randomWalks

Just to put a finer point on it, zagg, not all media dutifully encouraged the American public to believe that Hussein and 9/11 were linked. And the president, as far as I know, never explicitly said that the attacks and Hussein were directly connected.

According to The Christian Science Monitor on March 14, 2003:

Sources knowledgeable about US intelligence say there is no evidence that Hussein played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, nor that he has been or is currently aiding Al Qaeda. Yet the White House appears to be encouraging this false impression, as it seeks to maintain American support for a possible war against Iraq and demonstrate seriousness of purpose to Hussein's regime.

And a little further on the article states:

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden himself recently encouraged the perception of a link, when he encouraged attacks on the US in response to a US war against Iraq. But, terror experts note, common animosity toward the United States does not make Hussein and Mr. bin Laden allies.

I think a much more interesting discussion would be one about how so many people will take indirect an inaccurate information and make a story out of it that fits their fear and anxiety.

Are people inherently anxious? Are they made anxious by politics and economic uncertainty? Do they fulfill a desire to have a target of animosity? Do they create animosity out of nothing, as a figment of their identity?

I would turn the questions on our selves, and to ask these questions, not in order to find out who was right, or who was wrong, but to find out exactly why the former happens?

Why, without ever willing it to be, are so many successful in getting so many others to believe things that aren't true, but weren't even said?

Mass paranoia?

Unclipped desire for pain?

Many questions, young jedi.

Not all media is right. Most alternative and progressive media have been pointing out the lack of a link for a very long time. But the mainstream corporate media did not question the link. The Christian Science Monitor is a wonderful paper, but it does not exactly have the exposure of the ones listed in the E&P link. If that's the best evidence you can find that the media wasn't going along with the story, than I think my point stands.

Moreover, the very article you're quoting from starts off like this:

In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11.

Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks. A New York Times/CBS poll this week shows that 45 percent of Americans believe Mr. Hussein was "personally involved" in Sept. 11, about the same figure as a month ago.

Even if Bush never blamed 9-11 on Saddam, there certainly were attempts to concretely link Iraq and 9-11. There was the whole story about Mohammed Atta meeting with Iraqi intelligence, which proved to be false. There was the attempt to lay the blame for the anthrax attacks on Iraq, which proved to be false. And in all of the speeches leading up to the Iraq war, Bush and associates were very careful to use words such as "9-11", "al Qaeda", "Iraq", "terrorism", etc. in close proximity to each other, if not the same sentence.

Today I run into more people not exploring their own anxieties and trying to figure out how they were duped, but are outraged that they were lied to by Bush.

It's extremely clear that Bush, et. al., made a concerted effort to link Iraq and 9-11 from the very start. And to me it's not so surprising that people were duped by this when you could find the assertions of a link so easily, but had to hunt really hard to find debunkings of the myth.

If President says X and no one challenges him on it, than people are likely going to believe it.

Zagg???

What if Saddam surrenders?

I mean, I know not all papers are right and everything, but....

Well if Saddam surrenders than clearly he had everything to do with 9-11.

????

I don't get it.

If Saddam surrenders, do you think much of the media will finally admit that the attacks on U.S. troops are not all the result of "Saddamists?"

How are you convinced that they are not? And what are they instead?

The point was not that Saddam had anything or nothing at all to do with 9-11. The point--if there ever was one--was, I guess, what happens if Saddam surrenders?

Does that mean that he will provide information that the rest of us ignorant fools have been trying to convince each other of for the past six months or more?

I mean, I think we're all looking for a story, and some of us have been making up stories that sound convincing, but who knows what the real truth is?

I mean, zagg, I give you credit, you seem to know the truth, but there's something that's not right about the whole thing that goes beyond just the war is bad idea and we've framed them mentality.

I want to know the truth from history's perspective, but that's frighteningly unable to tell us the real truth.

Perhaps Saddam is the horse and the horse's mouth?

"How are you convinced that they are not? And what are they instead?"

I'm sure there are former Saddam loyalists, or whatever, that are involved. I'm sure there are non-Iraqis that have gone into Iraq to take shots at Americans. But I'm also sure that the most significant portion of the resistance is home grown and it's coming from ordinary Iraqis resentful of the brutality of the occupation. Go to Google news and do some searches. I'm sure you can turn up any number of stories quoting average Iraqis on their rage.

From a Robert Fisk piece:

"They opened fire randomly at us, very heavy fire," Adel, the mechanic with the oil lamp, said. "They don't care about us. They don't care about the Iraqi people, and we will have to suffer this again. But I tell you that they will suffer for what they did to us today. They will pay the price in blood."

From the Washington Post:

"The killing of the policemen was the turning point for me," said Sabah Khalaf, recalling the Sept. 12 friendly-fire killing of eight U.S.-allied Iraqi policemen in Fallujah - one of the most dangerous cities for American forces.

