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Quidnovi: Noble Lies? |
Category: Philosophy 2 comments 24 Aug 2006 @ 17:05 by Hanae @69.33.46.10 : Putting the Iraq War on Trial?In a packed hearing room on an Army base south of Seattle last Thursday, Army Lt. Ehren Watada argued that the U.S. decision to attack Iraq in 2003 without U.N. authorization made the war illegal from the beginning. He went further, arguing that the failure of the Bush Administration to find either weapons of mass destruction or a provable link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks showed that Congress was persuaded "by means of fraud" when it voted to authorize the war. More about this, here, on Time Magazine: {link:http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0%2C8599%2C1228779%2C00.html|here} And here, on Ming The Mechanic: {link:http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-001688.htm|link} 28 May 2008 @ 17:17 by quidnovi : What Happened:Inside the Bush Whitehouse While a lot has been said on the topic, either in attack or defense of the Bush administration, this new and long awaited account presents the unusual perspective of being reported from the inside by one who was at the time one of George W. Bush's closest aides. WHAT HAPPENED: INSIDE THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE AND WASHINGTON’S CULTURE OF DECEPTION is the memoir of {link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_McClellan|Scott McClellan}, who served as the White House Press Secretary from 2003 until 2006 under President George W. Bush. The following is an excerpt form the book due to be released on June 2, 2008: "In the fall of 2002, Bush and his White house were engaging in a carefully-orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval to our advantage. We'd done much the same on other issues--tax cuts and education--to great success. But war with Iraq was different… Our lack of candor and honesty in making the case for war would later provoke a partisan response from our opponents that, in its own way, further distorted and obscured a more nuanced reality. Another cycle of deception would cloud the public's ability to see larger, underlying important truths that are critical to understand in order to avoid the same problems in the future.” The book includes a scathing criticism of the role of the press corps and the media in enabling and reinforcing the administration's propaganda with regard to the invasion of Iraq: "And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it… the media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. Was the president winning or losing the argument? How were Democrats responding? What were the electoral implications? What did the polls say? And the truth--about the actual nature of the threat posed by Saddam, the right way to confront it, and the possible risks of military conflict--would get largely left behind…" “The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should have never come as such a surprise. The public should have been made much more aware, before the fact, of the uncertainties, doubts, and caveats that underlay the intelligence about the regime of Saddam Hussein. The administration did little to convey those nuances to the people, the press should have picked up the slack but largely failed to do so because their focus was elsewhere--on covering the march to war, instead of the necessity of war.”
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21 Oct 2003 @ 19:11, by Quidnovi