Today’s Washington Post features a defense of the war by Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security, that begins with “As the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered in 2001…” Talk about connecting the dots… He attacks Brzezinski for being critical of the “war on terror,” then dredges up the Ayatollah’s “revolutionary fanaticism” of the 1970s, and even has the gall to mention “weapons of mass destruction.”
Also online: the full transcript of Richard Perle’s defense of the neocon vision of a new world order from Tuesday’s “The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom” (from the PBS series “America at a Crossroads”).
Jim Hoagland mingles the blood spilled this week at Virginia Tech with the ongoing butchery in Baghdad, using the actions of a psychotic kid from Korea as an excuse to connect the dots all the way to “jihadist fanaticism” in North Africa.
Cal Thomas insists that “it is a historical fact that Islam has advanced mostly by imposition, force, war and violence, including forced conversions.” Guess he never heard of the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition (which nobody expects).
I only hope that Bill Moyers’ upcoming show on PBS (“Buying the War” is to air April 25) provides some balance. I don’t know where this was written, but on April 12, a David Swanson introduced his review of the new series this way:
Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq war to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I’ve watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from 9:00 to 10:30 PM on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes will actually save you time because you’ll never watch television news again – not even on PBS, which comes in for its own share of criticism.
What Lucien wrote yesterday was hopeful: ” Some buy ink by the barrel, but electrons are almost free. Many networks can be built of electrons.” I get discouraged by the overwhelming volume of intentional disinformation that clutters establishment and anarchist media channels alike, but here’s a toast to the occasional rays of clarity that pierce that fog of unnecessary war: may these ghouls of false patriotism, who love the stench and darkness of distant battlefields, cower in their brilliance…