Letters from the Editor in Chief

This is all great stuff. Good jumping onto the bandwagon. But there remains one key question: Who is going to be held responsible for the lies that got us to this point, the killings of innocent Iraqis, the useless loss of American soldiers' lives? Certainly not the people responsible.

I'm not making excuses for the news media, but you would have to live here to know what it's been like. Don't you remember that the Bush administration allegedly leaked the identity of a CIA operative in retaliation for speaking out against the American government?

This country was thick with rumors about secret wiretaps, and that if someone spoke about terrorists or the word was found in an email, any American citizen could be taken in by the FBI. People were afraid to say certain words here.

Can you even imagine being a reporter under this regime? In Iraq no one would question a reporter being killed in "crossfire".

Now I hear that any American citizen who wants a passport will be fingerprinted like a common criminal before they are allowed to leave the country. Supposedly it is to protect against "identity theft" from electronic passports.

There is no question in my mind that reporters were intimidated by the government and their information probably "erased".

The US media displayed a pack-like mentalitly before the invasion of Iraq. They were the President's stenographers who merely repeated his assertions. He stressed the horror of 9/11 and used fear as a racheting tool.

At the present Iraq is experiencing a 9/11 almost monthly. What should be the response of the Iraqis?(rhetorically)

As for the US media, I am keenly aware of their errors of omission.

Thank You.

The report seems to make no mention of the fact that the entire disaster was started by using the U.S. media as jingoistic drumbeaters enabling Bush & Co to pull it off in the first place. It is frightening to see the collective amnesia that has settled over this whole debacle in the American media.
Why would anyone trust Bush and his handlers to 'fix' Iraq. Why is no one in the mainstream media stating the obvious...This war was started with a lie, mishandled so badly that upwards of 200,000 innocent people are now dead and an entire country laid waste by chaos. Corporate U.S. media is so blinkered that they have become barely more credible than Pravda.

But the Americans demanded blood...and now they have it: courtesy of NBC,CNN, FOX and the rest of them.

Kudos to CBC...I will always remember watching the intial bombing of Baghdad (remember 'shock and awe'?)with you and hearing Gwynne Dyer mutter "These people had nothing to do with 9/11." No one else seemed to be able to state the obvious, awful truth.

Interesting how the times have changed. The turning point for the mainstream American public during the Vietnam War was Walter Conkrite (at that time the most trusted man in America) stating the the war in Vietnam could not be won. It was the beginning of the end for LBJ.
As we watch this mess get worse muliple blowhards (O'Rielly, Limbaugh) sway public opinion as supposed objective observers giving the WhiteHouse spin that it couldn't buy.
The citizenry hasn't done its job, hasn't asked the questions of those in power, or thought this through in a critical fashion. They've got the government and the media they deserve by not giving a damn and being involved citizens.

as an american i have been DEEPLY ashamed of and frightened of the current administration. and i am extremely disappointed that the mainstream american media has willingly played footsie with and kowtowed to this administration by not honestly reporting events and scrutinzing its actions, serving primarily as an echo chamber for them, and relinquishing its constitutional first amendment rights. and i don't understand why they did this.
when some tried to get the truth out, they were called traitors, liars, unpatriotic, etc. by the administration and all too happily reported by the sycophantic media.
what former supreme court justice sandra day o'connor was saying was: we (the iraq study group) have given you (the media) all the ammunition you need to tell the truth...don't fail us now.
shrub was handpicked by his hegemonic neo-con friends to be president because he could easily be controlled and he willingly allowed himself to be insulted so he could avoid dealing with reality at any level including iraq, as well as both domestic and international issues.
we have their evilness and incompetency that allowed 9.11 to happen, their failure to respond the katrina disaster, and the horrors of invading and occupying iraq leaving tens of thousands dead and injured, and the unrelenting stripping of the constitutional rights and freedoms of americans and visitors to our country.
they are an embarassment to the american way of life and democracy.
only when it appeared that the american electorate were willing to give the congress back to the dems did the american media even start reporting some of the truth.
also embarassing are the many voters who bought into adminstration rhetoric and theologically based ideology, abandoned their thinking abilities, and reelected this horrible unamerican administration.
i want the america back that i and the world was brought to believe in, could depend on....not this.

When the next generation of historians writes of this, part of the story will be how the Left made this war possible by concentrating on snide comments about President Bush's Texas accent or his big ears and their sour grapes about details of the election process. Further, I recall Canadians and Europeans trying to claim that the Food for Peace plan was working then. They made it impossible to put together a coalition of serious-minded people from both sides of the aisle to oppose the war up front.

LBJ and Nixon both were on the wrong side of the law internationally and nationally. This much is certain. What befuddles me is this is taken as vietnam when it is much more serious.

