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Bentagon vs. Newsweak
WHAT’S THE BEEF?
Posted May 29, 2005
thepeoplesvoice.org
By: Ted Lang
What fury and outrage, especially when one considers the source! I mean, that Newsweek report about American soldiers flushing the Holy Koran down the crapper. Not only did the Pentagon brass get really bent out of shape, but even resident White House white washer and Mighty Mouth, Scott McClellan, conveyed the Bush administration’s anger and outrage, almost losing it himself! Clearly, the issue couldn’t be the absurdity that falsehoods and lies kill people – the Bush administration has demonstrated its total contempt for human life since it maneuvered itself into power. This outrage is about its sensing of rebellion and disloyalty to the state!
American soldiers flushing the Koran down the drain? Maybe our troops might blow up a dozen or so mosques, schools and hospitals; and maybe they’d cut off Fallujah’s water supply and electrical service before carpet-bombing and napalming every living soul within the city walls. And maybe we might hang two innocent Afghanis by their wrists from the ceiling of their cells for days, and beat their legs with bats until their bones became mashed potatoes. They’re the enemy, no?
We’ve been trained by the media to hate, loathe and despise these rag-headed camel stinkers; they’re not human! They deserve to be humiliated and tortured. We are learning, day by day, to enjoy their screams, especially when they are suffering and appealing to their maker for mercy. So maybe we might torture innocent, helpless prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, or kill twenty [?] or so – so what?! These vermin are Untermenschen! Gott mit Uns! Zeig Heil!!!
So it is completely understandable that members of the Bush administration and the neocon Pentagon would become so outraged when the truth is revealed. Where’s Newsweek’s loyalty to our Republican form of Government? As Frank Rich of the Bush-supporting New York Times points out, quoting Mighty Mouth McClellan: “‘Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care.’”
The Koran is treated with care, but Iraqis, Afghanis, Muslims and Arabs can be beaten to death, have electric shock treatment administered to their genitals, have their faces smeared with fake menstrual blood, can be made to crawl while naked and chained wearing a dog’s collar and led on a leash by a wimpy female “soldier,” and can be forced into a river by Coalition heroes where non-swimmers are drowned. But this, by no means at all, should lead anyone to the erroneous conclusion that the great United States of America, and its “duty-honor-country” military, would ever condone any display of contempt or disdain for the venerable Holy Koran!
Rich’s May 22nd commentary, entitled “It’s All Newsweek’s Fault,” points out the wording used by the administration in denouncing the magazine: “Yet there’s something weirdly self-incriminating about the language it uses to do it. Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman whose previous boss, Colin Powell, delivered a fictional recitation of Saddam Hussein’s weapon capabilities before the United Nations Security Council, said it’s ‘shocking’ that Newsweek used ‘facts that have not been substantiated.’ Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, attacked Newsweek for hiding ‘behind anonymous sources,’ yet it was an anonymous source, an Iraqi defector known as Curveball, who fed the fictions that Mr. Powell spouted to gin up America for war. Psychological displacement of this magnitude might give even Freud pause.”
Did I read that right? News isn’t news until The New York Times reports it? And now it is I who wish to point out that there is “something weirdly self-incriminating” regarding Rich’s choice of words. In fact, Rich does a little backward stretch when he cites the analogy of an “anonymous source” referring to “Curveball” feeding “fictions” to Colin Powell. Are both Frank Rich and the editorial board of The New York Times aware of the news? Aren’t they aware that a Sunday London Times article exposed the Bush administration and provided conclusive, irrefutable proof that Bush engineered the false intelligence himself?
If Rich is so disgusted with the Bush regime’s bullying of the press and Newsweek’s cave, why doesn’t his venerable newspaper report on what is now termed the “Smoking Gun Memo?” Even after the establishment media’s own watchdog group, FAIR, protested this spiking of what could easily be termed as the greatest blockbuster headline of the 21st century, Rich has to fumble his way through his published outrage by employing the term “anonymous source.” There is nothing at all anonymous about the President of the United States, George W. Bush!
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© THEODORE E. LANG 5/25/05 All rights reserved.
Ted Lang is a political analyst and a freelance writer.
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