CNN censors Gore

They said they were going to cover Al Gore's speech live, but at 8:00 AM San Francisco time, CNN led with "Ali's Plight," the tragic and tragically manipulated story of an Iraqi boy who lost both arms in the war. Somewhere in there, after more stories, they went to Maria Hinojosa, live on the NYU campus awaiting Al Gore's speech.

I paused the tape while they went back to other news and waited for them to cover the speech live, lost in something on my computer until I heard them go back to NYU. But what I saw was Hinojosa doing a stand up talking about what Gore was saying, and then they cut back to the studio for something totally different. I began to realize they had no intention of showing Gore, so I went to moveon.org's website where Gore was eloquently holding forth on truth and deception and the new seeds of fascism in America, and left CNN on in the background. Sure enough, CNN broadcast Colin Powell's live address to someplace or another instead of Gore while he was speaking. 

After Gore finished CNN had their own little slanted interpretation while Ms. Hinojosa spoke like someone who didn't have a clue, trivializing and obscuring what was said. She kept referring to one of the themes of Gore's speech, "false impressions," which I thought was an exceptionally polite way of saying lies, and the fact that the event was being held on the NYU campus but the attendees were members of moveon.org and not necessarily students, as if there was something odd about that. She also talked a lot about whether or not he would run for office. She either didn't have one iota of understanding of what was being said or was being heavily censored and not allowed to discuss Gore's criticism of the Bush administration. 

Gore's speech was powerful. He addressed all the issues, from Iraq to the economy to social programs and environmental responsibility. I have culled these excerpts to provide a flavor for the overall speech. For the full text and more go directly to: http://www.moveon.org.

Gore declared his focus at the beginning.

"In light of developments since [my last address], you might assume that my purpose today is to revisit the manner in which we were led into war. To some extent, that will be the case - but only as part of a larger theme that I feel should now be explored on an urgent basis. The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me -- not only in Iraq but also here at home on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy. Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right.

The way we went to war in Iraq illustrates this larger problem. Normally, we Americans lay the facts on the table, talk through the choices before us and make a decision. But that didn't really happen with this war -- not the way it should have. And as a result, too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price, for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments, and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way."

After enumerating and describing each false impression (AKA lie) he countered with, ". . . according to the just-released Congressional investigation, Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of Sept. 11. Therefore, whatever other goals it served -- and it did serve some other goals -- the decision to invade Iraq made no sense as a way of exacting revenge for 9/11. To the contrary, the US pulled significant intelligence resources out of Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to get ready for the rushed invasion of Iraq and that disrupted the search for Osama at a critical time. And the indifference we showed to the rest of the world's opinion in the process undermined the global cooperation we need to win the war against terrorism. 

In the same way, the evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama Bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction. So our invasion of Iraq had no effect on Al Qaeda, other than to boost their recruiting efforts. And on the nuclear issue of course, it turned out that those documents were actually forged by somebody -- though we don't know who. 

As for the cheering Iraqi crowds we anticipated, unfortunately, that didn't pan out either, so now our troops are in an ugly and dangerous situation. Moreover, the rest of the world certainly isn't jumping in to help out very much the way we expected, so US taxpayers are now having to spend a billion dollars a week. In other words, when you put it all together, it was just one mistaken impression after another. Lots of them." 

Addressing Bush's economic policy Gore addressed more false impressions and pointed to the reality of those claims.   

"(1) The tax cuts would unleash a lot of new investment that would create lots of new jobs. 

(2) We wouldn't have to worry about a return to big budget deficits -- because all the new growth in the economy caused by the tax cuts would lead to a lot of new revenue. 

(3) Most of the benefits would go to average middle-income families, not to the wealthy, as some partisans claimed. 

Unfortunately, here too, every single one of these impressions turned out to be wrong. Instead of creating jobs, for example, we are losing millions of jobs -- net losses for three years in a row. That hasn't happened since the Great Depression. As I've noted before, I was the first one laid off. 

