Update: Check out my piece today on MediaChannel:
Miscovering Anti-War Protest (Again)

IRAQ: ON PROTESTS AND PROGRESS

Is there a coma of another kind in the American public when it comes to Iraq? The war and the rhetoric around it seems to be deadening the national conscience and eroding the will to do something about it. Don’t forget that ever since the Iraq elections, we have been subjected to a wave of ceaseless misleading propaganda stressing the arrival of Democracy, the transfer of “sovereignty” and the success of the “mission.”

And with our media shamelessly relaying it, and replaying it, many are now saying it. Hooray for Democracy. Juan Cole who knows more about Iraq than most of official Washington scoffs on TomPaine.com:

“President Bush and his supporters are taking credit for spreading freedom across the Middle East. But where changes are genuinely occurring they have nothing to do with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.”

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21540/

Some war critics are rallying to the notion that withdrawal is a bad idea. I heard that debate yesterday on Air America between Truthout’s William Rivers Pitt who says out now, more or less, and Larry Korb of the Center for American Progress, an, ex Clinton Pentagoner who argues we have to stay. Korb keptr saying that setting a date would allow those faceless insurgents to wait us out.

MEDIA DOWNPLAYS MARCHERS

Clearly this unrelenting media massage also affected the turnout for anti-war protests even though according to United for Peace and Justice, there were more protests in more places than ever before:

This weekend, on the two-year anniversary of the Iraq war, people will gather in more than 725 communities, in all 50 states, to mourn the devastating losses and call for the troops to come home now. This is more than double the number of anti-war actions that took place on the first anniversary of the war. The unprecedented number and geographic spread of these events reflect the growing breadth of U.S. peace organizing, which is reaching into more communities than it ever has.

The lack of one big march was probably a factor in giving the impression that participation was way down. The N,Y. Times focused on the civil disobedience of the fringe War Resisters League in Times Square, down the block from their office, but not the larger march from Harlem to Central Park. That was a subway ride away.

WHY NOT MARCH ON THE MEDIA?

Why some activists were not protesting at the Times eludes me. The anti-war movement acknowledges media complicity in selling the war but does little about it. How hard would iit have been to send a few hundred people to each of the main media sites in New York and demand better coverage. Everyone thinks it’s a a good idea but no one does it–perhaps because they afraid of not getting good coverage. Take a look at the coverage they did get and weep

Meanwhile in the media, the pro-government tilt remains to this day.

Example#1 Headline In NY Times on Saturday:

“INSURGENCY LOSES GROUND, TOP MARINE IN IRAQ SAYS”

The story is filed from Washington, not Baghdad. No one in the “insurgency” is quoted. Neither is any war critic The interview is conducted over the phone. In it, Marine General John F Sattler assures the Times from Falujah that all is going swimmingly, Attacks are down, pacification is up.

The reporter Eric Schmidt does question what he is being told by adding a few “howevers” but only SIX paragraphs in. Other military souces are quoted to the effect that while attacks may be done, their lethality overall is up He also notes that this General was boasting about the occupation of Falluhah’s success even as others noted that “{many insurgents fled before or during the fighting./ The last paragraph explains that $400 million is needed for rebuilding but only $100 million has been allocated. Hmmm….. In short this page seven story has a misleading headline with the story contradicting its thrust.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/international/middleeast/19marine.html?

Example #2, BUSH RECORD STUCK IN ITS GROOVES

The president as we know prefers “faith-based information” to “fact-based” information. His rhetoric is an unchanging mantra, as Eric Olson noted Saturday in his Deep Blade Journal:

“Meanwhile, President Bush returns today in his radio address to the old lies about how he had to “disarm a brutal regime'’ of non-existent weapons of mass destruction in order to “defend the world from a grave danger.'’

“The hypocrisy is stunning, given the brutality and war crimes the US occupation has brought — the flattening of at least one major city and the atrocities against prisoners being only the most glaring examples of the American style of freedom for the Iraqi people.

“Note that while Bush says Iraq was ruled by a dictatorship that “murdered its own citizens,'’ mainstream media reports out this week say, “More Than 100 Die in U.S. Custody in Iraq.'’

