So what is new? Ninenteen Eighty-Four is here already. George Orwell wrote his famous dystopia in 1948 to warn that is current trends continued, we would end up with a world at perpetual war with an ill-defined enemy in which the proles would be kept ignorant and rallied with patriotic slogans via a pervasive propaganda machine.

This is what we have now. You can run, but you can't hide. Even if you go to an oil-change place or an airport lounge the propaganda is pumped at you in every waking moment.

The irony is that Orwell saw his book as a warning of a future that all decent people would want to avoid. He never anticipated that political strategists like Rove would take Nineteen Eighty-Four and use it as a procedure manual.

It is no good whining about the commercial media. They are not your friends. They are the apparatus of control. They are the propaganda arm of the military industrial complex of which Eisenhower warned.

Resistance is useless. Admit it. You love Big Brother. Stop struggling and come to Jesus.

A bomb never built a school.

A bomb never healed a wound.

A bomb never fed a child.

The state of mind of what we call "America" has been air-brushed, polished of any flaw, washed and waxed until it gleams.

And it bears no more resemblance to reality than what passes through George W. Bush's addled mind.

No, a bomb never convinced the MSM to tell us the truth.

And we rats continue to push the button for another wee cube of sugar.

The problem with Charlie Rose and his likes, centrists Democrats who are basically decent and intelligent human beings, is that they are wired in a hopelessly mainstream way. To them, the US government may make mistakes, but it always means well and can never be infested with evil and deadly people, because Americans and America is good and honorable. Watching Charlie Rose's face while he was listening to the two Iraqis talk about the utter devastation of their society and about the US failure and responsibility for the catastroph was very telling, because he obviously couldn't deal with that very ugly truth and was getting angry. A typical Charlie Rose reply to devastating criticism by one of his guests of the US involvement in iraq is usually:"you can't tell me our intentions aren't honorable".

Is there any better way to capture the inability and, more importantly, the unwillingness by our media to grasp reality than this?

The dominant narrative, that this is a "war in Iraq", doesn't help either. The 'war' (such as it was) ended in April 2003, and as the Jenning's transcripts make clear, Iraq simply doesn't exist anymore. The possibility of reconstruction of the country has come and gone; all we're left with is what anonymoose cheered so loudly last night.

The US invasion did this. All the misery and death since then came about purely by that event and that decision.

Small wonder the media won't touch this. They, at least, still have the capacity to feel shame at their own part in it.

Anything that promotes war, mental illness, crime, stupidity, or reenforces the model of people as soulless automatons easily controlled and manipulated in order to make them buy stuff, is able to get past the censors with no problem whatsoever.

Freedom of choice!

Another example of a rupture, of the clear control of American media to present a particular point of view was brought up yesterday by Retired Military Patriot.

Last week, the Winter Soldier's Investigation of Iraq and Afghanistan conducted hearings in Maryland on war crimes committed in these wars by the Iraq Veterans Against the War. As RMP detailed, it was news in other countries, in the UK, Australia, and elsewhere, but not even covered in the US. IHT covered it, which is owned and operated by the NYT and WaPo, but not in either paper, Stateside.

It's tantamount to censorship. Perhaps they were worried about another rupture.

Even the two part Frontline piece concentrated in its second part on mistakes made, not on whether or not the whole damn thing was a mistake. War critics. Zeesh!

Last week, the Winter Soldier's Investigation of Iraq and Afghanistan conducted hearings in Maryland on war crimes committed in these wars by the Iraq Veterans Against the War. As RMP detailed . . . .

Does anyone have the link to RMP's comment referenced here?

The hearings were conducted by IVAW, not the crimes. Sorry for the bad phrasing.

I saw Nelson Mandela on Jon Stewart one night and he said "Imagine if the United States exported hope and kindness instead of war what a world it would be" Trillions of dollars spent on the betterment of mankind instaed of war and oil.

John in Florida

RMP's post is at:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/25/war_opponents/view/index43.html?show=all

At the bottom of the page.

And the most amazing part of all of it is that the conventional wisdom holds -- and the establishment press even believes -- that they are the "liberal media," ...

They're called "liberal" because they sometimes screw up and tell the truth. "Conservative media" are more careful to avoid such mistakes.

is to get the Serious People to realize that we are not an occupation force, we are hostages. It sure got Reagan and some of the same Serious People off their asses in 1980 with some other hostages.

Spencer Ackerman:

As long as Maliki is in the prime minister's chair, and as long as we proclaim the Iraqi government he leads to be legitimate, Maliki effectively holds us hostage.

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/maliki-sadr-and-the

I can't say if that is too Orwellian or just 4GW Newspeak, but that's as Asymmetrical as you can get.

WOW. Just WOW. It underscores the criminal nature of this war, this enterprise, and the whole administration. If these crooks think they'll get a pass from historians, they are not only stupid and dishonest, but also dangerously deluded.

PETER JENNINGS

... I think Americans believe that there are millions of Iraqis who would be free, who would be happy to live free from the leadership of President Saddam Hussein. Do you believe that to be the case?

DR. MOHAMMED MOTAFFER ADHAMI

... during the British occupation, Iraqis were suffering. And the British were stealing our oil. It seem that now, the Americans want to do the same.

Thanks for the post, Glenn. This particular section that I've selected reminds me of Charlie Rose's interview, where Sinan Antoon emphasizes that:

1) The "reason" for invading the war changed many times. The above quote clearly indicates that invading Iraq was never perceived by Iraqis as something related to WMDs, and that the MSM was already making an excuse for the Bush administration by citing freedom from Saddam because they realized the argument of WMD was too weak.

2) The oil sector is, sadly, the only well-functioning infrastructure in Iraq now.

Even more revealing is Charlie Rose's vehement reaction to Antoon's observation about the oil sector. Which simply strengthens Antoon's argument of political amnesia: obviously Rose is trying to sell the idea that America was liberating Iraq from a dictator despite the fact that America had a colourful history of supporting dictatorships in the Middle East.