Feeding the sheep

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There is yet another report in the mainstream media today -- this time in the NYT, which prints so much that is unfit -- of White House "concepts for reducing American combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year, according to senior administration officials in the midst of the internal debate". Think about this for a moment: What exactly are "concepts"? Are they concrete plans or, much more likely, vague notions being tossed around because everything has gone wrong in a war that drags on and on and that has more or less destroyed the president's credibility and his party's electoral fortunes? And are we honestly to believe that there is some genuine "internal debate" in progress? Would it not be more appropriate to view this latest report as yet more of the same old warmongering spin being lapped up by a willing and eager and essentially bankrupt media establishment?

For more on this, see Glenn Greenwald, who posts the evidence. This does indeed seem to be yet another appearance of the eternal recurrence of the same old warmongering spin, "the same exact false assurances about Iraq -- virtually verbatim -- in order to protect themselves politically".

With the controversial war-funding bill now behind us -- and, as I said yesterday, we must unite around the common goal of putting an end as soon as possible to this disastrous war, not allow internal differences to overwhelm us -- we must not allow them to get away with it. The media may lap it all up, but all the bullshit coming out of the White House, and from the ranks of the warmongers generally, is nothing but cynical deception. And we don't need Penn and Teller to show us how it's done. It's all quite obvious.