Published: May 23, 2006 11:45 AM ET NEW YORK A former Reagan administration official has written another blistering column about the Bush administration -- and the U.S. media.
Creators Syndicate columnist Paul Craig Roberts said in a Monday piece: "The American public has been trained to obediently accept their government's lies fed to them by their government's handmaiden, the U.S. media. No statement or claim by a Bush regime official is too outlandish to be received with acceptance. Consider the claim by Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. secretary for war and aggression, made to the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee on May 17, that Iran was to blame for the instability in Iraq.
"Did the senators laugh Rumsfeld out of the room? No. Did the media remind the 'informed public' that it was actually the U.S. invasion and unsuccessful occupation, together with mass detentions, torture, slaughter of citizens and invasions of their homes, destruction of infrastructure and entire cities, such as Fallujah, and removal of Saddam Hussein's government, which kept the three Iraqi factions from each other's throats, that destabilized Iraq? Needless to say, no."
Roberts -- assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Reagan and a former editor at The Wall Street Journal and National Review -- added: "The only person in the Senate committee room who spoke the truth called Rumsfeld a liar and was hauled off by the police."
The columnist continued: "Freedom of expression still exists in America, but only on behalf of lies. Truth is forbidden, except on the Internet. The Internet is still free, because Americans are accustomed to believing what they hear on TV and read in the news columns of newspapers, whereas the Internet is new and iffy to most Americans and of less concern to the government. The mainstream media, which serves as a government propaganda organ, and the Internet are two parallel universes." |
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