BTW, the Jessica Lynch saga appeared in a Feb 2003 Washington Post story. This false story did not originate with Bush, it did not originate from the Pentagon. They (
Washington Post) just got it wrong.
The writer of that piece, Vernon Loeb, said
in an NPR interview that:
“Our sources for that story were not Pentagon sources”.
He also said:
“I just didn’t see the Pentagon trying to create a hero where there was none. I mean …they never showed any interest in doing that.”
That's that then. Vern just got it wrong, and in such intricate detail and for the Washington Post no less.
April 25, 1992
Richard Harwood, Ombudsman
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Mr. Harwood,
Though the Washington Post does not over-extend itself in the pursuit of hard news, just let drop the faintest rumor of a government "conspiracy", and a klaxon horn goes off in the news room. Aroused from apathy in the daily routine of reporting assignations and various other political and social sports events, editors and reporters scramble to the phones. The klaxon screams its warning: the greatest single threat to herd-journalism, corporate profits, and government stability the dreaded "CONSPIRACY THEORY"!!
It is not known whether anyone has actually been hassled or accosted by any of these frightful spectres, but their presence is announced to Post readers with a salvo of warnings to avoid the tricky, sticky webs spun by the wacko "CONSPIRACY THEORISTS".
Recall how the Post saved us from the truth about Iran-Contra.
Professional conspiracy exorcist Mark Hosenball was hired to ridicule the idea that Oliver North and his CIA-associated gangsters had conspired to do wrong (*1). And when, in their syndicated column, Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta discussed some of the conspirators, the Post sprang to protect its readers, and the conspirators, by censoring the Anderson column before printing it (*2).
But for some time the lid had been coming off the Iran-Contra conspiracy. In 1986, the Christic Institute, an interfaith center for law and public policy, had filed a lawsuit alleging a U.S. arms-for-drugs trade that helped keep weapons flowing to the CIA-Contra army in Nicaragua, and cocaine flowing to U.S. markets (*3). In 1988 Leslie Cockburn published Out of Control, a seminal work on our bizarre, illegal war against Nicaragua (*4). The Post contributed to this discovery process by disparaging the charges of conspiracy and by publishing false information about the drug-smuggling evidence presented to the House Subcommittee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. When accused by Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY). of misleading reporting, the Post printed only a partial correction and declined to print a letter of complaint from Rangel (*5).
Sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations confirmed U.S. Government complicity in the drug trade (*6). With its coverup of the arms/drug conspiracy evaporating, the ever-accommodating Post shifted gears and retained Hosenball to exorcise from our minds a newly emerging threat to domestic tranquility, the "October Surprise" conspiracy (*7). But close on the heels of Hosenball and the Post came Barbara Honegger and then Gary Sick who authored independently, two years apart, books with the same title, "October Surprise" (*8). Honegger was a member of the Reagan/Bush campaign and transition teams in 1980. Gary Sick, professor of Middle East Politics at Columbia University, was on the staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. In 1989 and 1991 respectively, Honegger and Sick published their evidence of how the Republicans made a deal to supply arms to Iran if Iran would delay release of the 52 United States hostages until after the November 1980 election. The purpose of this deal was to quash the possibility of a pre-election release(an October surprise). which would have bolstered the reelection prospects for President Carter.
< snip >
Though the Post does its best to guide our thinking away from conspiracy theories, it is difficult to avoid the fact that so much wrongdoing involves government or corporate conspiracies:
In its COINTELPRO operation, the FBI used disinformation, forgery, surveillance, false arrests, and violence to illegally harass U.S.citizens in the 60's (*16).
The CIA's Operation MONGOOSE illegally sabotaged Cuba by "destroying crops, brutalizing citizens, destabilizing the society, and conspiring with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro and other leaders" (*17).
"Standard Oil of New Jersey was found by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice to be conspiring with I.G.Farben...of Germany. ...By its cartel agreements with Standard Oil, the United States was effectively prevented from developing or producing [fo rWorld War-II] any substantial amount of synthetic rubber," said Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin (*18).
U.S. Government agencies knowingly withheld information about dosages of radiation "almost certain to produce thyroid abnormalities or cancer" that contaminated people residing near the nuclear weapons factory at Hanford, Washington (*19).
Various branches of Government deliberately drag their feet in getting around to cleaning up the Nation's dangerous nuclear weapons sites (*20). State and local governments back the nuclear industry's secret public relations strategy (*21).
"The National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and some twenty comprehensive cancer centers, have misled and confused the public and Congress by repeated claims that we are winning the war against cancer. In fact, the cancer establishment has continually minimized the evidence for increasing cancer rates which it has largely attributed to smoking and dietary fat, while discounting or ignoring the causal role of avoidable eposures to industrial carcinogens in the air, food, water, and the workplace." (*22).
The Bush Administration coverup of its pre-Gulf-War support of Iraq "is yet another example of the President's people conspiring to keep both Congress and the American people in the dark" (*23).
If you think about it, conspiracy is a fundamental aspect of doing business in this country.
Take the systematic and cooperative censorship of the Persian Gulf War by the Pentagon and much of the news media (*24).
Or the widespread plans of business and government groups to spend $100 million in taxes to promote a distorted and truncated history of Columbus in America (*25). along the lines of the Smithsonian Institution's "fusion of the two worlds", (*26). rather than examining more realistic aspects of the Spanish invasion, like "anger, cruelty, gold, terror, and death" (*27).
Or circumstances surrounding the U.S. Justice Department theft from the INSLAW company of sophisticated, law-enforcement computer software which "now point to a widespread conspiracy implicating lesser Government officials in the theft of INSLAW's technology", says former U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson (*28).
CONTINUE . . .
Vern and the Washington Post just got it wrong. Yeah, sure they did NS. More likely the Post's Jessica Lynch story was just business as usual, defending the corporate state, covering up it's crimes and promoting it's endless war agenda.
The infamous
"message force multipliers" didn't really have ties to the pentagon and the defense industry either.
Boy my memory is getting bad. I almost forgot about all the fake news reports team Bush put out, remember them NS? To late tonight but I'll try to post some links tomorrow.
