What Williams is really doing is reserving the right to lie, or hide the truth, if he believes it to be in the national interest. This approach to war reporting amounts to not much more than an appeal to the audience to believe in a shared fantasy, in the hope that it someday might be true.
Back to Main
July 4, 2005
WB: Send in the Clowns
Comments
Well, they did almost assassinate Wolfowitz with a rocket 2 years ago, and what better way to disillusion people with the truth than to kill the fairy teller when he starts to read you the bed time story.
Posted by: Vin Carreo | Jul 4 2005 7:43 utc | 1
Billmon is definitely callin’ ’em out and calling a spade a spade on this one.
Billmon should be an institution on each and every editorial page in America. His sense, wit and irreducible logic should be available to all. I try, but there is no denying what he says.
Posted by: York Phago | Jul 4 2005 9:44 utc | 2
“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Why do we accept a system of governance that survives on lies ?
Why do we not recoil at the widespread and intentional manipulation of the Truth ?
Why do we accept that our supposed representatives are, virtually have to be, beholden to interests or more bluntly corruption ?
What of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Liberty’, for us, for others, that so many have, or believed they had, died and sacrificed for over many generations ?
Why does it seem all public discourse is little more than chattering heads discussing minutae, whilst clearly politely ignoring the deciet and corruption, at so many levels ?
Are the Democrats going to abandon Amerikan Empire, or simply be better at presenting a more human facade on what amounts to bi-partisan policies going back 50, a 100 years or more ?
What gives us the right as individuals, blocs or as a nation to satisfy our own self interest above all others whilst purposely denying, concealing, deluding ourselves to the TRUE costs, the human costs ?
What of morals, principles, ideals ? How far have we as a nation, as a people, fallen, how much further are we yet to fall ?
Why can we not have leaders who are, simply, honest ?
Honesty, a simple virtue, which is the essence, the very foundation, upon which all other virtues must be built, yet one that is so endemically lacking throughout every level of society, yet especially so in our leaders …
If the majority do not recognise, openly, the consequences of our adventures in support of empire how can we ever progress to soul-searching ?
If we cannot hold our society, our leaders, our system to account for gross damage and consequences occasioned through monumental lies, manipulation and deciet, to which the majority consented, how will we survive ?
Did our forefathers, though hardly the saints of sanitized history, intend for us to become an unsustainable corporate controlled and driven, rabidly consumptive culture, with the wars and intrigues, systemic violence, oppression, repression and exploitation it requires world-wide to sustain it ?
What will it take to begin upon the long path that must by necessity lead to a nobler, more peaceful future, more worthy of the empty ideals and rhetoric we repetitively, hypocritically, insincerely trumpet … for us, for the world at large ?
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 4 2005 12:37 utc | 5
Outraged,
The formal decision makers will not represent the people until they actually live like and with the people.
The concept of a centralised seat of power made sense in the conditions of the 18th 19th and much of the Twentieth Century. But it makes no sense with modern communications.
Anybody that wants to promote democracy would decentralise power under present circumstances. Make the fuckers live with us so we can keep an eye on them. Two days a week in DC is plenty.
Surprise surprise the robots that run the EU sre pushing us in the opposite direction, and in the process of creating a second “inside the beltway” in Brussels. And it is that which is at the root of the present “crisis”.(IMHO)
Posted by: John | Jul 4 2005 13:05 utc | 6
The shot at Wolfman could have been an accident. At the time, shelling the Green Zone was a top priority. But who knows…
Outraged: Do people want honesty? It’s often very uncomfortable.
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 4 2005 15:43 utc | 8
Gee, I first thought Wolfie meant to imply that Saddam kept everyone in order!
🙂
For Wolfie, there simply isn’t anything much in Iraq (after March 2003 – before that there were all kinds of nasty things) so how could there be ethnic strife?
From end July 2003 (Wolfie visited Abu Ghraib and other places on / around 20 July 2003):
“There is no humanitarian crisis. There is no refugee crisis. There is no health crisis. There has been minimal damage to infrastructure — minimal war damage, lots of regime damage over decades, but minimal war damage to infrastructure except for telecommunications, which we had to target,” he emphasized. “There has been no environmental catastrophe, either from oil well fires or from dam breaks. And there has been no need for massive oil field repair.