Saddam’s regime may have “threatened its neighbors,'’ but what is Bush’s regime doing to Iran and Syria from its base in Iraq? The rest of the world has no trouble seeing the irony of Bush stating that Saddam “defied the world.'’

We knew of his long history of pursuing, even using, weapons of mass destruction, and we know that September the 11th requires our country to think differently. We must, and we will, confront threats to America before they fully materialize.

“Linking the Iraq project to protection of America from 9/11-type attacks is absurd and dangerous. It’s a gift to Osama bin Laden. None other than CIA Director Porter Goss says that “The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists.'’

“In other words, Iraq is now the central rallying cry for the enemies of America. With every prisoner atrocity, every home American soldiers destroy, and every hypocrisy Bush utters, the situation just gets worse and worse. Time to wake up America, and put a stop to this.

http://deepblade.net/journal/2005/03/2nd-anniversary-of-disastrous-war.html

MUST READ

Last week, I mentioned a very moving piece by Calvin Trillen in The New Yorker on the death of one soldier. I didn’t have the URL then. Here it is:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032005Z.shtml

FIXING THE CASE

ICH reports: ” The head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency told the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, that the case for war in Iraq was being “fixed” by Washington to suit US
policy, a BBC documentary will claim today.

Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, briefed Blair and a group of ministers on the United States’ determination to launch the invasion nine months before hostilities began in March 2003, the Sunday Times reported, citing the BBC program, which is due to be aired Sunday.

http://tinyurl.com/3z576

THE SELLING GOES ON

Don’t think that this repetitive rhetoric doesn’t influence public opinion, reinforcing the base and wear down opponents making many critics feel that it is hopeless to protest.

The selling of the war goes on, mirroring the selling of earlier frauds like Enron as Frank Rich notes in his Times column.Think of North Korea’s “Potemkin Villages” and then think of this.

The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda.

“Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery — and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in “The Smartest Guys in the Room,” Enron “was fixated on its public relations campaigns.” It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the company’s Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay.

“We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look like the area was lived in,” a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. “We had to make believe we were on the phone buying and selling” even though “some of the computers didn’t even work.”

WHAT IS THE PRESIDENT GOING TO DO?

Before the weekend, there was this wonderful exchange in the White House presroom.

[From Wonkette]

“How is the President going to mark the second anniversary of our war against Iraq and the start of the third year?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, there’s still a few days off until the date that we began the liberation of Iraq, and . . .

Q The invasion of Iraq.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think the Iraqi people showed that they appreciate the sacrifices of the coalition forces, of Iraqi forces, and our men and women in
uniform of the U.S. military, who helped . . .

Q Well, we’re still there and we’re still fighting, aren’t we?

MR. McCLELLAN: — to provide them with the opportunity to determine their own future, and to move away from their past of oppression and terrorism.
And, obviously, we will . . .

Q How is the President going to mark the anniversary?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we will have more to say as we move closer to that, to express our eternal gratitude to the men and women of our Armed Forces who have served and sacrificed in the defense of freedom, and who have helped to liberate some 25 million people in Iraq. We are . . .

Q That isn’t why you went in.

MR. McCLELLAN: We are forever grateful to our men and women in uniform. And the Iraqi people have expressed their gratitude, as well, and showed that they are committed to defying the terrorists who want to return to the past by going to the polls and voting for a future based on freedom and democracy. And the National Assembly that was elected by the Iraqi people, the transitional National Assembly, will be meeting for the first time tomorrow. It’s an important step on the path to democracy. And we stand with the international community in doing everything we can to support the transition to democracy in Iraq. We stand with the Iraqi people, and we are greatly appreciative of our men and women in uniform who continue to serve and sacrifice for this important cause. We are also grateful to their families who
have made sacrifices, as well.

Q How many people are dead?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, April.

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/white-house/second-anniversary-gifts-always-tricky-036132.php

FROM WAR IN IRAQ TO WAR ON THE POOR

Norreena Hertz writes in the Guardian opposing Mr. Wolfowitz’s nomination to head the World Bank:

“This, after all, is a man who, while US ambassador to Indonesia, was scarcely a vocal critic of the blatantly corrupt Suharto regime; a man who embodies the mindset that compels other countries to adopt a particular set of values and policies, whether they are right or not.