The Neo-Con's spelled it out clearly. This is not a war for anything asides the power to control the flow of oil in the middle east and keep it in American Dollars. The United States cannot maintain it's way of life otherwise. Even so it is slipping faster than at any point in it's last 250 years thanks to the corporate war on the middle class.

This is not vietnam. This is a game for all the marbles in my opinion. It's a question on how far the US will go and how far Europe, Russia and China will let them. This part of history might be a lull in the fascist corp-battle or just the beginning of the end of the neo-cons, it's hard to say.

I felt at the time of "Shock and Awe" as I do now, the media had a herd mentality of "getting the story". Remember the embedded journalists? Remember how their stories were filtered? It was the only way they could get to the action; submit to the Pentagon's conditions. This was a complete breakdown of the integrity of The Fourth Estate.

Editors were wooed into believing the real story was on the lines and accepted the conditions dictated by the Pentagon. That should have been a BIG clue that something wasn't right in Dodge. In following the herd, they missed the real story, the one at home. They missed the balance of news. In fact, they missed the news because they were all reporting exactly what they were told to.

Remember those who openly objected or criticized the Bush administration? Remember how they were blacklisted? Bill Maher comes immediately to mind, not that he was or is a journalist but definitely a political commentator in his own right.

I was sickened by the actions of the media at the time, and their credibility is still largely in doubt. They ignored the news and went for entertainment, plain and simple. The US media is still following the ratings bandwagon instead of the news. So called reporters are providing little more than opinion; opinion based on the current wave and often dictated by the news organization if not government.

It seems that the media have forgotten how to question the status quo. They have lost their strength to go against the flow. They have lost their pursuit of truth; all in the name of ratings.

There is still hope though as long as organizations like the CBC and BBC exist.

The CBC has not yielded to government pressure to report what the governing party wants published. If they ever do, Canada will have lost its most important tenet of freedom; that being freedom of the press.

I hope to never see that day.

All these commitees are fine but the conclusion is that nothing will be done until 2008...How many people will be killed while they dither..If I were a soldier in Iraq I would drop my rifle and contemplate my navel as they are doing in Washington..

US media are war criminals just like Bush and his terrorist gang. This is a complete joke!!! Now we are supposed to feel sorry for this criminal media???!!!

How many media superstar careers have the blood of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqis made? How many promotions? How many million dollar contracts for imbedded reporters, those that saw all the facts and reported all the lies?

US media were not simply cheerleaders... they were and still are partners in this crime against humanity...

Someone in a coma on a hospital bed in Jerusalem is laughing though, goes by the name of Sharon... or as the "leader of the free world" calls him... "A man of peace"... what a sick joke this has been... one of the lowest points in human history not just American history.

BTW, whatever happened to one of the designers of this crime, Wolfowitz? From US Deputy Secretary of Defense to president of the World Bank!!! That is priceless!!!

The American media should be deeply ashamed of the way they served as George Bush's propagandists in the runup to the war and for the last few years of the occupation. Any self-respecting media outlet would have taken the whole Bush cabal to task, day after day, for their dirty lies that led to the horror that is Iraq, rather than disseminating those same lies. For shame!

In my youth the Americans were my heroes.They came and helped liberate us.Now I feel betrayed.And to think,that this country staged the Nüremberg trials for those Nazi-criminals.At least the Nazis,vile as they were,never claimed to get directions straight from God.For their self-enrichment the Bush administration lied itself into a war,created the Islamophobia and abused Christianity at the same time.The whole neo-con clique should be hauled in front of the international court in the Hague.Was that court not instituted for the very purpose of trying these kinds of crimes?Can 9/11 justfy this kind of retalliation against two seperate sovereign nations?The White House is now painted red with the spilled blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims.The Republicans supplied the neo-cons amongst themselves with the brush to do that job.Hopefully the Democrats prove themselves trustworthy enough to be given the stewardship of this once great nation.

I was really disappointed (though in hindsight, maybe I should not have been all that surprised) with the members of the media. They were a bunch of amnesiac lap-dogs for the administration. It was intersesting that, post-9/11, they forgot all about President Bush's *pre-9/11* hatred for Saddam Hussein (who certainly is a nasty piece-of-work, but post-9/11 I thought there were other things on America's plate, no?). They *let* the administration link Saddam to al Qaeda, for example. Gulf War II, in my opinion, didn't start as a part of the War on Terror. The terrorists got there thanks to the lack of security in the country, *after* the US-led invasion. "So-D*mn-Insane" *was not* an Islamist, he *was* a secular Arab nationalist (there's a difference there). Now, Iraq is a mess, and the Americans and the "Coalition of The Willing" have a nice royal-mess to clean up. I feel sorry for the American people, I truly do.

I am waiting for: "With Afghanistan, the Canadian media both problem and solution."

