Ayoon Wa Azan (“We Can’t Wait for the Smoking Gun”)

I wrote yesterday that the liberal American media is liberal in every issue except when it comes to those issues that concern Arabs and Muslims, in particular the Palestinian cause since it involves Israel. Nonetheless, those who made the mistakes of being biased, or who admitted to having made these mistakes, have given every possible excuse for their views, but that none of them has ever admitted that it was Israel behind the enthusiasm of some of these liberals for the war; nor did they admit that they failed miserably in exposing the administration’s lies and falsification of the intelligence information in justification of the invasion of Iraq.

The issue here is not about the Likudnik right-wing newspapers, be they the Washington Times, the New York Post or other publications such as the Weekly Standard and Commentary, which all openly profess their support for Israel even while the latter is murdering women and children. Such publications are exposed to everyone, and only the Likudniks – like the papers themselves – believe them. Instead, the issue here is about the New York Times and the Washington Post, and to a lesser extent the Los Angeles Times and other credible and reputable newspapers such as the ones that published the Vietnam War documents and exposed the Watergate scandal, but which then allowed George W. Bush to drag the United States to the devastating wars that have yet to end.

I have reiterated the above time and again since 2003, and then said it again yesterday when I was going over a similar opinion expressed in the book “So Wrong for So Long” written by Greg Mitchell, a witness against the American media of their own, and who cannot be accused – like myself – of being biased in favour of the other side.

The New York Times, or the self-proclaimed most important newspaper in the world (which is something I agree with), has in fact allowed Judith Miller, a secret Likudnik and not just Zionist, to roam freely on its front page, quoting sources such as Ahmed Chalabi and other questionable figures and personalities that know nothing about Iraq. The manner with which Miller was allowed to do so would have been impossible for the newspaper to accept had the target not been an Arab and Muslim country.

As such, we heard about sources of information of the kind that we have only seen before in films, and who were described in terms of baseball lingo, such as the nicknames given to baseball pitches or the caps worn by baseball players and fans. Then after it became too late, and after Iraq collapsed on top of its own inhabitants, the newspaper admitted its error of judgement, and published on the 15th of October, 2005 a 5800-word article that made references to Judith Miller’s diary, and how the name of the CIA Operative Valerie Plame was mentioned in it. The newspaper said that it had spent millions of dollars defending Miller, who ended up in prison because she refused to reveal her source of information, instead of following up one of the biggest scandals of those days.

Nevertheless, this acknowledgment by the newspaper did not stop it from lending its publishing spaces to the known war advocates, such as William Safire who called for the invasion and claimed that the Iraqis will welcome it all throughout 27 of his articles, and Kenneth Adelman who insisted that the war will be a “cakewalk”, and who shed tears of joys in Dick Cheney’s arms when the invasion began...

Furthermore, this major liberal newspaper then left the warmongers to incite against Iran following Iraq, and left Michael Gordon quoting sources similar to those quoted by Miller, such as Ali Moussa Daqduq or Hamid al-Akhras. Thus, lies were spread about Iran by this man, who claimed to have worked with Hezbollah for 24 years; even the liberal-minded Thomas Friedman supported the war on Iraq. Also, the Likudnik warmonger John Bolton went from one liberal newspaper to another, supporting and calling for war up until this very day, and calling for war against Iran, and still finds outlets where he can publish his purely Israeli views today.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post was not any better, and it is enough to prove this that Charles Krauthammer, an Israeli Likudnik whose sole purpose is to serve the occupation of Palestine, and to support every war against Arabs and Muslims, is still allowed to write in this newspaper. These days, Krauthammer is attacking Barack Obama with a purely Likudnik spirit. Also, the liberal-minded Richard Cohen had also voiced his support for the invasion of Iraq in the Washington Post.

This newspaper had in fact published 140 articles that supported the administration’s point of view in going to war, including some by Michael Gerson, a speech writer for George W. Bush who coined the expression “we cannot wait for the smoking gun”, meaning that we cannot wait for conclusive evidence, an expression that was also used by Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq without conclusive evidence. When Gerson left his job at the administration, he was hired by the Washington Post as an op-ed columnist (the two newspapers [the New York Times and Washington post] are now in dispute over advertisement sessions attended by journalists, but that is another story)

Greg Mitchell’s book provides a lot of evidence regarding the complicity of the U.S media with the wars of the Bush administration; perhaps his overview of Bill Moyer’s show on television broadcasted on the 25th of April, 2007 is enough to indict the U.S media: In a broadcast entitled “Buying the war” (meaning to market the war to the American people), some guilty journalists confessed, while others denied [their complicity], with some refusing to appear on the show as if implicitly confessing that they cannot defend themselves against the charges of incitement to commit the crime.

In the end, I want to say that the liberal American media has collapsed because the only party that was benefiting from Bush’s wars was Israel, and that their collapse continues today because there are still those voices in this media that are calling for a war against Iran.

Such a war would perhaps have the same catastrophic consequences despite the fact that it is impossible for Iran to ever become a threat to any American interest.