Wednesday, March 12, 2008

No Surprise but Still Worth Reporting

This is the sort of story that we would expect to read on Al Jazeera English, rather than through any of those media conglomerates controlled by and for the American ruling class:

An exhaustive Pentagon-backed study of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents seized after the 2003 US-led invasion has found no direct link between Saddam Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

However, to be fair, Al Jazeera compiled their report from both wire services and leaked excerpts from the study; and the McClatchy Newspapers group appears to be one of the beneficiaries of the leak. This is consistent with the McClatchy reputation for trying to get the "full story" from Iraq through such "novel" techniques as engaging "Iraqis on the street" as sources. As I have previously written, the Internet both enables and facilitates the sort of active reading that is necessary to cut through the propaganda that passes as news for those who insist on being passive. Nevertheless, even that passive sector eventually woke up to the fact that the reasoning behind invading Iraq for their weapons of mass destruction was specious, if not maliciously deceptive. Now an even greater deception has been revealed over the second line of reasoning that linked Saddam to 9/11.

Yes, Virginia, all those lives have been lost (along with the bankrupting of the American economy) over two bald-faced lies! Yet, in the broad mural of the commission of actions with dire consequences, your media sources are trying to flood your attention with the sexual vices of one man, who, when he was not indulging that one vice, was doing his damnedest to stand up for all those whom the American ruling class keeps trying to enslave. We are all now looking at that same mural; but there is so much on it that we are going to have to set some priorities. Can enough of us agree on those priorities to declare them in a strong enough voice?

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