Corporate Main Stream Media shills, stand up and take a bow. If you had spent the time making sure the public knew the facts about who was behind 9/11 and examining this administration's deceptions about Iraq and Saddam Hussein being connected to 9/11 and al Qaeda with the same energy you dissected Clinton's fling with his intern, perhaps there would not, now, be 2,300 dead American soldiers, and 20,000 maimed. Because you did not, you must now share in that "guilt for the dead" Bradley was talking about. But then, to you, as to the president, the dead are only "other people's kids."
The flags in my town were flying at half-mast on Friday to "honor" the third Roswell soldier killed in Iraq. Collection boxes have been set up at various businesses to benefit his wife and children, thus providing a means by which Roswellians whose kids are not in the military can assuage their consciences for the death of someone else's kid in an unnecessary and disastrous war based on lies and deception.
In "The Accidental Terrorist" a soldier wrote that he was
A time honored family tradition
The floatation device for the working class man"
It may be possible to argue whether or not minorities and the poor are still over-represented in the military. What is not arguable is that virtually none of the children or grandchildren of people in Congress and this Administration, not to mention children of the CEO's and other high-ranking people in the boardrooms of the military-industrial complex, or the children of media anchors and right-wing talk show hosts are serving in the military.
If you have seen the military recruiting commercials flooding the airwaves, you will have noticed the ads do not seem to be aimed at children of rich white people.
Remember Jessica Lynch? She enlisted in the military because she could not get a job at Walmart.
The fact is that two of the three Roswell soldiers killed in Iraq have had Hispanic surnames.
What is fortunate for this administration is that many soldiers were at least as misled as the rest of the population about Iraq and Saddam Hussein even before the military had the opportunity to brainwash them. It is likely such ignorance of the facts influenced the decision of at least some of them to enlist.
A first-ever Zogby survey of U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq found that an astonishing 85% of those questioned believed their mission was "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9-11 attacks." Ninety-three percent said removing Saddam's non-existent WMD's is not the reason U.S. troops are in Iraq. Sixty eight% of the troops think our mission in Iraq was to remove Saddam Hussein from power, while 77% said they believe the main or a major reason for the war was "to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq."
A state-run media could hardly have produced more dismal statistics of public awareness of the facts than has our "free" press, thus proving once again that our pathetic main stream media is little more than a propaganda arm for this corrupt, corporate run, war-mongering and war-profiteering administration.
George W. Bush and members of his administration consistently, and it must be supposed, deliberately, juxtaposed the words "terrorism" and "Saddam Hussein," and the media consistently carried those pronouncements without disputing their implications. Thus, in the minds of the public after 9/11, Osama bin Laden gradually morphed into Saddam Hussein. The participants in that attack and the people who funded it also morphed into Iraqis rather than the Saudis most of them actually were.
Even the 9/11 commission report, accused of going easy on this administration, found that bin Laden was no friend of Saddam, and that he "at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan."
As James Bovard wrote in "Saddam as the Twentieth Hijacker"
"It is vital to recognize how persistently and intently Bush exploited Americans' fears on the Saddam-al-Qaeda link to justify his preemptive assault against Iraq.
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