“So, fortunately,” he said, “much of what … we planned for and budgeted for has not proved necessary.”
Link
Posted by: Noisette | Jul 4 2005 15:44 utc | 9
Yes, the shot at Wolfie could have been coincidence, but given the infiltration of Iraqi spies into the Green Zone even then, I doubt it.
I’m not sure I agree with Billmon this time. Accepting Billmon’s premise and assuming a divergence in the objectives of what we are now calling the insurgents and the terrorists, it would seem the insurgents would benefit from killing a couple talk show hosts to further diminish US public support for the war and get the Americans out sooner.
Who knows what effect a couple of dead talk show hosts would have here? They preach to their choir anyway; their listeners would have one more “outrage” to fume about and further “evidence” of terrorist brutatlity to rant about, but I doubt there would be much movement in public opinion one way or the other. War supporters would get a martyr and war opponents more evidence that the US is losing when US forces can’t even protect their own propagandists.
My own uneducated guess is that the Iraqi resistance would kill them if they could. Demonstrating their reach in Iraq could buoy insurgent supporters at little or no real cost in public opinion in the US. (What war opponent or war supporter is going to switch sides because a wingnut talk show host got killed?) If these guys are attacked, we’ll have some proof of how deeply insurgent spies are entrenched in the Green Zone.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jul 4 2005 15:56 utc | 10
Where is John Wayne when you need him? I’m sure a Green Berets mkII is only a matter of time.
Posted by: > | Jul 4 2005 15:59 utc | 11
Yes, the shot at Wolfie could have been coincidence, but given the infiltration of Iraqi spies into the Green Zone even then, I doubt it.
I’m not sure I agree with Billmon this time. Accepting Billmon’s premise and assuming a divergence in the objectives of what we are now calling the insurgents and the terrorists, it would seem the insurgents would benefit from killing a couple talk show hosts to further diminish US public support for the war and get the Americans out sooner.
Who knows what effect a couple of dead talk show hosts would have here? They preach to their choir anyway; their listeners would have one more “outrage” to fume about and further “evidence” of terrorist brutatlity to rant about, but I doubt there would be much movement in public opinion one way or the other. War supporters would get a martyr and war opponents more evidence that the US is losing when US forces can’t even protect their own propagandists.
My own uneducated guess is that the Iraqi resistance would kill them if they could. Demonstrating their reach in Iraq could buoy insurgent supporters at little or no real cost in public opinion in the US. (What war opponent or war supporter is going to switch sides because a wingnut talk show host got killed?) If these guys are attacked, we’ll have some proof of how deeply insurgent spies are entrenched in the Green Zone.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jul 4 2005 16:02 utc | 12
Yes, the shot at Wolfie could have been coincidence, but given the infiltration of Iraqi spies into the Green Zone even then, I doubt it.
I’m not sure I agree with Billmon this time. Accepting Billmon’s premise and assuming a divergence in the objectives of what we are now calling the insurgents and the terrorists, it would seem the insurgents would benefit from killing a couple talk show hosts to further diminish US public support for the war and get the Americans out sooner.
Who knows what effect a couple of dead talk show hosts would have here? They preach to their choir anyway; their listeners would have one more “outrage” to fume about and further “evidence” of terrorist brutatlity to rant about, but I doubt there would be much movement in public opinion one way or the other. War supporters would get a martyr and war opponents more evidence that the US is losing when US forces can’t even protect their own propagandists.
My own uneducated guess is that the Iraqi resistance would kill them if they could. Demonstrating their reach in Iraq could buoy insurgent supporters at little or no real cost in public opinion in the US. (What war opponent or war supporter is going to switch sides because a wingnut talk show host got killed?) If these guys are attacked, we’ll have some proof of how deeply insurgent spies are entrenched in the Green Zone.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jul 4 2005 16:05 utc | 13
To comment to Citizen k’s comment to Outraged | July 4, 2005 08:37 AM comment:
Outraged: Do people want honesty? It’s often very uncomfortable.
