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Banned
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...and what about Iraq? Is it accurate to say that "corporate influences" and agendas had a significant hand in "bombing Iraq back into the stone age"?
The Firefox 3 download map shows downloads of the new internet browser version are more than 500,000 in Iran, and, in Iraq, with a population a bit more than 1/3 the size of Iran's.... Iraqi downloads of the software are.... just 2000 sessions:
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/
Could these be accurate explanations of what has been going on, since 2002?
Quote:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030421/interns
TV's Conflicted Experts
By Daniel Benaim, Priyanka Motaparthy & Vishesh Kumar
This article appeared in the April 21, 2003 edition of The Nation.
April 3, 2003
Perhaps Americans can be excused for imagining that "regime change" in Iraq would be a cakewalk. So did Don Rumsfeld, who lashed back at critics accusing him of approving a too-optimistic war plan. Like Rumsfeld, a veritable army of ex-generals playing military analysts on TV seem to have gotten the story wrong, too, and are only now, very belatedly, changing their tune.
One might have expected a pro-military slant in any former general's initial estimation of the US invasion. But some of these ex-generals also have ideological or financial stakes in the war. Many hold paid advisory board and executive positions at defense companies and serve as advisers for groups that promoted an invasion of Iraq. Their offscreen commitments raise questions about whether they are influenced by more than just "a lifetime of experience and objectivity"--in the words of Lieut. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a military analyst for NBC News--as they explain the risks of this war to the American people.
McCaffrey and his NBC colleague Col. Wayne Downing, who reports nightly from Kuwait, are both on the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a Washington-based lobbying group formed last October to bolster public support for a war. Its stated mission is to "engage in educational advocacy efforts to mobilize US and international support for policies aimed at ending the aggression of Saddam Hussein," and among its targets are the US and European media. The group is chaired by Bruce Jackson, former vice president of defense giant Lockheed Martin (manufacturer of the F-117 Nighthawk, the F-16 Fighting Falcon and other aircraft in use in Iraq), and includes such neocon luminaries as former Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle. Downing has also served as an unpaid lobbyist and adviser to the Iraqi National Congress, an Administration-backed (and bankrolled) opposition group that stands to profit from regime change in Iraq.
NBC News has yet to disclose those or other involvements that give McCaffrey a vested interest in Operation Iraqi Freedom. McCaffrey, who commanded an infantry division in the Gulf War, is now on the board of Mitretek, Veritas Capital and two Veritas companies, Raytheon Aerospace and Integrated Defense Technologies--all of which have multimillion-dollar government defense contracts. Despite that, IDT is floundering--its stock price has fallen by half since March 2002--a situation that one stock analyst says war could remedy. Since IDT is a specialist in tank upgrades, the company stands to benefit significantly from a massive ground war. McCaffrey has recently emerged as the most outspoken military critic of Rumsfeld's approach to the war, but his primary complaint is that "armor and artillery don't count" enough. In McCaffrey's recent MSNBC commentary, he exclaimed enthusiastically, "Thank God for the Abrams tank and... the Bradley fighting vehicle," and added for good measure that the "war isn't over until we've got a tank sitting on top of Saddam's bunker." In March alone, IDT received more than $14 million worth of contracts relating to Abrams and Bradley machinery parts and support hardware.
Downing has his own entanglements. The colonel serves on the board of directors at Metal Storm Ltd., a ballistics-technology company that has contracts with US and Australian defense departments. The company's executive director told the New York Times on March 31 that Metal Storm technologies would "provide some significant advantage" in the type of urban warfare being fought in Iraq.
At Fox News, military analysts Lieut. Col. Bill Cowan and Maj. Robert Bevelacqua are CEO and vice president, respectively, of wvc3 Group, a defense consulting firm that helps arms companies sell their wares to the government. It recently inked an exclusive deal with New Zealand's TGR Helicorp and will help the company hawk its military aviation equipment to the United States. The firm trades on its inside contacts with the US military, and a message on its website reads, "We use our credibility to promote your technology" (accompanied by the sound of loud gunfire).
The networks don't seem too concerned about what the analysts do on their own time. "We are employing them for their military expertise, not their political views," Elena Nachmanoff, vice president of talent development at NBC News, told The Nation. She says that NBC's military experts play an influential role behind the scenes, briefing executive producers and holding seminars for staffers that provide "texture for both on-air pieces and background." Defense contracts, she adds, are "not our interest."
