Why Telling the Truth about Iraq Will Set US Free

Cheryl Seal
Why Telling the Truth about Iraq Will Set US Free
Fri Mar 24, 2006 12:20

Why Telling the Truth about Iraq Will Set US Free

By Cheryl Seal
http://cherylsealreports.com/iraqwartruth.html

The Bush administration and its Pentagon have made telling the truth about the Iraq war completely taboo. Don't talk about the chaos, the car bombs, the lack of power and water, the fact that most "insurgents" are local Iraqis and not "foreign fighters." Don't mention the rising civilian death toll from war-induced secondary factors such as lack of clean drinking water, sanitation, and adequate access to medical aid. Don't even hint that torture of prisoners may be a systematic practice initiated and condoned by top brass in the Pentagon. Don't breathe the words "civil war" too loudly. Don't allow soldiers to speak freely about what they are witnessing - allow them only to state "I am proud to be serving my country" or "We must stay until the "mission" is completed." Talk only about the "progress" and the US determination for "complete victory." Blame the press for "only showing the latest car bomb."

What we need, claim Bush & Co. is NOT the truth - what we need is better propaganda.

But the failure to tell the truth, and worse, the insistence on disseminating propaganda, much of it highly misleading if not downright false, is making the situation in Iraq worse....and worse....and worse......

Why?

The most obvious reason is the message we are sending the Iraqis. The Iraqis LIVE in Iraq. They walk the streets of Baghdad. They hear, they see, they communicate. What they experience is so at odds with what they hear given as the "official story" by Bush et al. and (until recently) the US press, that even those who once supported the American presence have become disgusted and angry. The often heavy-handed everyday treatment of Iraqis by some US troops has been ignored and/or covered up, while outright torture whitewashed or condoned (the dog handler only got 6 months, while higher brass responsible have yet to be held accountable).

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis live in a rubble with no running water or electricity. Yet the Pentagon touts how well "reconstruction" is going. Citizens in many parts of of Baghdad are afraid to leave their houses in the morning, and pray they make it through the night without violence erupting. Yet Bush and the US media refuse to acknowledge that at least parts of Iraq are now in the throes of civil war. Worse, they have brushed off Iraq's former Prime Minister Allawi's opinion that civil war HAS begun. What sort of message is this? - Oh, he's just an Iraqi, what would he know?

This failure to respect Iraqis is a major source of outrage, helping to fuel the rising violence. Last week, Iraqi police officials investigated, then submitted a report on an atrocity against civilians committed by a handful of US soldiers (a March 15 incident in which an entire family, including a six-month-old baby were murdered in reprisal for the death of a US marine). The US military's response was to brush off the report - which was signed by an Iraqi colonel, dismissing it out of hand as "untrue," and opening its own investigation. The message:1. the Iraqis, even their most trusted officials, are incompetent underlings whose reports are meaningless, and 2. The Americans can do no wrong.

Our troops in Iraq are suffering, they are strained to the breaking point, some way beyond it. Yet they are muzzled, unable to be heard, though they are the ones bearing the brunt of this war, along with the Iraqis.

Meanwhile, things in Iraq just keep on deteriorating. Yet when the Iraqis express their outrage, they are called "ingrateful," "impatient," or "uncooperative." If US soldiers try to speak out, they are condemned as "traitors" and punished in various ways by superior officers.

Until the ban on truth is lifted - and I mean officially by the Pentagon AND White House - things in Iraq will continue to deteriorate. The greater the amount of "Pollyanna" propaganda that is spouted, the more enraged the Iraqis will become as the gulf between reality on the ground and Bush fantasy widens. As long as no one knows just how pathetically behind reconstruction efforts are, no one will be held accountable for this failure, and things will not change. As long as the Pentagon refuses to acknowledge that much of Iraq is now in civil war, the appropriate measures required to address this situation will not be applied. Instead, the continued pressing of inappropriate "counterinsurgency" offensives will only make things worse.

But, most of all, as long as the Iraqis perceive that American-style freedom does not involve telling the truth, free speech, or holding citizens accountable for murder, torture, or other abuses, it will NOT be a brand of freedom that Iraqis will embrace, much less fight for.

HERE'S AN ARTICLE ON THE LATEST PENTAGON PROPAGANDA BLITZ:

from Cheryl Seal Reports "Need to Know News Briefs"

March 24
Pentagon Propaganda Crusade Gets Media Cooperation

The Pentagon has launched an all-ought, heavily funded (with our tax dollars, it should be noted) propaganda crusade to sell the Iraq war. Newsrooms are being barraged by Pentagon "press kits" that include stories, photos with cutlines included, and even video segments. While many editors and anchors of integrity have refused to run this prepackaged material, others are cooperating fully and eagerly to help Bush use misleading, even false info. to sell his Central Asian bloodbath. There is even evidence of "coordinated propaganda," as I show below.

If you tuned into NBC Nightly News with Campbell "Pentagon Patsy" Brown on 3/23 (she's been standing in for Brian Williams this week) you might have thought you were watching some 1950s-style, government-produced newsreel. Well, close! Brown ran, as a "news segment," a Pentagon video. As in, Pollywood studios - "Coming soon to a newsroom near you!" The segmente showed, complete with voiceover, a "typical unit" in Iraq. Guys who, though looking decidedly glum, dutily read their scripts, with great lines like this (more or less) : "We are here to do a job and that'ss all that counts....." "It would be wrong for the US to just leave...." "My opinion of the rightness or wrongness of the war doesn't matter, I go where I am told..." And, of course, there was the ever-present "guy who had signed up for his second tour" because he was just so gung ho. The "newsreel" showed a completely bloodless 30 seconds or so of the unit wandering around an empty looking in empty buildings, their weapons poised. I half expected to see John Wayne stride onto the "set," barking inpsirational comments "to the men."

No busy, chaotic Baghdad streets here! No angry Iraqis shouting. No ragged dirty kids running around. No anxious eyed women hurrying along, carrying a child or a bag of groceries, hoping to get home without incident. No sewage seeping through the streets. Nope it is strictly the sanitized Pollywood (Pentagon Hollywood) version, where no one gets hurt, everyone loves their job as a soldier and no one would ever think of questioning the omniscience of the Bush administration.

After turning off NBC in disgust, I went up on line and there on the AOL main page - perfectly timed to complement NBC's propaganda offerings, was a headlining story: "Is Media Coverage of the War too Negative?" The story featured the current overplayed propaganda buzz line:: "Critics say the coverage is too focused on daily violence and not focused enough on positive developments." I mean, why focus on that family of 11 allegedly slaughtered by marines? Afterall, they weren't blond white women in California! (If they had been, the networks would be covering the story for the next three years, complete with interviews with anyone the familly had ever known).

My oldest son managed to sum up the irrationality of the "gotta have more positive coverage" spin. While watching coverage of a large apartment building fire in Baltimore City the other day, when he sarcastically quipped: "Hey, mom, maybe they ought to also report on what a good day the lady down the street is having - I mean they don't want the neighborhood news to be "all bad!"

The fact is, if any city in the US were racked by the kind of violence that is happening in Iraq, the news media would NOT be scurrying around trying to sniff out the "good news." It would be all they could handle to keep on top of the unfolding crisis. As it is, from their "bunkers" in the Green Zone, they can barely wrap their PCs around a fraction of what is actually happening.

The story in Iraq now IS the violence. It will not go away if newspeople don't cover it. In fact, by trying to spin the plight of Iraqis and our own soldiers into some sort of "feel good picnic" the media will only be throwing gas on the fire: People who do not feel they are being heard are only likely to scream that much louder

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