- Okay, so it's ynical to suggest that the White House
is playing politics with its talk of Saddam's "nuke-u-lure capabilities,"
"weapons of mass destruction," "links to Al Qaeda"
and having "gassed his own people."
-
- So what if these phrases sound like slogans, ready-made
to fit a TV graphic alongside "Showdown: Saddam?"
-
- Maybe U.S. President George Bush the Younger really does
believe it when he says, echoing a line first used by his national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot
wait for the final proof " the smoking gun " that could come
in the form of a mushroom cloud."
-
- Forget how that statement makes plain that there is no
"final proof" of that aforementioned "nuke-u-lure"
capability " which is exactly what an alarming number of unnamed intelligence
types are telling The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and other
reputable publications. After all, they are anonymous.
-
- Perhaps Bush really isn't marching to the war drums being
beaten by his top political strategist Karl Rove and his chief of staff
Andrew Card Jr. to keep the spotlight off the economy, health care, education,
the deficit and other domestic disasters until the mid-term elections Nov.
5.
-
- Even though U.S. unemployment and poverty are up, consumer
confidence is down, record numbers of bankruptcies are being filed while
mortgage foreclosures are at an all-time high, not even the Democrats are
talking much about the economy, at least not on my TV.
-
- Sure, let's give Rove and Card the benefit of the doubt,
even if they're the guys who seem to be packaging this war thing more slickly
than Coke launched that vanilla concoction. After all, Rove's the guy whose
accidentally-made-public election strategy said "Focus on war,"
while Card's the man who told The New York Times that the reason all this
Iraq talk escalated after Labour Day " just in time for the Sept.
11 anniversary " was because "from a marketing point of view,
you don't introduce new products in August."
-
- Maybe these guys know something we don't and, for some
truly important security reason, they really, really, really can't share
because, if they do tell, the world will blow up.
-
- So how come last Monday in primetime, when Bush was calling
Saddam a "murderous tyrant," the White House did not ask the
main networks to clear airtime for his speech?
-
- Was that not weird?
-
- Turned out that Rove and Co. balked in order to prevent
fears that the president was about to push the button. As press secretary
Ari Fleischer put it, "The rumour-mongering would have become uncontrollable
and it would suggest that war is imminent."
-
- Well, isn't it imminent?
-
- Otherwise, what's this all about?
-
- You'd think war was just around the corner considering
this rumour-mongering about an "arsenal of terror," not to mention
how the news nets have fallen into step, showcasing military experts in
TV "situation rooms."
-
- If war isn't imminent, then how long will MSNBC be "counting
down" to Iraq? Weeks? Months? Or until Nov. 5?
-
- The White House insists it isn't "wagging the dog"
to divert attention from domestic issues, an accusation that Fleischer
and Vice President Dick Cheney have both pooh-poohed as "reprehensible."
But still, much of the mainstream media is chasing the war ball. After
all, it's a lot sexier than discussing how 41 million Americans have no
health insurance.
-
- The media dog has not only been wagged, it's rolled over
at Bush's feet.
-
- On Friday, a Pew Research Center For The People &
The Press Poll, conducted with the Council on Foreign Relations, revealed
that, although nobody has ever proved an Iraq-9/11 link, two-thirds of
those surveyed agree that "Saddam Hussein helped the terrorists in
the Sept. 11 attacks." The poll also shows that 79 per cent believe
Iraq has nukes or is close to having nukes.
-
- Alarming but not surprising. After all, that's the message
put out by most of the mainstream media most of the time.
-
- Meanwhile, you'd be hard pressed to know that U.S. protests
are getting bigger and more frequent by watching TV. When CNN shows a march,
it's always overseas and always slugged as an "anti-American demonstration."
-
- And what about the human cost of war?
-
- Never mind how, as many military and terrorism experts
not on the TV payroll have predicted, an attack on Iraq will unleash a
rain of terror on Americans. Don't even think about how many Iraqi civilian
casualties there might be. The media don't " or won't " even
bother grappling with the death toll for the U.S. military with the bad
luck to end up fighting in the streets of Baghdad.
-
- As syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington noted last
week, "Not a single reporter has stood up ... and asked, `Mr. President,
how many young Americans are going to die?'"
-
- Are they so cowed by the White House that they don't
dare? Are they so onside that they don't care? Are they dumb? Or are they
convinced that, once the votes are counted next month, the war drums will
stop beating?
-
- No matter what the answer, they have served their constituents
very poorly indeed.
-
- azerbis@thestar.ca First posted October 13, 2002 Copyright
1996-2002. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved.
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