...

"I thought they came as liberators and had hope that they would bring this country freedom," said Khalaf, a 31-year-old resident of Fallujah. "Initially, we were against the police, calling them agents of the Americans. But by killing the police, the Americans showed their true faces. ... I think the attacks against them will increase, and revenge for the dead policemen will be taken."

Occupation breeds resistance. It breeds resistance of all forms. See: Vietnam. See: Palestine. See: East Timor. See: India. See: Africa. National liberation struggles quite normal. We shouldn't be all that flabbergasted when we see it develop.

"there's something that's not right about the whole thing that goes beyond just the war is bad idea and we've framed them mentality."

Well I agree with this. But this specific post was meant to address one aspect of the war: the fact that Bush and Co. lied or otherwise deliberately created confusion about Iraq's connection to 9-11 in order to win support for a war they wanted for lots of other reasons. I saw an astounding figure recently. It said that right after 9-11, 3 percent of people polled thought that Iraq had something to do with it. Today the number is 70 percent. And that's despite there being no evidence gained in that two years. There were plenty of stories that came out that were later debunked. But no proof has ever come out. And yet people's perceptions changed anyway. To me that's a clear result of a calculated effort to link the two in people's minds in order to build a case for a war that the ruling class needed for other reasons. (Oil, Empire, Extension of U.S. power).

But part of their problem is that they didn't just lie to us. They also lied to the Iraqis, who told they would be liberated and instead are being occupied. And now there is resistance. Saddam has become irrelevant to the conversation about what is going on in Iraq in the present tense.

Occupation breeds resistance. It breeds resistance of all forms. See: Vietnam. See: Palestine. See: East Timor. See: India. See: Africa. National liberation struggles quite normal. We shouldn't be all that flabbergasted when we see it develop.

But remember, my reaction to your post, and the discussion I was hopeful to have about this was:

How do we know what is true?

And it seems that you rely on a story in your mind about colonialism, invasion and imperialism, and, even though you say that "not all media is right," you seem to like to pick and choose when to use media to your advantage.

I proposed that Sunday Mirror story to you to get a reaction. I wanted to know what parts of that do you think are correct?

You've immediately slipped into explaining to me that occupation breeds resistance, you've handed to me cliche after cliche.

And I want to know how you know the truth.

How do you know the truth?

What is really happening? Where do you get your information?

And is your information correct, or are you only a reader of a world being filtered.

To me, the answer to that is the beginning of a true discourse on our knowledge about the world and the war and who is really in charge.

That's why I started writing, that's what I think is amazingly compelling about our identities on this thing.

It's amazing to me that someone can choose to say some things are wrong when they have so much power to decide how they want to deliver their identity and information to the "reading public."

And it seems that you rely on a story in your mind about colonialism, invasion and imperialism, and, even though you say that "not all media is right," you seem to like to pick and choose when to use media to your advantage.

A "story" about these things? These things are historical facts. Besides, you make it sound as if I'm on the only one tossing around these terms. There have been plenty of Right-wing articles in the past two years defending Imperialism, Colonialism and even trying to rehabilitate the racist "White Man's Burden" notion.

But I do admit that I pick and choose which media I trust and which I don't.

Here's the simplest fact I can point to in terms of determining who I do and don't trust: Who owns the media source? Large corporations have a vested interest in how the war is run. They are pro-war organizations. Therefore their portrayal of the war and its motives is automatically suspect.

Here's some of other simple rules on: How to Read the News and Discern the Truth About the War in Iraq:

1) Never trust stories that make liberal use of anonymous sources, especially high-level government ones.

2) Even though most mainstream media toe the line on administration policy, sometimes quotes within stories can be very revealing. For example, quotes of ordinary people in the U.S. and in Iraq can be more telling of what's actually occurring than official party lines. (I don't see a contradiction here because reporters are human beings. They may at some level learn to self-censor or perish, but at other times they're not going to. Sometimes things slip through the cracks. It's worth looking for these instances).

4) Check sources such as FAIR, which call out bias in the media. Other less ideological media watchdogs include Editor & Publisher and the journalism reviews. But these two occasionally point out when the media's bias is showing.

5) Turn to alternative news sources which do not have ties to corporate media.

6) Listen to people who have been there and are filing eyewitness accounts, such as Robert Fisk and Medea Benjamin.

I proposed that Sunday Mirror story to you to get a reaction. I wanted to know what parts of that do you think are correct?

I have no inkling of what's true and what's not in that one. But it certainly smells like a pile of crap given the media source and the way the story is sourced.

To me, the answer to that is the beginning of a true discourse on our knowledge about the world and the war and who is really in charge.

But we've had this discussion.

A thousand times.

How many times do you want me to reiterate "who is really in charge?"

Feh. Boring.

Bush is a moron, AND THAT IS THE TRUTH.