Another Blicero?

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 äh, who's the new blicero? pinochet or kissinger? why not pol pot?! kfl


Doug Millison schrieb:
> OBSTINATE MEMORY AND PURSUIT OF THE PRESENT
> By Norman Solomon
>
> Henry Kissinger usually has an easy time defending the  indefensible on
> national television. But he faced some pointed questions  during a recent
> interview with the PBS "NewsHour" about the U.S. role in  bringing a
> military dictatorship to Chile. When his comments aired on Feb.  20, the
> famous American diplomat made a chilling spectacle of himself.
>
> Nearly three years after the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the  elected
> socialist president Salvador Allende in September 1973 and brought  Augusto
> Pinochet to power, Kissinger huddled with the general in Chile. A
> declassified memo says that Kissinger told Pinochet: "We are sympathetic
> with what you are trying to do here."
>
> While interviewing Kissinger, "NewsHour" correspondent Elizabeth  Farnsworth
> asked him point-blank about the discussion with Pinochet. "Why  did you not
> say to him, 'You're violating human rights. You're killing  people. Stop
> it.'?"
>
> Kissinger replied: "First of all, human rights were not an  international
> issue at the time, the way they have become since. That was  not what
> diplomats and secretaries of states and presidents were saying to  anybody
> in those days."
>
> Right. Back then, we didn't know that it was wrong to kidnap  people; to
> hold them as political prisoners; to torture them; to murder them.
>
> Kissinger added that at the June 1976 meeting with Pinochet, "I  spent half
> my time telling him that he should improve his human rights  performance in
> any number of ways." But the American envoy's concern was  tactical. As
> Farnsworth noted in her reporting: "Kissinger did bring up  human rights
> violations, saying they were making it difficult for him to  get aid for
> Chile from Congress."
>
> In Chile, the victims of Kissinger's great skills numbered into  the
> thousands; in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, into the hundreds of  thousands
> and more. Seymour Hersh's 1983 book "The Price of Power:  Kissinger in the
> Nixon White House" documented his remarkable record as a  prodigious liar
> and prolific killer. But the most influential news outlets  continued to
> treat Kissinger with near-reverence. In 1989, he was elected  to the board
> of directors of CBS. The autobiography of Katharine Graham,  the owner of
> the Washington Post Co., praises Kissinger as a dear friend  and all-around
> wonderful person.
>
> Kissinger is still commonly touted by news media as Dr. Statesman  Emeritus.
> On Feb. 16 of this year, CNN interviewed him live a few hours  after the
> United States and Britain fired missiles at sites near Baghdad.  Anchor
> Bernard Shaw asked about the sanctions against Iraq, but neither man  said
> anything about the human toll -- although an estimated half-million  Iraqi
> children have died as a result of sanctions since the early 1990s.
> Kissinger offered his wisdom: "The United States has absolutely nothing to
> gain abandoning sanctions."
>
> Today, as in the early 1970s, tactical concerns loom large in  Washington's
> corridors of power -- and in much of the news media. On the  networks,
> routine assumptions confine the discourse to exploring how the  U.S.
> government can effectively get its way in the world -- not whether it  has a
> right to do so. For the present, moral dimensions are pushed to the
> margins.
>
> Napoleon observed that it's not necessary to censor the news, it's
> sufficient to delay the news until it no longer matters. That might be a
> bit of an overstatement; truthful information about the past is valuable
> even if it comes late. But when lives are in the balance, truth is vital
> sooner rather than later.
>
> In the present tense, with foreign-policy stakes high, media  professionals
> routinely defer to official sources. Most U.S. journalists  are inclined to
> swallow the deceptions fed from high levels in Washington.  Months or years
> or decades later, big news outlets may report more  difficult truths. But by
> then, the blood has been shed.
>
> No wonder so many high-ranking foreign policy officials are eager  to visit
> network TV studios, especially in times of U.S. military actions.  If the
> questions get prickly, they're apt to be of a tactical nature: Will  this
> missile attack be effective? Will it hurt relations with allies or  backfire
> in world opinion? Did the targets get hit?
>
> We don't hear much fundamental questioning of top officials from  the White
> House or State Department or Pentagon about intervention abroad.  Nor do we
> get much assertive journalism that challenges ongoing support for
> repressive American allies such as Indonesia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt and
> Saudi Arabia. On the "NewsHour" and other major network programs, when the
> subject is current policies, I don't recall questions along the lines of:
> "You're violating human rights. You're killing people. Why don't you stop
> it?"
>
> The recent superb "NewsHour" report on U.S. policies toward Chile  was
> titled "Pursuing the Past." In truth, that's a very tough endeavor for
> mainstream journalists. And pursuing the present is even more difficult.
>
>   Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist. His latest book is "The Habits of
> Highly Deceptive Media."
>
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