The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing America's War Profiteers, the Media That Love Them and the Crackdown on our Rights
By Amy Goodman, with David Goodman
Allen & Unwin
346 pages (pb), $24.95
REVIEW BY MAUREEN FRANCES
This book examines how our world changed on September 11, 2001, particularly how the US media uncritically adopted the US government's spin on the "war on terror" and the invasion of Iraq. The implementation of the USAPATRIOT Act and its effect on civil rights also comes under the spotlight in this wide-ranging examination of the US in the 21st century.
September 11 is seen as "blowback" — US government support for tyrants overseas coming back to hurt people in the US. US support for and financing of Osama bin Laden was part of a pattern that included US government backing of the Shah of Iran and support for former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein since 1983. A quotable quote: "The Pentagon knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction because they have the receipts."
The author describes the "oilygarchy" that runs the US and examines the links between oil firms and the government, including the bonanza for these companies resulting from the "reconstruction" of Iraq. It shows that the disincentive to explore the links between Saudi Arabia and terrorism is due to the relationship between the Saudi royal family and the Bush family.
One example of "reconstruction" is the Iraqi mobile phone "solution" — to use the CDMA system despite the rest of the Middle East using GSM, because the US company with the contract operates with CDMA.
In late 2003, US President George Bush put national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in charge of Iraqi reconstruction. Her qualifications for the job included serving on oil giant Chevron's board until 2001. She was in charge of Chevron's policy committee for the last two years of her tenure, when the board successfully fought off shareholder resolutions demanding that Chevron improve its human rights record. In May 2003, Bush signed an executive order immunising oil companies operating in Iraq from any consequences for abusing human rights or polluting the environment.
Forty-five days after September 11 and with virtually no debate, the USAPATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) passed through Congress. The act legalised preventive detention, coercive interrogation and secret deportation hearings in the government's anti-terror campaign.
Between November 2002 and March 2003, men over 16 (including many foreign students) from 25 countries were required to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Many thousands were detained for visa infringements and held for long periods. Hundreds were deported. The USAPATRIOT Act permits the FBI to demand records from libraries of the books patrons read and the websites they visit. Librarians are forbidden to tell anyone if the FBI asks for these records.
The US government created a "terrorist index" containing data about 100,000 "known or suspected terrorists". People have been grabbed for buying pro-peace or anti-war T-shirts. The civil rights of US citizens are under attack. A radio talk-back host offered his government some advice — "If the Iraqis need a new constitution, why not take ours — we're not using it".
In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the US media was an organ of US government propaganda. The New York Times' Judith Miller released several "scoops" based on Pentagon briefings that are now known to be false. The Times has itself admitted that Iraqi "exiles" who provided information exaggerated their claims to have direct knowledge of Hussein's government. The Times also under-reported the size of crowds at anti-war demonstrations — on one occasion because its reporter did not go.
Once the bombs began falling, coverage of the war on US networks consisted chiefly of retired generals and colonels commenting mainly on the efficiency of US weapons. The US media is owned by six large corporations, one of which — General Electric — is a weapons manufacturer. US 60 Minutes' Dan Rather claims that mainstream journalists censor themselves — they pass their questions and commentary through a "patriotism filter", due to fear.
CNN instructed its journalists to follow any footage showing civilian casualties in Afghanistan with a comment that the actions of the US military were in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It is apparently OK to kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan because al Qaeda caused the deaths of innocent US civilians. Yet only al Qaeda are called terrorists.
The Vietnam War taught the Pentagon that public opinion can force the US government to withdraw from an unpopular war. To prevent a repetition of such humiliation, the Pentagon tries to prevent the media from showing to the public the death and destruction associated with war.
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, journalists were "embedded" in US operational units, so that they see only what the military permits them to see. Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke (a former top executive with Hill & Knowlton, the world's largest PR firm) claimed that "we put the same planning and preparation into this as military planners put into the war effort". Rather says the result was limitation of access to information, which "is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted".
Some "unembedded" journalists did visit Iraq, but were taught how dangerous such independence could be. On April 8, 2003, a US tank fired at the fifteenth floor of the Palestine hotel (Reuters' Baghdad headquarters). Around 100 international journalists were staying in the hotel, and two were killed and three injured in the attack. On the same day, the US hit Aljazeera with a missile launched from a plane, killing its chief correspondent and wounding a cameraman. Later, the US battered the headquarters of Abu Dhabi television with artillery. Even within the US, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) has recorded cases of 10 journalists fired or forced to quit for expressing anti-war sentiments or criticising the actions of the US.
The coverage of the war on US mainstream media continues to be sanitised — it is an issue of "taste" according to CNN. Are there any dissenters to the war in Congress? The US media response is "None that matter". Are there any mainstream media outlets willing to criticise US foreign policy? "None that matter."
The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act prohibits the domestic dissemination of US government propaganda. Yet Colonel Sam Gardiner (of the National War College, the Air War College and the Naval War College) has identified more than "50 stories that have been manufactured or engineered that distort the picture" of the war on Iraq for US and British people. Gardiner adds: "When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage." The author concludes that "propaganda requires a gullible and complacent media in order to thrive. The US corporate media played its part to the hilt."
Distorted reporting of the effects of war is not new — the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett travelled to Japan to cover the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. He defied the US military's closure of Southern Japan to the press and was therefore among the first to witness and describe the effects of radiation sickness. After his story was reported in the London Daily Express in September, 1945, the US military reacted by denying the existence of radiation sickness.
Journalist William L Lawrence, who had observed the A-bomb tests in New Mexico, was recruited to write a series of ten articles for the New York Times praising the ingenuity and technical achievements of the nuclear program, and continuing to downplay the human impact of the bombing. He won a Pulitzer Prize for this reporting.
In 2003, Michael Powell (son of Colin and Bush-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission) tried to relax US cross-media ownership laws. By the end of 2003, the FCC and Congress had received 3 million emails, phone calls and letters, mostly opposing deregulation. Despite the FCC voting for deregulation, Congress and the courts have to date resisted it.
An Independent Media Centre was set up in Seattle in 1999 to cover the first World Trade Organisation meeting on US soil. While the major media networks quoted police claims that they were not using rubber bullets on protesters, the IMC reporters were picking up the rubber bullets from the streets by the handful. The author concludes that a free media is a vital protection for our democratic and civil rights.
From Green Left Weekly, January 26, 2005.
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