Surprisingly, CBC does not recognize itself as "media" exhibiting the same systemic weaknesses as their American counterparts: cheerleading.

So, restate your assertion regarding Iraq and replace with Afghanistan, "evident to many people since the beginning of this drama but they were simply missed, or ignored, by the Canadian media. And, through them, the Canadian public."

CBC, you've got work to do!

I have long given up on the American media; my concern is the CBC. I clearly recall early in the war that one of your ""weather girls" on News World, when talking with a correspondent in the Gulf who reported that an Iraqi missile missed its target replied, and I paraphrase, not quote, "Well, it's good news that the Scud missed". I found this appalling, because the miss was neither good nor bad news, but simply news, and further the missile was not a Scud - a banned weapon - but some lesser missile. This type of facile happy-chat has no place on the CBC. I bitterly regret that you have lost your capability to reliably report from areas of interest. Compared to, say, Robert Fisk digging out missile serial numbers from a denied attack on a Baghdad market, our correspondent posturing in a safari suit in Amman while giving us breathless "reports" from the front was a sham and indeed a shame.

CBC reports from Afghanistan, compared with those of the international media, also strike me as being quite uninformative, as you yourself must recognize. Is this due to lack of resources or the adoption of a cheer-leader role?

As to "It noted that media organizations often “like to be cheerleaders for the side that’s winning.”", well, Woodward's series of books demonstrates the truth of that.

Cheers,
dba

"An informed citizenry is the bulwark of a democracy" is a quote usually, although perhaps apocryphally, attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

If one assumes that to be a true statement then one is left no option but to note that the antithetical statement would also be true.

That a misinformed citizenry is a main point of vulnerability of a democracy.

Then again, perhaps Jefferson was wrong.

Perhaps the bulwark of a democracy is really the ability of large corporations to accrue profits to their shareholders.

Because that's all the major media in the US did. They looked after their shareholders by not alienating advertisers, by not confronting regulatory agencies, by not angering the halls of power in DC.

The effects on the wider society or on the world are not their concern.

Jefferson be damned.

I believe your analysis minimizes media complicity. "missed or ignored" is hardly an appropriate description of what took place.
It was the coarsest form of jingoism - many of the US media even acknowledged that (famously, Wolf Blitzer) and were proud of it. Journalists aren't stupid - they must have made a conscious decision to participate.
You also seem to absolve the American public from having any critical faculties or moral courage. After Vietnam, they should know better.
"Fool me once, your fault. Fool me twice, my fault"

Simply put the destruction of Iraq is America's fault both its media and its people. Do not forget that many many Democrats called for war along with Republicans. The streets of America have seen no mass protests since 2003. The people were not deceived by the media. It was just as clear to them as it was to the rest of the world that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. Americans did not care. They wanted so much to taste blood that they elected Bush twice. The jingoistic media only reflected back the bankrupt values of its population. After all, when a bloodthirsty monster looks in the mirror should it expect to see a princess?

During this terrible time in the world's history CBC has been relatively balanced. Even though some of your reports have bordered on fear mongering most have been objective. I do not always like what I hear from CBC but I listen anyway. Tony Burman offers valuable editorials because his opinion is clear but not forced. This article asks good questions.

Typical CBC. No link to the full report, quotes from other media hacks, a focus on America and a declaration of "debacle", as if it is up to you to decide. This is why nobody can trust you. You hide, you obscure, you lie and you have a painfully obvious bias that you pretend is impartiality. You decide the story and report the "facts" to fit. Because obviously, nobody in the whole wide world could reasonably disagree with the CBC right?

What gives George Bush the power to do what he wants in Iraq,... Stephen Harper the power to do what he wants in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein the power to do what he wanted in Iraq?

Their power draws from ‘sovereignty’. But why should a ‘nation’ or multiplicity of ‘nations’ have any claim to ‘sovereignty’, to act out of the premise they know what’s good not only for themselves but for everybody on the globe?

Native Americans have an answer to this; i.e. ‘sovereignty’ is a religious belief bundled into imaginary-line-bounded ‘independent nations’ and actualized by ‘absolute central governing authority’. This is Euro-American imposed abstraction. Legal inquiry into the origins of ‘sovereignty’ such as that of Peter D’Errico, law professor emeritus at the Univ. of Massachusetts reveals; “The notion of "absolute, unlimited power held permanently in a single person or source, inalienable, indivisible, and original" is a definition of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. This "God died around the time of Machiavelli.... Sovereignty was ... His earthly replacement." [Walker, R.B.J. "Space/Time/Sovereignty."]