“Wolfowitz is hardly even a champion of the values on which the bank itself was founded. He is neither well placed to help it meet its early goal of helping countries rebuild, nor its later one of poverty alleviation. Wolfowitz recently told the US congress that war-ravaged Iraq should pay not only for its reconstruction but also for the war itself out of its oil revenues.

“Although the bank today is hardly a collaborative or progressive operation, any moves its current president, James Wolfensohn, has made to include environmental considerations in lending decisions and to broaden the range of nations consulted are unlikely to be continued under Wolfowitz, who has a track record of rewarding subservience. He banned countries that opposed the war with Iraq from bidding for reconstruction contracts. …”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1441444,00.html

The Washington Post reports today that Wolfowitz is making over his image.

And then, there is this:
Independent Journalists in Iraq Tell of U.S. Targeting Children in Falluja

THAT OTHER WAR: ANOTHER VICTORY

“Afghanistan is the hub of a global network of detention centres, the frontline in America’s ‘war on terror’, where arrest can be random and allegations of torture commonplace. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark investigate on the ground and talk to former prisoners.”

Saturday March 19, 2005 The Guardian (UK)

“Washington likes to hold up Afghanistan as an exemplar of how a rogue regime can be replaced by democracy. Meanwhile, human-rights activists and Afghan politicians have accused the US military of placing Afghanistan at the hub of a global system of detention centres where prisoners are held incommunicado and allegedly subjected to torture. The secrecy surrounding them prevents any real independent investigation of the allegations. “The detention system in Afghanistan exists entirely outside international norms, but it is only part of a far larger and more sinister jail network that we are only now beginning to understand,” Michael Posner, director of the US legal watchdog Human Rights First, told us….

“… we met Dr Rafiullah Bidar, regional director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, established in 2003 with funding from the US Congress to investigate abuses committed by local warlords and to ensure that women’s and children’s rights were protected. He was delighted to see foreigners in town. At his office in central Gardez, Bidar showed us a wall of files. “All I do nowadays is chart complaints against the US military,” he said. “Many thousands of people have been rounded up and detained by them. Those who have been freed say that they were held alongside foreign detainees who’ve been brought to this country to be processed. No one is charged. No one is identified. No international monitors are allowed into the US jails.” He pulled out a handful of files: “People who have been arrested say they’ve been brutalised - the tactics used are beyond belief.” The jails are closed to outside observers, making it impossible to test the truth of the claims.”

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ANYONE?

By Steven Aftergood writes on Slate:

” The government does a remarkable job of counting the number of national security secrets it generates each year. Since President George W. Bush entered office, the pace of classification activi! ty has increased by 75 percent, said William Leonard in March 2 congressional testimony. His Information Security Oversight Office oversees the classification system and recorded a rise from 9 million classification actions in fiscal year 2001 to 16 million in fiscal year 2004.

Yet an even more aggressive form of government information control has gone unenumerated and often unrecognized in the Bush era, as government agencies have restricted access to unclassified information in libraries, archives, Web sites, and official databases. Once freely available, a growing number of these sources are now barred to the public as “sensitive but unclassified” or “for official use only.” Less of a goal-directed policy than a bureaucratic reflex, the widespread clampdown on formerly public information reflects a largely inarticulate concern about “security.” It also accords neatly with! the Bush administration’s preference for unchecked executive authorit y.

No comprehensive catalog of deleted information exists, which is part of the problem. What follows is a representative selection of categories of data that have been withdrawn from public access in the Bush years, with reflections on what they mean.

“Department of Defense Telephone Directory. The Pentagon phone book is a useful tool for reporters, students of defense policy, or others who might wish to contact the Pentagon or gauge the size and shape of the bureaucracy. Anyone could buy it at the Government Printing Office Bookstore until 2001, when it was marked “for official use only.” A GPO Bookstore notice advises that it is no longer for sale to the public.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114963/nav/ais/

IS AMERICA#1?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8191.htm

DANGEROUS PRECEDENT

Todays NY Times: “Nonprofit Groups Question Motive for Federal Actions”

The N.A.A.C.P., which is locked in a standoff with the I.R.S., is not the only group that believes it is being made a government target for its positions on issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/politics/21charity.html?th