By Norman Solomon
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

When The New York Times published its explosive “Pentagon Pundits” story on April 20, the result was a wave of criticism directed at the Defense Department for manipulating TV news coverage of the Iraq war. Critics also faulted the networks for failing to scrutinize the conflicts of interest of the “military analysts” who went on the air. Many of those retired military officers were being coached by the Pentagon to mislead the public, and many had personal financial stakes in corporations with major Pentagon contracts.

Routinely lost in the current uproar is the extent to which media managers have gone out of their way to suck up to the Pentagon. Top network executive Eason Jordan – who ran CNN’s news operation during the invasion of Iraq – is a case in point. He repeatedly asked the Pentagon for approval of the “military analysts” who were under consideration for on-air roles.

The documentary film “War Made Easy,” based on my book of the same name, shows the pervasive and long-running partnership between key news outlets and high-ranking warmakers in Washington. This video excerpt from the movie puts the “Pentagon Pundits” story in a broad and chilling context.

Years later, some news outlets like to critique the previous media spin for war. It’s part of what amounts to a repetition compulsion disorder – which includes participating in the corrupted process and then critiquing it long after the damage has been done.

Unfortunately, when the next agenda-setting for war gets underway, as is now the case for Iran, the mainline news reporting slides into a very similar mode of parroting official sources. It’s not hard to point the finger backwards and acknowledge misdeeds in the past. As Mark Twain said long ago: “It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

From the “War Made Easy” transcript:

SEAN PENN [narrator]: CNN’s use of retired generals as supposedly independent experts reinforced a decidedly military mindset, even as serious questions remained about the wisdom and necessity of going to war.

NORMAN SOLOMON: Often journalists blame the government for the failure of the journalists themselves to do independent reporting. But nobody forced the major networks like CNN to do so much commentary from retired generals and admirals and all the rest of it. You had a top CNN official named Eason Jordan going on the air of his network and boasting that he had visited the Pentagon with a list of possible military commentators, and he asked officials at the Defense Department whether that was a good list of people to hire.

EASON JORDAN [speaking on CNN]: Oh, I think it’s important to have experts explain the war and to describe the military hardware, describe the tactics, talk about the strategy behind the conflict. I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN, here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war, and we got a big thumbs up on all of them. That was important.

NORMAN SOLOMON: It wasn’t even something to hide, ultimately. It was something to say to the American people on its own network, “See, we’re team players. We may be the news media, but we’re on the same side and the same page as the Pentagon.” And that really runs directly counter to the idea of an independent press, and that suggests that we have some deep patterns of media avoidance when the US is involved in a war based on lies.

Take the Bush-McCain Challenge by clicking here. Then watch the clip below.

By Klaus Marre
The Hill

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Sunday that Republicans are using “hate and divisiveness” to win elections.

Dean argued that the use of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) former pastor Jeremiah Wright in GOP ads in local races is “race baiting.”

“When you start bringing up things that have nothing to do with the candidate and nothing to do with the issues, that’s race baiting,” Dean said on Fox News Sunday in response to a question whether the Wright issue and his ties to Obama hurt Democrats down ticket.

“There’s a lot of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats on issues, but the biggest issue of all is we don’t use this kind of stuff. We never have used this kind of stuff, and we’re not going to start now,” said the DNC chairman. “America is more important than the Republican Party, and that’s the lesson that the voters are about to teach the Republicans.”

In response, Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said in a statement that “voters are looking for strong leadership that has a positive vision to move us forward, but also recognizes the very real challenges we face by putting forward common sense solutions that grow our economy and protect our nation.”

Duncan criticized both Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as lacking an understanding of the economy and said the Democratic ticket in the fall will be headed by a candidate who “failed to follow through on their commitment to support the troops,” while standing with “the most radical elements of their party.”

On Sunday, Democrats appeared united in their desire to put the Wright controversy aside.

Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said Obama would not be a drag on the Democratic ticket.

On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the former first lady also weighed in on the issue.

“We should definitely move on,” Clinton said. “And we should move on because there [are] so many important issues facing our country that we have to attend to.”

Meantime, Obama said the Wright controversy has “distracted” his campaign.

“What he said did not bring the country together, it divided the country,” Obama said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

The Illinois senator said that he would “ultimately trust the American people to put this in context.”

By Clayton Dach
Adbusters

Armed with potent drugs and new technology, a dangerous breed of soldiers are being trained to fight America’s future wars.

Amphetamines and the military first met somewhere in the fog of WWII, when axis and allied forces alike were issued speed tablets to head off fatigue on the battlefield.

More than 60 years later, the U.S. Air Force still doles out dextro-amphetamine to pilots whose duties do not afford them the luxury of sleep.

Through it all, it seems, the human body and its fleshy weaknesses keep getting in the way of warfare. Just as in the health clinics of the nation, the first waypoint in the military effort to redress these foibles is a pharmaceutical one. The catch is, we’re really not that great at it. In the case of speed, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency itself notes a few unwanted snags like addiction, anxiety, aggression, paranoia and hallucinations. For side-effects like insomnia, the Air Force issues “no-go” pills like temazepam alongside its “go” pills. Psychosis, though, is a wee bit trickier.

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From the ACLU:

KENANSVILLE, NC – An innocent man who spent 14 years on North Carolina’s death row after being wrongfully convicted for a 1987 murder will be released from prison today. Jones has been represented by American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project lawyers Cassandra Stubbs and Brian Stull, along with North Carolina attorney Ernest “Buddy” Connor.

Levon “Bo” Jones, an African American man who has always maintained his innocence, was sentenced to death in 1993 for the murder of Leamon Grady, a white man. Jones is the fifth innocent death row inmate to be exonerated in the United States in the past 11 months, and the third innocent North Carolina death row inmate to be granted release in the past six months. He is the 129th death row exoneree since 1973.

“We never had any doubt about Bo Jones’ innocence,” said Connor. “We knew when we started the case that there were serious holes in the evidence. After we began seriously investigating the case, it completely unraveled.”

A federal judge ordered Jones off death row in 2006 and overturned his conviction, declaring that the defense provided by Jones’ initial defense attorneys was so poor that they missed critical evidence pointing to his innocence. After keeping him imprisoned in anticipation of a retrial, the Duplin County, N.C. District Attorney announced Thursday that the state was dropping all charges and Jones would be released.

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By Bernie Horn
The Campaign for America’s Future

John McCain [spent] the week promoting his health care scheme. The crux of the plan is to abolish employer-based health insurance and throw middle class working Americans to the wolves. It is market fundamentalism at its worst.

But I’m not here to talk about the policy details. I want to discuss message framing. During an election campaign, when our ultimate audience is persuadable voters, how do we talk about health care?

Let’s first understand McCain’s frame. His campaign understands one crucial fact (if nothing else): About 95 percent of the voters in the 2008 general election will be insured – the uninsured don’t tend to vote. Extensive polling and focus group research has shown, without a doubt, that people who are insured are more interested in preserving and improving their own coverage than in covering the uninsured. Americans want “quality, affordable health care.” But of the two concepts, they are more focused on affordability than on quality.

McCain is trying to convince voters that Democrats are all about covering the uninsured while he, on the other hand, is all about lowering health care costs. Understand that this is a good strategy because it fits voters’ stereotypes of Democrats (and is fairly true). To our credit, we focus on “universal” or “single-payer” coverage, “Medicare for all,” “Canadian-style” health, and the like. But this is not good message framing for the 2008 election.

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