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The Green Guide

Wartime Lies: A Consumer's
Guide to the Bombing

Paul Bass, New Haven Advocate
October 8, 2001

"George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as
just one American, he wants me to line up, just tell me where."

-- CBS News anchor Dan Rather, after the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon
and the World Trade Center

Here come "surgical strikes"! Check out that "laser-guided" "pinpoint
precision."

"Collateral damage"? Hardly any.

It's a glorious war, a noble cause, the only solution to a world crisis....

So we heard in the Gulf War.

So we hear at the onset of the Afghan war. Many of the same characters who
ran and propagandized the last war -- Colin Powell and Dan Rather, for
instance -- have returned to our living rooms.

Last time, it turned out there was more to the story. In the first days of
CNN-fueled war hysteria, we couldn't know the truth about whom we
bombed, or to what end. It's the same this week as our bombs began
raining on Afghanistan. It's hard to know the truth about what's happening
-- and therefore impossible to judge whether the action is justified.

We can assume only this: Right or wrong, the government is lying to us. And
the media is repeating and magnifying those lies in order to convince us to
put our brains on hold and yell for blood behind a waving pennant of the
stars and stripes.

They did it last time.

Last Time's Lies

Consider ABC News' Sam Donaldson. He helped convince the nation that Star
Wars works, through his live coverage of the Persian Gulf War.

On Jan. 22, 1991, ABC showed a bright object flashing through the sky.
Another bright object raced toward it. Donaldson told viewers that one of
Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles was heading toward Saudi Arabia. But here
came a good old U.S.-made Patriot missile to the rescue.

"Bull's-eye!" Donaldson proclaimed. "No more Scud!"

Such media accounts -- and parroting of government claims that Patriot
missiles hit almost every Scud they aimed at -- led to a public celebration
of the Patriot missile. We weren't powerless. America was strong! We could
stop enemy weapons. That November, Congress boosted the budget for the "Star
Wars" anti-missile shield from $3.1 billion to $4.15 billion.

The following year, as Columbia Journalism Review would report ("Patriot
Games," July/August 1992), that film clip showed up at a Congressional
hearing concerning inflated military claims. Pointing to the same clip
Donaldson had narrated, a former nuclear weapons analyst pointed out that
the Scud passed through whatever explosion appeared on the screen -- and
that Patriots were a "total failure" in the Gulf War.

Some other examples of Gulf War lies (courtesy of Fairness & Accuracy in
Reporting):

- After the war, The New York Times retracted a story, repeated by other
major news outlets, that Iraqi soldiers had killed 300 premature babies by
removing them from incubators.

- 60 Minutes featured an interview with "Captain Karim," a supposed former
Saddam bodyguard, spinning fearful tales about the Iraqi dictator. Karim
turned out to be a fraud.

- The Times, CNN, Time and others supported then-President Bush's attacks on
Iraqi radio by reporting that a broadcaster named "Baghdad Betty" had told
U.S. troops to return home because "Robert Redford is dating your girlfiend
... Bart Simpson is making love to your wife." In fact, the media was
repeating a Johnny Carson Tonight Show gag. (Or misquoting. Johnny said
Homer, not Bart.)

What to Watch Out For

While we rely on government and CNN, CBS, et al for our first torrent of war
news, history gives us some advice in filtering the noise:

- Don't assume any fact to be true. Especially about the success and human
toll of our military actions.

- Watch the videotape. Just because they say something blew something else
up, judge for yourself.

- Read next-day or on-line full transcripts of speeches. For instance, some
national media characterized Osama bin Laden's first statement as in effect
acknowledging he authorized the Sept. 11 attack. It didn't. Also, some
accounts played up bin Laden's threat that peace must "reign in Palestine"
before Americans have peace -- but left out his next statement that "the
army of infidels [must] depart the land of Muhammad," historically his
primary gripe.

- Don't take depictions of "allies" at face value. Remember that we helped
put the Taliban in power (to destabilize the old Soviet Union), along with
Saddam Hussein. Remember that Pakistan's government and Afghanistan's
Northern Alliance have horrid human rights records.

- Pay attention to questions on which the media or officials remain silent.
So counsels Normon Solomon, a media watchdog and syndicated columnist:
"Newsday after the Gulf War quoted somebody in the Pentagon saying, 'We lie
by not telling you things.' The starvation issue, for instance: Bush was
talking about [our airlifting] 37,000 kits of food and medicine. This is in
contrast to several million people who are on the verge of going into
starvation [because of U.S. military action]. This fact that serves as a lie
is window dressing. A crime against humanity is dressed up as humanitarian
action."

- Read and listen to the alternative press! But don't necessarily just
believe us, either.