"We expect the analysts to keep their other interests out of their commentary, or we stop using them," says Kim Hume, Fox Washington bureau chief, though she concedes that the network has yet to sever its relationship with any analyst for this reason. She says the network is aware of various political and financial ties (Fox's website mentions wvc3 in Cowan's and Bevelacqua's bios) but refused to discuss the issue. Hume says only that Fox military analyst Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, who represents several information-technology companies, is valuable as a commentator on psychological operations.
Shortly after the Vietnam War, Vallely pioneered a concept he called MindWar, a strategy that uses "electronic media--television and radio" in the "deliberate, aggressive convincing of all participants in a war that we will win that war." With the televised version of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we may be watching his theory at work--and at a tidy profit, too.
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Fast forward five years, and "NBC has still yet to disclose":
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...4/30/williams/
Wednesday April 30, 2008 07:00 EDT
Brian Williams' "response" to the military analyst story
(updated below)
It has now been more than 77 days http://home.comcast.net/~d.leedle/news/ since the New York Times exposed the Pentagon's domestic propaganda program involving retired generals and, still, not a single major news network has even mentioned the story to their viewers, let alone responded to the numerous questions surrounding their own behavior. This steadfast blackout occurs despite the fact that the Pentagon propaganda program almost certainly violates http://www.prwatch.org/node/7261 numerous federal laws; http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...16a539362.html both Democratic presidential candidates sternly denounced the Pentagon's conduct; http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campa..._mccain_silent and Congressional inquiries http://utdocuments.blogspot.com/2008...elauro-to.html are already underway, all of which forced the Pentagon to announce http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/wa...gg&exprod=digg that it suspended its program.
Still, there has not been a peep from the major news networks at the center of the storm, the integrity of whose reporting on the Iraq war is directly implicated by this story. Even establishment media defender Howard Kurtz called their ongoing failure to cover this story http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...8/04/28/kurtz/ "pathetic."
Like Fox and CBS, NBC News outright refused to answer any questions about the allegations when asked by the NYT's David Bartsow, and its prime time anchor, Brian Williams, has delivered seven broadcasts since the story was published and has not uttered a word to NBC's viewers about any of it. Yesterday, I wrote about http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...ams/index.html an entry on Williams' blog http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/ar...28/953442.aspx -- which he calls "The Daily Nightly" -- in which Williams found the time to mock one frivolous cultural puff piece after the next in the Sunday edition of the NYT, even as he still had refused even to acknowledge the expose in last Sunday's NYT that calls into serious question the truthfulness and reliability of his "journalism."
After I wrote about Williams' blog item yesterday, his blog was deluged with commenters angrily demanding to know http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/ar...53442.aspx?p=2 why he has failed to address the NYT expose. In response, Williams wrote a new blog item last night http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/ar...29/958477.aspx in which he purports -- finally -- to respond to the story, and I can't recommend highly enough that it be read by anyone wanting to understand how our establishment journalist class thinks and acts.
The essence of Williams' response: he did absolutely nothing wrong. Nor did any of the military analysts used by NBC News. Nor did his network. These are all honest, patriotic men whose integrity is beyond reproach. Here's but a sampling of Williams' defense:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by NBC's Brian Williams
A few of you correctly noted I’ve yet to respond to the recent Times front-page article on the military analysts employed by the television networks, including this one.
I read the article with great interest. I've worked with two men since I've had this job -- both retired, heavily-decorated U.S. Army four-star Generals -- Wayne Downing and Barry McCaffrey. As I'm sure is obvious to even a casual viewer, I quickly entered into a close friendship with both men. . . .
All I can say is this: these two guys never gave what I considered to be the party line. They were tough, honest critics of the U.S. military effort in Iraq. If you've had any exposure to retired officers of that rank (and we've not had any five-star Generals in the modern era) then you know: these men are passionate patriots. In my dealings with them, they were also honest brokers. . . .
At no time did our analysts, on my watch or to my knowledge, attempt to push a rosy Pentagon agenda before our viewers. I think they are better men than that, and I believe our news division is better than that.
