Media en 'onafhankelijke berichtgeving' over oorlogsvoering VS

Melvin Goodman schreef op CounterPunch een artikel over de gekleurde berichtgeving in de reguliere VS media. Met een aantal voorbeelden laat hij zien dat deze media lobbyisten van het militair-industreel complex opvoeren als deskundigen, lobbyisten meestal in de vorm van ex-leger officieren, die dan berichten over de 'geweldige verrichtingen' van het VS leger en hun afschuw uitspreken over landen die de VS niet welgevallig zijn (bijvoorbeeld om het volk 'klaar te praten' voor een nieuwe oorlog, of een luchtaanval op een ander land)...... Zoals te verwachten alles overgoten met een berg leugens, halve waarheden en verdraaiingen om het volk te manipuleren ten gunste van VS terreur elders.......

Mooi dat Goodman alles nog even een aantal voorbeelden noemt, echter de hele berichtgeving in de reguliere (massa-) media is totaal scheef en lijkt eerder op de verdediging van het agressieve inhumane neoliberalisme dat een groot deel van het westen in haar greep heeft...... Wat betreft de rol van die media bij oorlogen, ook hier gebruikt men oud-officieren en figuren van denktanks die fungeren als lobbyisten van: -de wapenindustrie, -de VS agressie en -die van de andere NAVO-lidstaten, om uit te leggen dat 'we het goed doen in het Midden-Oosten.....' Intussen hebben we daar militairen naar toegestuurd op basis van grove leugens, gemaakt door veelal de CIA en NSA, leugens die worden overgenomen in de westerse massamedia als was het de waarheid, terwijl men in deze media dondersgoed weet dat deze geheime diensten (en verreweg de meeste andere westerse geheime diensten) over het algemeen liegen dat het gedrukt staat.... 

Terug naar de media: heb jij ooit een rectificatie in bijvoorbeeld de Volkskrant, of de NRC gelezen voor de leugens die men ventileerde om de illegale oorlogen van de VS te steunen en die als gevolg daarvan bijvoorbeeld in Irak tegen de 2 miljoen mensen het leven hebben gekost? Nee, inderdaad, terwijl deze dagbladen de bek vol hebben over fake news (nepnieuws) en andere desinformatie waarmee het volk zou worden gemanipuleerd...... Precies wat deze mediaorganen zelf deden in aanloop van en tijdens de illegale oorlogen van de VS (met hulp van andere NAVO-lidstaten, waaronder Nederland), oorlogen tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië....

De eigenaren van deze media (in de VS en de rest van het westen) zijn ofwel de super welgestelden, of investeringsgroepen, die beiden belang hebben bij oorlog, uitbuiting en grootschalige vervuiling, dit daar ze grootaandeelhouders zijn in het militair-industrieel complex, de oliemaatschappijen (waaronder ik ook de steen- en bruinkoolmaffia reken) en in de grote multinationals die hun producten in slavenlonenlanden laten maken, zodat ze niet alleen arbeiders voor een appel en ei kunnen uitbuiten, maar waar ze ook geen rekening behoeven te houden met milieuregels, zelfs al zijn die regels ook ontoereikend in het 'dure westen......'

Intussen vergadert veel van het genoemde geteisem in Davos op het World Economic Forum (WEF) over de wereldeconomie........

Ach geen gezeur, het is mooi dat Goodman een aantal voorbeelden geeft, wellicht opent dat de ogen bij een flink aantal mensen.....

January 22, 2020

The Media and the Military Mindset

by Melvin Goodman

U.S. national media have been lazy in their treatment of our military—pandering to the military itself and using retired general officers with ties to the military-industrial complex as spokesmen. The United States is largely in an arms race with itself, but the media typically ignore bloated defense spending. It is past time to reinforce Martin Luther King’s address to the Riverside Church in 1967 that linked chronic domestic poverty and military adventurism.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Department of Defense has been playing an outsize role in the implementation of U.S. foreign policy and has too much clout in the production of intelligence analysis. The administrations of Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump have given the Pentagon an unprecedented position of power and influence, including huge increases in defense spending and a dominant voice in the making of national security  policy. The media, relying for the most part on retired general officers, have been insufficiently critical of this militarization.

