Melvin
Goodman schreef op CounterPunch een artikel over de gekleurde
berichtgeving in de reguliere VS media. Met een aantal voorbeelden
laat hij zien dat deze media lobbyisten van het militair-industreel complex opvoeren als deskundigen, lobbyisten meestal in de vorm van ex-leger officieren, die dan berichten over
de ‘geweldige verrichtingen’ van het VS leger en hun afschuw uitspreken over landen die de VS niet welgevallig zijn (bijvoorbeeld om het volk ‘klaar te praten’ voor een nieuwe oorlog, of een luchtaanval op een ander land)…… Zoals te verwachten alles overgoten met een berg leugens, halve waarheden en verdraaiingen om het volk te manipuleren ten gunste van VS terreur elders…….

Mooi dat
Goodman alles nog even een aantal voorbeelden noemt, echter de hele
berichtgeving in de reguliere (massa-) media is totaal scheef en
lijkt eerder op de verdediging van het agressieve inhumane neoliberalisme dat
een groot deel van het westen in haar greep heeft…… Wat betreft de rol van die media bij oorlogen, ook hier gebruikt men oud-officieren en figuren van denktanks die fungeren als lobbyisten van: -de wapenindustrie, -de VS agressie en -die van de andere NAVO-lidstaten, om uit te leggen dat ‘we het goed doen in het Midden-Oosten…..’ Intussen hebben we daar militairen naar toegestuurd op basis van grove leugens, gemaakt door veelal de CIA en NSA, leugens die worden overgenomen in de westerse massamedia als was het de waarheid, terwijl men in deze media dondersgoed weet dat deze geheime diensten (en verreweg de meeste andere westerse geheime diensten) over het algemeen liegen dat het gedrukt staat…. 

Terug naar de media: heb jij ooit een rectificatie in bijvoorbeeld de Volkskrant, of de NRC gelezen voor de leugens die men ventileerde om de illegale oorlogen van de VS te steunen en die als gevolg daarvan bijvoorbeeld in Irak tegen de 2 miljoen mensen het leven hebben gekost? Nee, inderdaad, terwijl deze dagbladen de bek vol hebben over fake news (nepnieuws) en andere desinformatie waarmee het volk zou worden gemanipuleerd…… Precies wat deze mediaorganen zelf deden in aanloop van en tijdens de illegale oorlogen van de VS (met hulp van andere NAVO-lidstaten, waaronder Nederland), oorlogen tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en Syrië….

De
eigenaren van deze media (in de VS en de rest van het westen) zijn ofwel de super welgestelden, of
investeringsgroepen, die beiden belang hebben bij oorlog, uitbuiting
en grootschalige vervuiling, dit daar ze grootaandeelhouders zijn in
het militair-industrieel complex, de oliemaatschappijen (waaronder ik
ook de steen- en bruinkoolmaffia reken) en in de grote multinationals
die hun producten in slavenlonenlanden laten maken, zodat ze niet
alleen arbeiders voor een appel en ei kunnen uitbuiten, maar waar ze
ook geen rekening behoeven te houden met milieuregels, zelfs al zijn
die regels ook ontoereikend in het ‘dure westen……’

Intussen vergadert veel van het genoemde geteisem in Davos op het World Economic Forum (WEF) over de wereldeconomie……..

Ach geen
gezeur, het is mooi dat Goodman een aantal voorbeelden geeft,
wellicht opent dat de ogen bij een flink aantal mensen…..

January
22, 2020

The
Media and the Military Mindset

by
Melvin Goodman

U.S. national media have been lazy
in their treatment of our military—pandering to the military itself
and using retired general officers with ties to the
military-industrial complex as spokesmen. The United States is
largely in an arms race with itself, but the media typically ignore
bloated defense spending. It is past time to reinforce Martin
Luther King’s address to the Riverside Church in 1967 that linked
chronic domestic poverty and military adventurism.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet
Union in 1991, the Department of Defense has been playing an outsize
role in the implementation of U.S. foreign policy and has too much
clout in the production of intelligence analysis. The
administrations of Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump have given the
Pentagon an unprecedented position of power and influence, including
huge increases in defense spending and a dominant voice in the making
of national security  policy. The media, relying for the
most part on retired general officers, have been insufficiently
critical of this militarization.

