A New Salvo of Bright Spinning Lies- Bush Downplays Growing Iraq Air War [View All]

December 23, 2005
http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=8296

"What's on the horizon for 2006 is that the Bush administration will strive to put any real or imagined reduction of U.S. occupation troop levels in the media spotlight. Meanwhile, the Pentagon will use massive air power in Iraq.

Yes, we should demand swift withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But, at this point, to do so without also demanding an end to U.S. bombing of Iraq is to fall into a trap laid by the war makers in Washington. This kind of thing has happened before – with devastating results for people trying to survive a Pentagon air war that was receiving little U.S. media attention.

The Nixon administration was eager to divert attention from the slaughter in Southeast Asia to peace talks in Paris – and to the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam over a period of more than three years. In general, the networks were all too willing to oblige.

The negotiations and withdrawals served as diversions from bloody facts of the continuing war. The tonnage of U.S. bombing actually increased – while the networks' focus moved away from the ongoing bloodshed. At NBC, for instance, "although combat footage was sent to New York from the Saigon bureau every day for two months following the decision , it was aired only three times on the evening news," journalist Edward Jay Epstein noted. "The preceding year, when there had been almost the same number of American combat deaths during the same period, combat stories were shown almost every night of the week."

full article: http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=8296