Lev Navrozov writes, “… in 1859 John Stuart Mill argued that conformities may be not imposed by an omnipotent tyrant but created spontaneously by citizens themselves, and yet be more absurd, intolerant, and vindictive with respect to nonconformists than conformities imposed by omnipotent tyrants.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 4 2005 16:24 utc | 14
Oops and apologies. My original attempt to post timed out and I thought it didn’t go through.
BTW, while all elements of the Iraqi resistance to US occupation certainly must monitor US public opinion, I doubt that is a major factor in the targets they choose to strike.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jul 4 2005 16:26 utc | 15
lonesomeG — My advice would be not to take everything I write literally. Don’t tell anybody else but (whispers conspiratorially) I sometimes exaggerate for effect.
Posted by: billmon | Jul 4 2005 16:53 utc | 16
Duly noted and thanks, Billmon. We literal minded types need a little help now and then. 🙂
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jul 4 2005 17:20 utc | 17
@Outraged (quoting Shaw),
Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected.”
A version of this I’ve seen includes the following response to the question “which dog wins”…
The one you feed.
Sci-fi channel’s Twilight Zone marathon just concluded the highly relevant episode “To Serve Man”. Billmon and many others have already deciphered the Administration’s cookbook – will a sufficient number of citizens hear and believe?
Posted by: OkieByAccident | Jul 4 2005 18:45 utc | 18
Rather than target the talk-show idiots, the insurgents might be more likely to stage well-coordinated attacks all over the country to show these fucks to be the fools and liars that they are. After all, these talk-radio propagandists are doing almost as much as Dear Leader/Dick/Rummy/Condi to further the terrorst cause
Posted by: Phil from New York | Jul 4 2005 19:27 utc | 19
But the really intriguing question is this: Is there anybody out there armed with subpoena power — like, say, the FBI or Patrick Fitzgerald — who is trying to find out the full story?
Now that is the intriguing question, and my guess is the Franklin and Plame investigations cover a whole lot of this territory. There appears to have been quite simply a very effective disinformation campaign, designed to fix the facts and intelligence around the policy. Who’s been part of that? Rove, Bolton, Franklin, Rosen, Miller, Chalabi, the whole gang of neo-cons. Will Matt Cooper fold, in light of Time’s decision to respect the law? Will Judy Miller go to jail? Will the press ever get over the shield issue to examine the case Fitzgerald is pursuing, and not just from the perspective of several defendants, un-named co-conspirators, and administration apologists? Blog your way to fame and fortune, Billmon.
Doppler
Posted by: Doppler | Jul 4 2005 20:17 utc | 20
And why are Cooper and Miller threatened with jail time but not Novak? There may be an explanation beyond his right wing connections but, if so, I missed it.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jul 4 2005 20:30 utc | 21
There is a divergence of interest between Iraqi insurgents and Islamic extremists in this case.
Keeping the Iraq war going for as long as possible makes Islamic Extremist politically stronger in Iraq and other muslim countries. But the Iraqi insurgents must prefer this war over as soon as possible to get their country back faster, keep the damage to the country to a minimum and have the best possible chance of re-building the country when the Americans leave.
I don’t think it makes much practical difference for the moment. I doubt the insurgents have enough control to be deciding which American guests get to live. The best way to make America leave is still to crank up the insurgency as much as possible. This suits both parties right now. But when those negotiations with “freedom fighters” start getting serious the future US administration conducting those negotiations will undoubtedly find them complicated by Bin Laden follower’s who don’t want the party to end.
Posted by: still working it out | Jul 4 2005 22:20 utc | 22
That must be it then. The other night here we had to endure an alleged news story about a group of grunts celebrating Independence day in one of Saddam’s Palaces. I was unhappy cause it wasn’t news. This same story was run back in ‘mission accomplished’ days. The ‘palace’ would have been in the heart of the Green Zone so what’s the big deal? Finally surely a better story would have been Iraqis celebrating Mesopotamia Day in a Saddam palace.
