AnthonyB:

the book o.k-ing torture to which i referred is: "bioethics and armed conflict; moral dilemmas of medicine and war," by michael l. gross (M.I.T.Press).

so...do i get an apology for your claim that what i wrote earlier was "heresay" - and for its angry & spurious insinuations that anything i say, think or feel should be accordingly discounted?

does this mistake on YOUR part mean that everything YOU write should be discounted..?

i didn't care for your tone, one bit - you are not remotely civil (or right) - and i can see that other educated humanists writing in don't, either.

have you ever thought what the equally-negative, opposite of an anti-semite is?

you would do well to do so - as you seem to qualify - unfortunately.

cwny.

Great shit, Gary. During 2003, at least, both Bill Moyers - on his show "NOW" - and Frontline reported on the questions that should have been asked by all honest journalists at that time. For many of us, the runup to the invasion was a flashback to the public stupidity that elected Nixon. Twice. If Americans truly valued education they wouldn't need to rely on journalists to guide their opinions.

It's just as tiresome and dangerous to rehash the oft-spouted "The nation was duped because of Israel and the powerful American Jews and their supporters" as it is to keep blaming media coverage for the U.S. population's stupidity in 2002-2003 when I, not the greatest or most informed of the population, was able to discern from the start that Iraq was an expensive, unjustified, profit-seeking, and dangerous war.

Gary,

I wanted to thank you for a thoughtful and thought provoking article about the role of the media in the run-up to the Iraq War. Your breakdown of the psychological, ideological and institutional influences on the media, especially with respect to broadcast media, is right on the mark. I was the editorial consultant on Kristina Borjesson's book, "Feet to the Fire," which you graciously mention in your story, and it is heartening to see this discussion continuing with such depth and insight in Salon Letters.

If the press is "toothless" how do you explain what happened to Imus?

Oh yeah, they are providing a smokescreen to help bushco, fascists and the war profiteers get away with treason.

Did you know yesterday was the anniversary of the start of the Civil War? Were all the bloody shirt wavers out there protesting?

mahoney.

Gary ends the excellent article with a hopeful ending about the press getting better at doing their job. I was hoping the same thing until the hyena like attacks on Speaker Pelosi over her Syria trip. Watching Dick Gregory maligned her made me wish they we could actually reach through our televisions. I was hopeful too; after this week, I'm being real cautious.

I'm the last real socialist here. Nice try though. You are being lied to by the left as clumsily as you are being shouted at by the right. Keep up the nice stereotypes though.

even though it may well ruin RealName and AnthonyB's day to read a "leftist," "pro-middle-east, as opposed to pro-israel per se" write this (i.e. something they'd expect someone on the right to spill), i distinctly remember reading that george soros - whom i otherwise admire - actually bought a huge position in harkin oil, at a time crucial for gwb.

ah, for hindsight...

should be fairly easy to check - no?

was that your point?

i have to say that you choose a self-defeating argument with which to "prove" that one has to be on the right to see that iran "meddles" in lebanon's affairs; after the egregious ways in which we interferred in iran's history from the early 1950's on, it would be truly dysfunctional of iranians to have any fond feelings for us/for our allies/or for our policies. (if we have any allies left, after this debacle in iraq). my father was posted to teheran in 1952 (by the unicef) & always marvelled that the u.s. somehow decided it was o.k. to present mossadegh as a communist enemy of the u.s. & the shah as iran's rightful ruler when mossadegh was in fact a member of the legitimate, former royal dynasty and a brilliant intellectual trying to keep some of iran's oil revenues for his own country and the shah was the son of a fascist, peasant usurper. my mother - a much-decorated french, catholic resistance fighter (who spent the last year of the war being tortured and then in ravensbruck) - nearly died all over again when we were posted to beirut in 1951 and she got to see the palestinian refugee camps: she foolishly had believed that part of the point of winning world war 2 was so that there would never again BE concentration camps. that other muslim states would find the plight of such developments can hardly be taken as surprising to people with any intelligence.

while it is difficult to know all the facets of history, yours seems to me a rather simplistic analysis & and not compassionate.

Thanks for the long boring way you eventually devolve into namecalling. It's so.....enlightened.

Maybe you're in one of the pictures?

http://www.zombietime.com/berkeley_racist_literature/

1) thank you "lev" for nailing "realname's" ugly use of the "anti-semitism card"

&

2) "MacK:" i have to be a little worried about the rest of your explanation of "facts about iraq" when you start off by calling the ottoman high administration "the divine porte..." (it was called " the sublime porte.")

that's right, realname, sarcasm:

"don't get it. Why do you hate the jews?

They are no different than anyone else."

genes schmemes who knows, what i do know is a fairly easy marker for b.p.d. - that's the polite term for it - the other two terms are bad for business.

you are flat, with depth comes understanding. you are presenting yourself as a two dimensional comic book character. this is analgous to the child ego, the territorial reptilian circuit of the brain. you should try to activate the other circuits. then you may be able to present arguments or examples in order to better present your case without resorting to pretending that those who do not agree with you are jew haters.

you wouldn't happen to work on 17th street - wink wink nudge nudge, know what i mean?

maybe its just the same pathology.

but, i pretty sure i know your real name.

how's business?