Why doesn't the American media cover the war anymore?

Because they can't. More reporters have been killed in Iraq than any other war in modern times. The only safe place to report from is the Green Zone. The only information they get in the Green Zone is provided by military sources.

There are no journalists crazy enough to venture into the countryside and check the veracity of the "al-Qaida" status of each dead body. Besides, honestly, does anyone expect that an al-Qaida fighter is going to be carrying an ID card? Or maybe they tattoo a picture of Osama on their chest.

It's ludicrous.

The whole goddamned mess is a farce and a tragedy.

Somewhere around 70% of the people in this country no longer believe what this government says.

If our supine national press wishes to get that sort of approval rating, also known as cancelled subscriptions and turned-off televisions, then repeating the lies of the administration is probably a fine way to do that.

After 1948, any Arabs who tried to walk back to the homes they had been forced out of by threats of massacre (Dir Yassin, anyone?) were referred to by the Hebrew press as "mistanenim" - infilitrators (מסתננים).

After the PLO was organized, they were "mehablim" or "mehablei fatah" - terrorists or PLO terrorists (מחבלים or מחבלים מארגון הפת"ח).

By the nineties, every time a Palestinian Arab picked up a rock he was "ish Hamas" - a member of the Hamas - or "haver beirgun Az A Din Al Qassem" - a member of the Az A Din Al Qassem Brigade. (איש חמאס or חבר בארגון עז א-דין אל קאסם)

It's a form of dehumanization. First an organization is described as beyond evil - and incidentally, beyond negotiation - and then anyone you don't like gets described as a member of that evil organization.

That doesn't allow much hope for any kind of calming down of the roiling tragedy in Palestine. But why would the U.S. administration want to emulate the total failure that Israel's policies in Palestine are? I understand that they like (some) Israelis, but their policies don't work. Unless, that is, the goal is another roiling tragedy.

Al Qaida=[Origin: < Ar al-qa'ida, lit., the base].

When the White House propagandists are confronted with any questions that reflect Glenn's thesis, look for the Tony Snowish ones to say something to effect:

"The literal translation of Al Qaida from Arabic is "base."

And it's common knowledge in Iraq we are waging a war on the "base"...the terrosist base.

Therefore we deem it fully appropriate to label our current war on terror in Iraq as a fight against the base that wants to kill us. Or, in other words, "Al Qaida."

Retired Military Patriot:

Secretary of Defense Gates should also be asked to reply. He seems to be a man of integrity something very rare in the Bush administration. This would verify or nullify that assumption.

The idea that Gates has integrity is pure wishful thinking and propaganda.

I wrote an article about him at the time of his nomination, here:

http://www.randomlengthsnews.com/archive/gatesnov24.html

Over two decades before the Bush Administration first thought about politicizing intelligence to build a phony case for war against Iraq, Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey, played a trailblazing role in politicizing intelligence within the CIA, vastly inflating the threat posed by the Soviet Union, and blaming it for a wide range of terrorism it had nothing to do with. His right hand man was Robert Gates, President Bush’s appointee to succeed Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.

But Gates did more than politicize intelligence. His involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, selling weapons to the terrorist-supporting Iranian government to illegally fund the terrorist Nicaraguan Contras—came close to getting him indicted. As the Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh (a life-long Republican), explained in his final report, “The issue was whether Independent Counsel could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gates was deliberately not telling the truth.” Just because he declined to indict did not mean he thought that Gates was innocent.

Furthermore, in his book, Firewall: the Iran/Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up,” Walsh explained that Gates set up an internal CIA investigation that hindered his criminal investigation. “No longer would we be able to question CIA witnesses while they were fresh,” Walsh wrote. Instead, they had time to get their stories straight.

As for Iran-Contra itself, national security expert Ivan Evland, of the Independent Institute, recently wrote, “Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Iran-Contra affair was worse for the Republic than the Watergate scandal.... the Reagan administration’s evasion of a congressional ban on assisting the Nicaraguan Contras (the Boland Amendment) was a knife in the heart of the greatest power the Congress has under the checks and balances of the Constitution—the power of the purse.”

....

“Here is a nation that went to war with politicized intelligence,” said former CIA Agent Mel Goodman—a senior Soviet analyst from 1966-1986 who clashed directly with Gates. And now to help clean up the mess, Bush is naming, “someone who was the most important practitioner of politicized intelligence in the history of the CIA,” Goodman stressed, adding, “As Yogi Berra would have said, ‘This is deja-vu all over again.’”

....

Another example Goodman cited was the alleged Papal assassination plot. Casey wanted a report blaming it on the Soviets. “It was Gates who picked the three people who wrote it. And he told them to write it in secret,” Goodman recounted. Yet, “He [Gates] had testified as late as 1983 that the Soviets had nothing to do with it.” Because of this willingness to do whatever he’s asked, Goodman calls Gates “a windsock,” without any core beliefs. For this reason, labels like “neocon,” or “realist” are both irrelevant and misleading, Goodman stressed.

My article went well beyond Gates himself to resurrect the history he was part of. But one thing should be clear: he was at the very heart of the Reagan-era corruption of intelligence. He's the last person one should expect to clean things up. As Goodman said, he's "a windsock" who changes direction with the prevailing wind. We saw how quickly he turned against the Iraq Study Group--which he had been part of--once he joined the Bush team. Folks expected him to persuade Bush to accept the ISG's advice. Those folks clearly had no idea who Gates was.

Don't make the same mistake.