Anyway not to worry it just goes to show that the repugs are clutching at straws. No bad thing.
As far as the mortaring of talkback hosts goes; as someone who abhors the taking of life I can’t say I support it but it is not a difficult stretch to argue this particular group of journalists are combatants.
Certainly they appear less objective than the Al Jazeera reporters who are continually attacked by western MSM for telling the other side of the story and who do appear to have been targetted by coalition forces on the grounds that their reports aid the ‘enemy’ effort.
We often see criticism of the resistance for not allowing journalists to operate freely around Iraq but one can’t fault their assumption that creating fear and uncertainty in the minds of all uninvited visitors to Iraq is likely to resolve this conflict quicker than trying to work out whether a particular journalist, his/her medium, and it’s shareholders are likely to report the situation objectively.
Apologies to Billmon and any others in his trade but most people who have to deal with the media in an ordinary day to day situation, much less an emotionally charged bloody conflict have a nagging little alarm sounding off in part of their consciousness throughout the whole experience.
On the occasions where I have been intimately involved with an event which has ended up in the MSM I don’t think I can confidently say that any of the coverage I saw accurately reflected the event I witnessed.
Yeah yeah it probably is my perspective on things but lets face it even if journos just stick to the facts the techniques of reportage allow the media to weight and angle a story in a way that permits the reporter to impose his/her world view on any set of facts.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 5 2005 1:33 utc | 23
Yes Billmon, the wingnuts are covering their asses. I’ve noticed a somwhat different tone at Wacknut Daily lately. They’re trying to find any other subject to distract from their war mongering throughout the wars.
Their even talking about some doctor at a abortion clinic in Colorado that supposedly ate the fetuses. I have no idea what thats about.
The audience is starting to get the wingnut bullshit. Their starting to say, dam, you mean all that right wing nut crap wasn’t true? Now they need to run to the source of the wingnuttery to prove their right.
Unlike Billmon, if they get wacked, so be it. His tone is don’t wack them because that make the wacknuts lambs to the slaughter. We don’t need that or the sheeple will react that their heros are being killed by Islamic extremist.
I say, f— them, I hope they venture out of the Green Zone and find out just what our soldiers have to endure because of their propaganda for the war. If some get wacked, so be it.
Posted by: jdp | Jul 5 2005 1:48 utc | 24
The BEST Billmon essay I’ve read in a long time.
Sad, but true . . .
It should be a call to arms . . .
time will tell . . .
Posted by: ck | Jul 5 2005 2:13 utc | 25
That article inspired me to coin a new slogan:
“Cynicism is Strength” 😉
Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Jul 5 2005 9:58 utc | 26
I have no doubts whatsoever that ‘the clowns’ would be high priority targets, should they ever leave the, defense-in-depth, concrete bunker complex that is the ‘Green Zone’. Arab and Islamic diplomats are being targetted as part of an obvious co-ordinated campaign, why not rabid US Wingnuts ?
Gunmen fire on Pakistan envoy in Iraq
05 Jul 2005 11:03:12 GMT
(Updates with background)
BAGHDAD, July 5 (Reuters) – Gunmen opened fire on a convoy carrying Pakistan’s envoy to Iraq on Tuesday in the third attack on a senior diplomat in three days, police sources said …
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 5 2005 12:02 utc | 27
Why I was banned from Roger L. Simon:
JIM ROCKFORD:”Newsweek seems intent on proving Mike Wallace’s assertion that he was a journalist first and American only second. ”
If they really were Americans first, Bush would be swinging from the gallows.
Posted by: Steve J. at May 18, 2005 12:37 AM
Steve J. was banned fromthis site last night for his comment two above this.
Posted by: Roger at May 18, 2005 07:48 AM
Steve,
“If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.” — George Bush, cited in the June, 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter
Posted by: John | Jul 5 2005 20:33 utc | 30
sorry, wrong link , i don’t know how that happened
try again in english please
not having any luck this morning w/ my postings, long delays etc, when i preview i get a double post
Posted by: annie | Jul 5 2005 20:36 utc | 31