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Williams argues that the two retired Generals whom he identified in particular -- Downing and McCaffrey -- voiced "harsh criticism of the Rumsfeld Pentagon and the war effort." As proof, he cites a McCaffrey quote from 2006 -- more then 3 years after we invaded Iraq -- in which McCaffrey said there was a civil war there and that "it's a very bad situation, and it's getting worse." He also said Downing was angry that we didn't use more troops for the invasion.
That is the sum and substance of Williams' response to allegations that these analysts were presented as "independent" despite having multiple political and financial ties which negated their independence. There is no indication that he has any plans to tell his viewers about the story. And he seems to think that this smug, dismissive response resolves the questions surrounding the behavior of NBC News. It doesn't. If fact, Williams' response -- and his citation to these two specific retired Generals -- raises far more questions than it answers.
* * * * *
Both McCaffrey and Downing were about as far from "independent" as a news analyst could possibly be. On November 15, 2002, a press release http://utdocuments.blogspot.com/2008...raq-press.html was issued announcing the formation of something called "The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," which was devoted "to advocat[ing] freedom and democracy in Iraq." Its list of 25 members was filled to the brim with the standard cast of war-hungry neocons -- including Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Leon Wieseltier, Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, Eliot Cohen, and anti-Muslim "scholar" Bernard Lewis. Both Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing -- the two extremely independent "news sources" hailed yesterday by Brian Williams -- were two of its 25 founding members.
On the day of its formation, the group announced that they would meet later that day with then-National Security Adviser Condolleeza Rice to discuss Iraq. The group's President was quoted in the Press Release as follows: "We believe it is time to confront the clear and present danger posed by Saddam Hussein's regime by liberating the Iraqi people." Here was its stated purpose:
The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq will engage in educational and advocacy efforts to mobilize domestic and international support for policies aimed at ending the aggression of Saddam Hussein and freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny. The Committee is committed to work beyond the liberation of Iraq to the reconstruction of its economy and the establishment of political pluralism, democratic institutions, and the rule of law.
So this was a group devoted to building domestic support in the U.S. for the invasion of Iraq through so-called "educational and advocacy efforts." And NBC News then hired both Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing as supposedly "independent analysts" to opine to NBC's viewers about the war, and did so without ever once disclosing this affiliation to their viewers, without ever disclosing that they were dedicated to propagandizing on behalf of the Bush administration's desire to invade Iraq.
Beyond their ideological affiliations that negated their "independence," both McCaffrey and Downing had substantial ties to the defense industry which gave them strong financial incentives to advocate for the war. ...
.....Just consider what is going on here. The core credibility of war reporting by Brian Williams and NBC News has been severely undermined by a major NYT expose. That story involves likely illegal behavior by the Pentagon, in which NBC News appears to have been complicit, resulting in the deceitful presentation of highly biased and conflicted individuals as "independent" news analysts. Yet they refuse to tell their viewers about any of this, and refuse to address any of the questions that have been raised.
More amazingly still, when Brian Williams is forced by a virtual mob on his blog yesterday finally to address this issue -- something he really couldn't avoid doing given that, the day before, he found time to analyze seven other NYT articles -- Williams cited McCaffrey and Downing as proof that they did nothing wrong, and insists that his and their credibility simply ought to be beyond reproach because they are good, patriotic men. But those two individuals in particular had all kinds of ties to the Government, the defense industry, and ideological groups which gave them vested interests in vigorous pro-war advocacy -- ties which NBC News knew about and failed to disclose, all while presenting these individuals to their millions of viewers as "independent." Is there anyone who thinks that behavior is anything other than deeply corrupt?
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As of today, no American television broadcast network, including NBC....has reported anything about the NY Times April 20 expose, or about their own failure to inform their viewers/listeners about the conflicts of interests of the "military experts" they hired and put on the air to "inform" the American public about the war in Iraq.
There is also this reporting of intentional government policy to "enhance" the bottom lines of military contractors via the use of a retired general who is now
serving on the boards of directors of three of these contractors:
Quote:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi...p1=MEWell_Pos2
An undiplomatic conflict of interest
By Kevin McKiernan | November 1, 2006
MOST PEOPLE would agree that it's bad ethics for government officials to invest in companies that they regulate. But what about a US special envoy to a Middle East trouble spot who happens to be a director of an arms company selling weapons to one of the parties in the conflict?