The news on cable television relies on retired general officers to analyze and assess the military actions of the United States. Nearly all of these retired generals and admirals have high-level positions at various arms manufacturers, but this is rarely noted. General Jack Keane, one of Donald Trump’s favorite generals, is a frequent analyst on Fox News, but it is never mentioned that the retired general is executive chairman of AM General, a leading defense contractor, best known as the manufacturer of the Humvee and other tactical military vehicles.  Keane obviously has a direct financial interest in the use of force.

NBC News and MSNBC, the so-called liberal voice of cable television, rely on a former student of mine at the National War College, retired Admiral James Stavridis, who is described as the networks’ “chief international security analyst.” The networks never mention that Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, currently works for the Carlyle Group, advising Carlyle on its multibillion-dollar portfolio of defense companies.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, CBS’s in-house military expert is retired Admiral James Winnefeld Jr., a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but also a member of the board at Raytheon, a major defense manufacturer. CNN relied on retired General James Marks in the early years of the Iraq War, without mentioning Marks’ role in obtaining military and intelligence contracts for McNeil Technologies. Marks is back at CNN, but the network never mentions that now he is a venture partner and adviser to a company that invests in military companies.

The Washington Post is guilty of the same kind of enabling of the military. In the wake of the killing of Qassim Soleimani, Stephen Hadley, President George W. Bush’s national security adviser, endorsed the actions of the Trump administration, arguing that the killing could open the door to diplomacy. The Post needed to mention that Hadley is a director at Raytheon, which manufactures components of the drone that killed Major General Soleimani. In other words, it should be noted that Hadley has a vested financial interest in the war. As a letter writer to the Post noted, drone targeting systems aren’t cheap.

In the field of intelligence reporting, MSNBC relies almost entirely on the views of former CIA director John Brennan and deputy director John McLaughlin. Brennan is a peculiar choice because he supported the policy of torture and abuse while serving on the executive staff of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as aiding in the cover-up of the CIA’s role in shooting down a missionary plane over Peru in a botched mission to stop drug trafficking.  
Brennan was also responsible for the order to CIA lawyers and technicians to hack into the computers of the Senate intelligence committee to remove sensitive documentary evidence of the sordid acts of CIA officers.

McLaughlin is a bizarre choice as an intelligence analyst because he led the effort to craft the spurious speech that Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the United Nations only six weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The speech was designed to convince a domestic and international audience of the (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraqi inventories. The speech was particularly successful in fooling the editorial and oped writers of the Washington Post, who claimed they were “convinced” that Iraqi WMD justified Bush’s war.

The U.S. reliance on military force has damaged U.S. national interests at a time when the global community is facing severe economic stress. The Iraq and Afghan wars have cost trillions of dollars and have not made America more secure. The war on terror has created more terrorists than it has eliminated, and recent secretaries of state have failed to question the strategic and geopolitical implications of a wider war in Southwest Asia. The budget of the Department of Defense, exceeding levels reached during the worst days of the Cold War, receives overwhelming bipartisan support.

Even so-called liberal organizations are attracted to these policies. The Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and their scholars—Michael O’Hanlon and Robert Kagan, respectively—have advocated the use of military force in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the media largely ignore the loss of civilian life as they do the destruction of civilian economies, including hospitals, schools, and infrastructure. Nearly
sixty years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex, the United States must come to terms with its elevation of the role of the military; its cult of military spending that has become sacrosanct; and the culture of militarism that has placed U.S. bases all over the globe.  The American public is in danger of knowing only those military policies and actions that the government wants it to know, and the media are insufficiently aggressive in uncovering the nature of U.S. militarism the world over.

More articles by:Melvin Goodman

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent book is “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing), and he is the author of the forthcoming “The Dangerous National Security State” (2020).” Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.