NP worth reading, re Iraq

[pynchonoid]

Trust Colin Powell?
A Retrospective
February 6, 2003

The U.S. news media promoted two "themes" about
Secretary of State Colin Powell's trip to the United
Nations where he buttressed George W. Bush’s case for
war with Iraq by presenting satellite photographs of
trucks outside buildings and snippets of intercepted
conversations.

While the “evidence” on its face didn’t seem to prove
much of anything, the media's first "theme" was that
Powell is a trustworthy man of principle, a straight
talker who wouldn't be part of some cheap propaganda
ploy. The second "theme" was that Powell’s appearance
before the United Nations was a kind of sequel to
Adlai Stevenson’s convincing case that Soviet missiles
had been installed in Cuba in 1962.

But both themes – Powell’s trustworthiness and the
Cuban missile precedent – may be misleading, as
articles below from the Consortiumnews.com Archives
will demonstrate.

Powell’s press clippings aside, his real history is
one of consistent political opportunism. For the full
picture, see the series, “Behind Colin Powell’s
Legend” or read the excerpt below that recounts how
Powell advanced his political standing with the first
Bush administration at the expense of the U.S. field
commanders during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

On the second "theme," instead of the Cuban missile
crisis, a better historical parallel may be the Reagan
administration’s fabricated presentation to the UN
following the Soviets’ downing of the Korean Airlines
Flight 007 after it flew over Russian territory.
Though the evidence supported a case of outrageous
Soviet bungling, that was not enough for the Reagan
administration, which was determined to exaggerate the
case and chose to willfully mislead the American
people and the world community by insisting that the
incident was cold-blooded murder.

To achieve that propaganda coup, U.S. diplomats
manipulated the release of intercepted radio
communications from the Soviet military to give the
impression of premeditation. This disinformation caper
was later admitted by a participant in the scheme,
Alvin A. Snyder in his book, Warriors of
Disinformation. Snyder explained that in such
situations, "the key is to lie first." The
Consortiumnews.com's full story about the KAL 007
incident is republished below. [...] 

continues:
<http://www.consortiumnews.com/2003/020603a.html>

...enjoy!

-Doug


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