I don’t believe we, as a nation of independent thinkers, can blame the media. I have watched CNN for several years now, especially since the war began, and I find that is has been depicting the sad truth about this war. In fact, the sad truth has been plastered all over our TV screens on every network.

Initially, I was a bit disgusted at the press. Yes, it helped the great propaganda machine when it showed Iraqi’s celebrating in the streets as the statue of Saddam was pulled down. But, within two days of those pictures airing, ABC news did a rather honest piece about what we were really seeing during that ‘celebration.’ It was a cropped picture, with only the crowd being shown in the field of vision. The original shot showed very empty streets inhabited by this one group of people dragging the statue down the street. They even went so far as to freeze the picture, and show you how many civilians were actually there and how many of the crowd were actually reporters.

The press is what solidified my disdain for the war before we even invaded. They interviewed George W, asked why we were invading (WMD, direct links to Al Qaeda, and liberation for the Iraqi people), and then asked him to show us some evidence. A grainy satellite shot of what was supposed to be a terrorist training camp taken above Iraq was all he could come up with; along with his claims of intelligence information. NOBODY QUESTIONED THIS! Everybody just started waving their flags and yelling, “Let’s go kick their asses!� Is this the press’s fault? I think not.

We have been living in our safe bubble, and being lead around by the nose; not by the media, but by our own apathy which allows us to jump on a band wagon when we don’t want think things through.

I believe the media has and continues to show us the truth, albeit from several different perspectives, and it was the citizens of this great nation that chose to ignore the fact that we invaded a sovereign nation without a clue as to how we would proceed once the government toppled. I blame the people. WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER!

Just my opinion.

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FracturedMindset

Never heard or saw a single dissenting voice on CNN during the lead-up to war time, though thens of thousands actively protested against it in America and hundreds of thousands protested it worldwide. Couldn't find the time for a single interview explaining why.

All those inbed/inbred reporters? Ever hear one of them ask a soldier any kind of important question about why they thought they were Over There, with so many Americans unsure what the actual reason was?

Never heard Cindy Sheehan's voice, even once until she got booted out of the gallery at the President's State of the Union Address, to whit: she got into the state of the union address before she ever got on CNN. She'd been around, dude, she'd been speaking at speech after speech after convention, what-have-you. And they'd show clips of her speaking but you never heard her voice or what she was saying. Not even once. And she would have loved to do an interview for CNN, I assure you. She has a message, remember?

The Media is Big Business. Big Business runs the White House (whether you have a Dem in there or a Repubby, I'm afraid), therefore Big Business, Big Media and the Government are one and the same thing.

Welcome to the Coalition of the Incorporated, and it has it's grubby little hands in every facet of American Life, including your thoughts and perception of the world.

But I'm not blaming the mechanism of propaganda propagation, I blame the idiot Recievers who never think to question, who never use critical thought just because it's coming from that chowderhead Paula Zahn or that big pimp Lou Dobbs.

And I'm not a person that believes there is a Devil or that he sometimes walks the earth in the guise of Man, but if there is and he does I just KNOW it's gotta be Bill O'Reilley. The sick bastard.

-SenseChange

I think it is at this point more or less accepted as the "conventional wisdom" that the current administration was intent on invading iraq before 9/11 ever happened.

9/11 simply played into their hands for achieving that goal. But they could not, of course, come out and say that they were utilizing 9/11 to pursue their own agenda. They had to fabricate other reasons and when it wasn't that easy to come up with anything convincing they had to exaggerate a bit and when the truth started to come out that's when they started to change their supposed reasoning behind the iraq invasion.

I don't think this administration was ever all that interested in going into afghanistan and i'm not sure that they have ever shown much enthusiasm for going after bin laden.

Their neglect of Afghanistan becomes more and more pronounced by the day; just a day or two ago i saw some headlines about a resurgent taliban taking over more and more territory in afghanistan as the over extended USA army can no longer do a good job of opposing them there.

There may have been some justification for the USA to go into Afghanistan as that was the base of operations for the taliban (supporters of Bin Laden and al qaeda) and that seems to have been the spot from which bin laden and his cohorts helped to engineer plots such as 9/11.

But when Bush made a decision to switch the emphasis of the "war on terror" from Afghanistan/Pakistan and the hunt for bin laden to a misguided invasion of iraq, all because he was hell bent on invading iraq no matter whether there was a good rationale or not, then i think he made a historic strategic error.

It was a strategic error so bad that it's going to go down in the history book of all time bad strategy moves.

And who knows how long we'll be picking up the pieces..........

OH, they wanted into Afghanistan alright Shiva, and Osama or not, they got done precisely what they wanted to: oil-lines are now pumping through that land where they've never been before. Not to mention another ridiculously large military base right in the middle of the oil-rich Middle East. Nope, Afghanistan's been part of the plan too.

I'd be sweating bullets if I were Iran right now. You know Iran, the piece in the middle? Sheesh.

Fact is, these guys don't care about "fighting terrorism" and never have! If they did those bloody ports would be sealed up tight and the borders wouldn't be the ridiculous joke that they are.

And they certainly would never have invaded Iraq -which had a bunch of poor people who had suffered under Saddam and the economic embargoes that killed thousands during the nineties and early 2Ks.

This is the Middle East! You didn't think anybody'd get pissed off about a foreign, pro-Israel and predominantly Christian invading force rolling right through the middle of the place? Please. Dubya may be an idiot (and I'm gonna say 'may' here, if you can dig that) but Cheney certainly is not. A bad guy to go hunting with when he's been drinking, certainly, but no fool.

They knew damn well that invading Iraq was going to create untold thousands of more terrorists. They didn't and don't give a shit, they got their eye on the real prize: a friendly hand on the spigot and boots on the ground for when the shit comes down.

A bunch of Americans get killed in another terrorist strike? It actually helps their cause. Look at the state of America right now, my friend, a few more terrorist attacks and they can institute the draft NO PROBLEM and the country would get behind the extermination of a nation of grandmothers and buck-toothed babies if it came to that. That bloodthirsty Pastor Bob Jr or whatever his name is will be leading the charge to sign up his paritioners, I can assure you that.

Keep your head down, Citizen, and your pecker up!

-SenseChange

Yeah that is true.

That point was made in "Farenheit 9/11" about bush going into afghanistan for the oil.

What i meant was like this:

The Bush team was not interested in going into afghanistan as part of the so called "war on terror."

In fact, as you say, the hunt for oil was probably the only thing that ever got them in there.

And since they never really had any interest in afghanistan in a strategic sense that relates to the "war", hence our military offensive there is now crumbling.

If the support in the USA for the war on iraq hadn't crumbled away to the extent that it has then we would be invading iran, no doubt about it.

Some well known investigative reporters, like seymour hersh, wrote long articles in publications like the New Yorker about the government's plans to invade iran.

Did i read those articles..........?

No, but i did see seymor hersh talk about them on the daily show......!

I agree. I would have voted for a block of wood too.

Dreams Matter.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/6562/pchan_stockton.html

I hereby nominate: Largish Chunk of Wood!