Blow's It Off

The Best They Can Do

Probably one of the more important historical events that's happened in decades, took place over the weekend, at least as far as America and it's allies are concerned, and all the Times-Standard could manage to do was publish a cartoon depicting the poor Pentagon getting pissed on. Never mind the more serious reality that the American forces reported and recorded, during this specific time period, 66,000 civilian deaths. 

That event, if you didn't already know, was the Wiki Leaks' publishing of the Iraq War Logs:
[from their website - http://wikileaks.org/ ]

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.

The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths. That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the 'Afghan War Diaries', previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.

This, of course, is consistent with their role as “establishment media.” Glenn Greenwald defines their role in providing our Constitutional rights of “free speech” in his October 25, 2010: “NYT v. the world: WikiLeaks coverage.”

Here's an excerpt on how the Sunday news shows responded:

UPDATE III:  Michael Calderone of Yahoo! News documents how the Sunday news shows barely bothered to discuss the substance of the WikiLeaks documents at all.  Even worse, on ABC News, Diane Sawyer demands to know whether WikiLeaks -- but not the U.S. Government officials responsible for perpetrating and sanctioning torture in Iraq -- will be arrested.   To paraphrase that exchange:

WikiLeaks documents: There was mass torture, abuse, government deceit, reckless civilian deaths in Iraq.

Diane Sawyer: Will WikiLeaks be arrested?

As I wrote yesterday:  "serving the Government's interests, siding with government and military officials, and attacking government critics is what they do. That's their role. That's what makes them the 'establishment media'."

It's been nothing but lies and more lies right from the beginning. It's apparent that President Barack Obama's Presidency is also based on nothing more than one lie after another. Here is a very good article by Ellen Knickmeyer, who was there, on the deliberate lying reported in The Daily Beast.

[Source - TS]

--Joe