That's the case of retired Air Force General Joseph Ralston, who was appointed by the Bush administration in August to help US ally Turkey counter the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK , the Kurdish rebels who are seeking autonomy from Turkey and have bases in northern Iraq. Ralston, a former NATO supreme allied commander, has been negotiating with Turkish generals and Iraqi leaders since his appointment to develop measures to eliminate the bases.
The problem is that General Ralston is on the board of Lockheed Martin, the world's largest arms maker, which just last month finalized a $2.9 billion sale for advanced F-16 fighters that may well be used in the Kurdish region (the State Department acknowledges that F-16 s were involved in human rights abuses in Turkey in the 1990s). This gives the ex-general the appearance of holding a financial interest in his shuttle diplomacy.
The administration hopes the Ralston appointment will boost US-Turkish ties, which soured on the eve of the Iraq war after Turkey refused to allow American troops to deploy from Turkish soil. But the issue of PKK guerrillas, who have been battling the US-equipped Turkish army for 22 years, is complicated, and efforts to impose a military solution without causing more regional instability may backfire.
The Kurdish uprising in the 1990s in Turkey accounted for approximately 37,000 deaths, most of them ethnic Kurds. Whatever happens next will be closely watched by the restive population of 25 million stateless Kurds who spill across the borders of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria.
Both the United States and the European Union regard the PKK as terrorists, but the group finds support among Turkey's long-abused Kurds. At the same time, Kurds who hoped the Turkish government would grant educational and broadcasting rights were disappointed in 2004 when the PKK ended its unilateral, five-year cease-fire and went back to war.
Now Turkey and the Kurds appear to be on a new collision course, and Lockheed Martin, General Ralston's company, may play a pivotal role. Last spring, Turkey moved 200,000 troops to its southern border, and its generals have been pressing Washington for a green light to enter Iraq to attack the rebel sanctuaries. Iraq's government opposes the threatened incursion, arguing it would only add to existing chaos in the country.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders fear local Kurds would join Turkish Kurds to fight the Turkish army -- the largest NATO power (after the United States) -- and the result would be a Kurdish bloodbath. Privately, Iraqi Kurdish leaders complain that the issue of PKK bases is only a pretext. They claim that Ankara's real target is Kirkuk, the multiethnic, oil-rich city that Iraqi Kurds vow to incorporate into their semi-autonomous zone by 2007.
Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, recently played a key role in behind-the-scenes negotiations to disarm the guerrillas. The result was a cease-fire announcement on Oct. 1 by the rebels, who also declared they might hand over weapons to US forces in Iraq in exchange for Turkish concessions that include human rights reforms and amnesty for rebels. In a speech in Istanbul last month Ralston opposed amnesty and dismissed the cease-fire, declaring he would never "negotiate with terrorists."
General Ralston is on the board of the American Turkish Council, the powerful Capitol Hill lobby, and he is vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a corporation founded by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, with close ties to the Turkish military. Unfortunately, Ralston carries too much baggage to be special envoy, and he should step down before he alienates the Kurds of Iraq, the best -- and perhaps only -- friend the US government has in the country.
With the looming threat of civil or even wider war in the region, the United States needs a skilled, disinterested negotiator to resolve the PKK issue, while finding a peaceful solution to legitimate Kurdish grievances.
Our new man in Ankara will be seen as an arms merchant in diplomat's clothing. He should be replaced.
Kevin McKiernan has covered the Iraq war for ABC News. He is the author of "The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland."
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Air Force General Joseph Ralston served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was expected to succeed Gen. Hugh Shelton as chairman, in 2001, but, because he had had an publicized extramarital affair with a CIA employee in the 1980's, over the public objections of his then estranged wife, and was being considered for the promotion to chief while the USAF was forcing the first female B-52 pilot to resign her commission because of an extramarital affair.......Gen. Ralston only had the clout to "bump" Gen. Wesley Clark into premature transfer out of the NATO command, and early retirement from his assignment as supreme allied commander of NATO.
We need to raise public awareness about what is being done, organize peaceful protests against these companies and boycotts of their consumer products, broadcasts, etc. We need to vote for people committed to holding these corporations responsible. The FCC has a strict policy against the broadcasting of "fake news", and it has the power to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV and radio stations owned by these networks!
Last edited by host; 07-06-2008 at 11:02 AM..
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