Our ‘religious belief’ in the ‘sovereignty’ of individual and national-head-of-state behaviour has us conceptualize global social dynamics in terms of ‘what heads of sovereign states ‘do’’ and has us respond to ‘problems’ by ‘removing a Saddam Hussein’ and/or ‘supporting a Hamid Karzai’. Meanwhile, transnational political currents resisting domination by sovereigntists do not recognize ‘sovereignty’. The Taliban doesn’t recognize the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and many of the 1.6 billion Muslims put Islamic brotherhood in precedence over local national ‘sovereignty’. Media seems to have bought into the ‘sovereigntist’ hype that solutions to global problems are in terms of ‘installing good’ and ‘replacing bad’ sovereign authorities. Canadian media is as misguided as US media on this issue, the latter has simply put a bigger dog on a longer leash

The ISG merely reconfirms the obvious that any thinking person has known since the drums of war started being pounded in 2002. What troubles me is that in 2002 and 2003, it was seen as an afront to country's "national manhood" to oppose Bush. Recall the vitriol heeped on France. Recall the accusations of shady motivation by the Chinese and Russians (oil contracts...oh my!!)

Anyone who's still searching for some real motives might try the website for Project for a New American Century (PNAC), especially the section on "rebuilding America's defenses". This is a classic example of the Neo-con vision of the world. They might also check the letter to President Clinton, penned in 1998, calling for the ouster of SH.

What I find most pathetic is the cheerleaders of 2003 are now the steely-eyed reporters of 2006. The American public who now oppose the war were mostly in favour of it in 2003. I don't see much in the way of principle here.

Question is: What happens now? I used to think that all Bush had to do would be to wait out the end of his term and leave the mess to someone else, but he's out of time and he's going to have to do something. Its probably a given that he will side with John McCain, Cheney, Pentagon et al and send even more troops in and make an even bigger mess. Even Baker, the man that helped to put him there in the first place can't save him now. Too bad. And then he's still got 2 years to kill in which to try to deflect attention from himself.

What will happen? Who will bomb Iran? The US or perhaps Israel? Which front will Anderson Cooper report daily from? What will he wear? Which retired experts will Wolf Blitzer call upon to give us the facts? Will Cafferty of the Cafferty file do another about-face and support Bush again? What very important things will Tony Blair tell us?

It would all be quite amusing really if it weren't for the fact that people are getting killed. Who's being shocked and awed now?

Sadly (very very sadly) one of our democratic senators just had a stroke and the republicans are getting ready to step in (yes, by the rules unfortunately)

Now Bush has subpoenaed the ACLU for documents that are supposed to protect free speech. Subpoenas are only allowed to be issued for trials but of course Bush is allowed to break the law again and again.

The ACLU cannot protect journalists from having their stories confiscated by the government which is what has happened all along.

Of course journalists can still shout things from the rooftops (proverbially) until they get arrested or taken in by the FBI but the neocons can make thier lives miserable and do all kinds of things behind the backs of journalists because of their power.

Again Canada, don't be surprised if we democrats come knocking on your door for a good place to hide.

What we have in Iraq is violent struggle without political agenda. In the past when a nation was invaded it would give rise to an independence movement, and political demands would be made against the invaders. Under the new humanitarian system, aid is provided to the invaded country. Assistance is provided in rebuilding and holding elections for a new government etc. Some people in the invaded country are left frustrated, without affiliation and no role to play.

Thus the insurgence in Iraq has no political agenda and no alliance to any group of people in Iraq. They do not want to be the new government of Iraq either. Thus they are unrestrained in their violent acts. The insurgents are apocalyptic and they want to destroy everything. They are also in a contest for the attention of the media, against any positive media that the invaders may receive.

Iraq is a complete new phenomena in the post modern world. And this is why it is so hard for people to understand.

More needs to be said in addition to my comment above. It seems that even supreme court Judges don't understand Iraq. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that national sovereignty does not supersede the right of people to be free from a life under totalitarian government. And whether it's the D-Day on the beach at Normandy, Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan, people have the right to their day of liberation.

Iraq most certainly met the criteria. The left has blood on their hands, because they labeled the invasion of Iraq based on a lie. This fueled insurgency, and may have denied the Iraq people their best and only chance to live in a free and civilized society.

Do you doubt that this is so? Look how the Iraq civil violence increased along side of the anti-American media reports and Bush bashing. People should be ashamed of them selfs.

it is sad to see that now after how many years of blood shed by money hungry Neo-Cons down south that their media is finally starting to do its job. I read earlier in the day that 2006 was one of the worst years for attacks and killings of journalists abroad. These journalists risk their lives the same as our troops making sure the outside world gets the stories it needs. I fear that the journalists from the major networks in the states are more worried about their paychecks and camera make-up than doing what a journalist is supposed to do...tell the truth...Unbiased. These networks and false reporters should be ashamed for lying to the American people for years, and should be held at least partly responsible for the deaths of 3,000 American citizens and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's.