The news on cable television relies
on retired general officers to analyze and assess the military
actions of the United States. Nearly all of these retired
generals and admirals have high-level positions at various arms
manufacturers, but this is rarely noted. General Jack Keane,
one of Donald Trump’s favorite generals, is a frequent analyst on
Fox News, but it is never mentioned that the retired general is
executive chairman of AM General, a leading defense contractor, best
known as the manufacturer of the Humvee and other tactical military
vehicles.  Keane obviously has a direct financial interest in
the use of force.

NBC News and MSNBC, the so-called
liberal voice of cable television, rely on a former student of mine
at the National War College, retired Admiral James Stavridis, who is
described as the networks’ “chief international security
analyst.” The networks never mention that Stavridis, the
former supreme allied commander at the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, currently works for the Carlyle Group, advising Carlyle
on its multibillion-dollar portfolio of defense companies.

According to a recent article in
the Washington Post,
CBS’s in-house military expert is retired Admiral James Winnefeld
Jr., a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but also a
member of the board at Raytheon, a major defense manufacturer. CNN relied on retired General James Marks in the early years of the
Iraq War, without mentioning Marks’ role in obtaining military and
intelligence contracts for McNeil Technologies. Marks is back
at CNN, but the network never mentions that now he is a venture
partner and adviser to a company that invests in military companies.

The Washington
Post is guilty of the
same kind of enabling of the military. In the wake of the
killing of Qassim Soleimani, Stephen Hadley, President George W.
Bush’s national security adviser, endorsed the actions of the Trump
administration, arguing that the killing could open the door to
diplomacy. The Post needed
to mention that Hadley is a director at Raytheon, which manufactures
components of the drone that killed Major General Soleimani. In
other words, it should be noted that Hadley has a vested financial
interest in the war. As a letter writer to the Post noted,
drone targeting systems aren’t cheap.

In the field of intelligence
reporting, MSNBC relies almost entirely on the views of former CIA
director John Brennan and deputy director John McLaughlin. Brennan is a peculiar choice because he supported the policy of
torture and abuse while serving on the executive staff of the Central
Intelligence Agency as well as aiding in the cover-up of the CIA’s
role in shooting down a missionary plane over Peru in a botched
mission to stop drug trafficking.  

Brennan was also responsible
for the order to CIA lawyers and technicians to hack into the
computers of the Senate intelligence committee to remove sensitive
documentary evidence of the sordid acts of CIA officers.

McLaughlin is a bizarre choice as
an intelligence analyst because he led the effort to craft the
spurious speech that Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the
United Nations only six weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The speech was designed to convince a domestic and international
audience of the (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraqi
inventories. The speech was particularly successful in fooling
the editorial and oped writers of the Washington
Post, who claimed they
were “convinced” that Iraqi WMD justified Bush’s war.

The U.S. reliance on military force
has damaged U.S. national interests at a time when the global
community is facing severe economic stress. The Iraq and Afghan
wars have cost trillions of dollars and have not made America more
secure. The war on terror has created more terrorists than it
has eliminated, and recent secretaries of state have failed to
question the strategic and geopolitical implications of a wider war
in Southwest Asia. The budget of the Department of Defense,
exceeding levels reached during the worst days of the Cold War,
receives overwhelming bipartisan support.

Even so-called liberal
organizations are attracted to these policies. The Brookings
Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and
their scholars—Michael O’Hanlon and Robert Kagan,
respectively—have advocated the use of military force in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the media largely ignore the loss of
civilian life as they do the destruction of civilian economies,
including hospitals, schools, and infrastructure. Nearly

sixty years after President
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial
complex, the United States must come to terms with its elevation of
the role of the military; its cult of military spending that has
become sacrosanct; and the culture of militarism that has placed U.S.
bases all over the globe.  The American public is in danger of
knowing only those military policies and actions that the government
wants it to know, and the media are insufficiently aggressive in
uncovering the nature of U.S. militarism the world over.

More articles by:Melvin
Goodman

Melvin A. Goodman is
a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a
professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former
CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure
of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National
Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A
Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent book is “American
Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing), and he is the
author of the forthcoming “The Dangerous National Security State”
(2020).” Goodman is the national security columnist
for counterpunch.org.