World to Congress - ENFORCE THE LAW

How does Cheney manage to stay in power when he is so obviously deranged?
He doesn't even like his own country having registered more Halliburton subsidiaries offshore than any executive in Halliburton's history, where they patriotically pay NO TAX to support the American military. What a deal, he can insult the entire populace and bilk you at the same time. No one holds him to account - no one. There is no law in America that applies to a Bushite.








Published on Monday, December 5, 2005
by the Guardian/UK

Propaganda and Bribery - The Bush Administration Will Pay Both at Home and in Iraq for Buying Puff Pieces in the Media
by Peter Preston

It seems such a tiny, insignificant thing. Why worry about planting a little propaganda and bribing a few journalists when your men in the field are dying day after day? "This is war," says the Pentagon. Yes indeed, adds the sonorous senator who chairs the armed services committee, "this is war". And in war, of course, anything goes (even including bombing al-Jazeera) because ... well, it's war, isn't it?



So two linked stories rise, then fade away. Maybe there was outrage last week when the LA Times reported that the department of defence had hired a Washington company called Lincoln Green to harvest phoney tales of triumph written by US army personnel in Iraq - then, duly translated, feed them back to the "free" Baghdad press Donald Rumsfeld loves so much. Maybe eyebrows flickered when it emerged that some Iraqi reporters and editors are on America's payroll. Maybe the Arab world was still fuming over alleged threats to its favourite 24-hour news channel.
But, war changes - and excuses - everything. Events move on. We slide swiftly back to a status quo where politicians seek to make the media the villains of every piece. Re-enter Alastair Campbell, singing his greatest hits (against the BBC). The director of al-Jazeera arrives in Whitehall demanding to see Tony Blair, who turns out to be somewhere else. Dirty, dud yarns don't seem to matter a jot.
...
Nevertheless: some lines can't be crossed, some boundaries of conduct have to be defended. And pushing bundles of dollars under the counter towards journalists of any persuasion in order to buy complaisant coverage direct is one stark frontier too far.
Didn't the Bush team see that when the Armstrong Williams scam was exposed? Didn't it realise that grime sticks to the giver as well as the receiver? Apparently not. Apparently, its moral compass has gone on permanent blink.
Voters, in Iraq as well as Iowa, are grown-up, sentient human beings. You can tell them the truth - that democracy is a rough-and-tumble way of governance - but you cannot foist lies on them in the name of freedom.
Suppose, for the sake of hope and argument, that one fine day the insurgency does begin to fade, that Iraq's economy revives and the first fruits of transition begin to appear. Who'll bring that news and that understanding to the people but the journalists of Iraq, professionals enduring constant peril day by day? But no one, surely, will pay them heed when they begin to bring good news. They will be dismissed, with a shrug, as paid lackeys from an occupying power, hacks who would say that, wouldn't they?
And exactly the same problem infects the al-Jazeera debacle, this time for Blair as well as Bush. The BBC World Service is closing down in much of eastern Europe in order to spend £19m of Foreign Office cash a year on an Arab TV news channel to rival al-Jazeera and bring the western message to the streets of the Middle East. But what are those streets now asked to think? If you can't beat them, bomb them? If you can't woo them, sue them? This isn't just wrong, whether war or not. It is imbecility.
p.preston@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

There is no free press in America, if we glimpse the truth - a terrorist attack on either side of the Atlantic is almost certain, or one narrowly averted, then there is the Ann Coulter noise, the Paris Hilton pawn and if that fails just fixate, repeat and repeat ad nauseum the same information...ANYTHING to divert from the most criminal administration in the history of the United States of America.

Let us stand worldwide and demand that the US congress ENFORCE THE LAW - arrest Bush and Cheney for treason and free the nation, then arrest the US media for criminal complicity in war crimes, and hiding the truth about the criminals in office.