journalists & War-Crimes Guilt

By Peter Dyer
October 15, 2008

October 16 is an anniversary that should hold considerable interest for American journalists who have written in support of ”Operation Iraqi Freedom” – the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Read on.

7 comments:

Mark E. Smith said...

Interesting that ConsortiumNews, a left gatekeeper site, would allow this article to be published.

While the site itself has not overtly supported the war crimes, it devotes much of its energy and bandwidth to supporting the Democratic Party, which has, does, and will continue to support war crimes.

It persists on laying all the blame on Bush, as in the intro to this article, wile ignoring the "hand-raisers," the Democratic Party traitors who voted for everything Bush wanted and are still protecting Bush from impeachment.

As the article points out, the war in Afghanistan is an unprovoked war of aggression, a crime against humanity according to the Nuremberg Principles. Yet the editors of ConsortiumNews support Obama, who is committed to expanding the war in Afghanistan. So they, like many, and in particular almost all so-called "alternative media" websites based in the U.S., are only opposed to war crimes when they are presided over by Republicans and voted for by Democrats. War crimes presided over by Democrats and voted for by Republicans have their full support.

Anonymous said...

Mark Smith is not addressing the issue of their complicity in gearing us up for war. Maybe he should read up on Chris Dodd's fathers opinion on the culpability of war cheerleaders in WW2. Why are those who lobbyied for war and genocide somehow innocent of the blood shed by their advocacy?

He even ignores the stovepiping of intelligence in his claim that Bush is not guilty of the crimes of which we accuse him. He most certainly is, and trials will prove this. This is why we need impeachment, to find out.

Bush supporters are walking around with their suspenders suspended. I BELIEVE THEY BEAR RESPONSIBLITY OF BUSH'S CRIMES.

Mark E. Smith said...

Anonymous is doing the same thing, blaming Bush but not blaming the Bush cheerleaders for war, the Democrats who voted for everything Bush wanted, who have funded the war until 2010 without even bothering to see who wins the election (maybe they already know, or maybe since both candidates are war criminals, they just don't care).

Bush is certainly guilty of asking for everything that his Democratic Party colleagues and supporters, who conceded to him twice for what they said both times was "for the good of the country" (words neither Gore nor Kerry have ever repudiated), and who voted to give him even more money for his war crimes than he asked for, are also guilty of.

Nobody here, least of all me, is saying that Bush isn't guilty of war crimes. The only ones standing in the way of impeachment are his eager collaborators in war crimes, the party committed, if elected, to continuing his war crimes, the Democrats.

In my personal opinion, Chris Dodd's father is correct, and I would go even further than that. Not only are those who lobby for war and genocide guilty of war crimes, but also those who fund war and genocide and those who vote for candidates they know support war and genocide.

That Bush is guilty does not make Obama less guilty. The "hand-raisers" who vote for war crimes are just as guilty as the instigators who promote war crimes. When millions of innocent lives are at stake you cannot pretend to be a whiny spoiled child and say, "Johnny made me do it." You have free will. If you oppose war crimes you don't have to vote for them or support candidates who vote for war crimes.

I advocate not voting. Check out my website The November Uprising

When the election is rigged and only war criminals can win, people of conscience do not vote.

Anonymous said...

Excellent article. I totally agree with your conclusion. You can add the CNN effect. In fact, the media can act as an independent factor influencing governments, the military and the public at large. Examining Western media (US media in particular) activity relating to Kosovo, it provides a novel interpretation of the factors that drove Western policy towards military intervention in Serbia.

The western media damaged Serbia's image worldwide. Nine years after Belgrade's bombing, we still have a lot of work to repair the negative picture of Serbia that was created by western media.

Karl Haudbourg
Serbia's Ambassador to the world

Anonymous said...

Mr. Smith is stretching the truth really far. Too far.

Yeah, yeah, Democrats cast votes in support of giving Bush the go ahead for war on Iraq... But he talks as if all the Democrats were the only members of Congress who supported Bush. Complete bullshit.

Most Republicans and many Conservative journalists directly called for a war of aggression in the Middle East.

Some Democrats and some Liberal journalists, at most, offered passive support.

Mark E. Smith said...

Feed writes: "Mr. Smith is stretching the truth really far. Too far."

"Yeah, yeah, Democrats cast votes in support of giving Bush the go ahead for war on Iraq... But he talks as if all the Democrats were the only members of Congress who supported Bush. Complete bullshit."

Not at all. I clearly stated that ALL the hand-raisers in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, are guilty of collaboration in war crimes.

Feed: "Most Republicans and many Conservative journalists directly called for a war of aggression in the Middle East."

And most Democrats and many liberal and progressive journalists also directly called for a war of aggression in the Middle East. In fact the current Democratic Presidential candidate has committed to maintaining a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq, which can only be done through military force because they don't want us there, and to expanding the war of aggression in Afghanistan.

Feed: "Some Democrats and some Liberal journalists, at most, offered passive support."

Passive support? If the question was before a panel of which I was a member, and the question was whether or not to take out a contract on YOUR life, Feed, that is to order, and pay for a hitman to kill you, and I voted for it, would you call that "passive support?"

Voting for something is more than passive support, Feed. It is ACTIVE support. When we are talking about war crimes involving the deaths of millions of innocent people, a simple failure to actively OPPOSE it, is the "good men doing nothing" that enables evil to prevail. To simply stand by and allow war crimes to occur, might still be described as passive support, even though that is all that is necessary to enable war criminals, but to VOTE FOR WAR CRIMES is active support, not passive support.

Cliff Tew said...

This is an excellent article. It cast some real light on the notion that we have a "liberal media". Most of them are about as liberal as Sarah Palin is gun shy. I cring whenever I hear the conservatives in my community, the ones who call themselves Christians and believe they have a hot-line to Jesus repeat the blood thristy language that O'Reilly and Culter daily spout out. It is good that someone is putting their modern propaganda in perspective.