Fog of war still hasn't lifted
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS
The Toronto Star
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"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
---
The truth is, in a manner of speaking, U.S. President George W. Bush gassed his own people.
He, and his administration, did it with hot air about how Iraq posed "a threat of unique urgency'' and how Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted nuclear weapons."
One year after the bombing of Baghdad, we know that the White House and the Pentagon prevaricated their way into Iraq. This while the media waved them on in a flag-flying frenzy that CBS's Dan Rather called "patriotism run amok."
"What we are talking about here ? whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not ? is a form of self-censorship," he told the BBC in 2002. "I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend."
And it did, at least according to University of Toronto history professor Paul Rutherford.
"For a brief time the United States ceased to be a democracy and became a propaganda state," he says. "Effectively, democracy was overwhelmed by managed discourse, by managed speech."
A report released March 8 by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland confirms that view.
etc.
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS
The Toronto Star
---
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
---
The truth is, in a manner of speaking, U.S. President George W. Bush gassed his own people.
He, and his administration, did it with hot air about how Iraq posed "a threat of unique urgency'' and how Saddam Hussein had "reconstituted nuclear weapons."
One year after the bombing of Baghdad, we know that the White House and the Pentagon prevaricated their way into Iraq. This while the media waved them on in a flag-flying frenzy that CBS's Dan Rather called "patriotism run amok."
"What we are talking about here ? whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not ? is a form of self-censorship," he told the BBC in 2002. "I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend."
And it did, at least according to University of Toronto history professor Paul Rutherford.
"For a brief time the United States ceased to be a democracy and became a propaganda state," he says. "Effectively, democracy was overwhelmed by managed discourse, by managed speech."
A report released March 8 by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland confirms that view.
etc.