And it turns out that most of the benefits actually are going to the highest income Americans, who unfortunately are the least likely group to spend money in ways that create jobs during times when the economy is weak and unemployment is rising. And of course the budget deficits are already the biggest ever - with the worst still due to hit us. 

Moreover, the global capital markets have begun to recognize the unprecedented size of this emerging fiscal catastrophe. The 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, George Akerlof, went even further last week in Germany when he told Der Spiegel, 'This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history . . . This is not normal government policy.' In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerlof added, 'What we have here is a form of looting.'" 

The audience gave the former Vice President a passionate response as he made each point. Several times he criticized both Congress and the media.

"It seems obvious that big and important issues like the Bush economic policy and the first preemptive war in U.S. history should have been debated more thoroughly in the Congress, covered more extensively in the news media, and better presented to the American people before our nation made such fateful choices. But that didn't happen, and in both cases, reality is turning out to be very different from the impression that was given when the votes -- and the die -- were cast." 

He was forthright and focused as he pinpointed the need to take responsibility.

"I remembered all that last month when everybody was looking for who ought to be held responsible for the false statements in the President's State of the Union Address. And I've just about concluded that the real problem may be the President himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one.

. . . whether you're a Democrat or a Republican -- or an Independent, a Libertarian, a Green or a Mugwump -- you've got a big stake in making sure that Representative Democracy works the way it is supposed to. And today, it just isn't working very well. We all need to figure out how to fix it because we simply cannot keep on making such bad decisions on the basis of false impressions and mistaken assumptions." 

Several times he received standing ovations as he addressed the issues and never let up his outspoken criticism of Bush, Congress and the media that should have been spoken for all to hear instead of being preempted by Colin Powell as CNN has so unobjectively done. 

"Perhaps the biggest false impression of all lies in the hidden social objectives of this Administration that are advertised with the phrase 'compassionate conservatism' -- which they claim is a new departure with substantive meaning. But in reality, to be compassionate is meaningless, if compassion is limited to the mere awareness of the suffering of others. The test of compassion is action. What the administration offers with one hand is the rhetoric of compassion; what it takes away with the other hand are the financial resources necessary to make compassion something more than an empty and fading impression. 

Maybe one reason that false impressions have a played a bigger role than they should is that both Congress and the news media have been less vigilant and exacting than they should have been in the way they have tried to hold the Administration accountable. Whatever the reasons for the recent failures to hold the President properly accountable, America has a compelling need to quickly breathe new life into our founders' system of checks and balances -- because some extremely important choices about our future are going to be made shortly, and it is imperative that we avoid basing them on more false impressions." 

Gore addressed Shrubco's duplicity towards the American people succinctly and precisely. 

"Two years ago yesterday, for example, according to the Wall Street Journal, the President was apparently advised in specific language that Al Qaeda was going to hijack some airplanes to conduct a terrorist strike inside the U.S. I understand his concern about people knowing exactly what he read in the privacy of the Oval Office, and there is a legitimate reason for treating such memos to the President with care. But that concern has to be balanced against the national interest in improving the way America deals with such information.

And the apparently chaotic procedures that were used to handle the forged nuclear documents from Niger certainly show evidence that there is room for improvement in the way the White House is dealing with intelligence memos. Along with other members of the previous administration, I certainly want the commission to have access to any and all documents sent to the White House while we were there that have any bearing on this issue.

And President Bush should let the commission see the ones that he read too. After all, this President has claimed the right for his executive branch to send his assistants into every public library in America and secretly monitor what the rest of us are reading. That's been the law ever since the Patriot Act was enacted. If we have to put up with such a broad and extreme invasion of our privacy rights in the name of terrorism prevention, surely he can find a way to let this National Commission know how he and his staff handled a highly specific warning of terrorism just 36 days before 9/11. 

And speaking of the Patriot Act, the president ought to reign in John Ashcroft and stop the gross abuses of civil rights that twice have been documented by his own Inspector General. And while he's at it, he needs to reign in Donald Rumsfeld and get rid of that DoD 'Total Information Awareness' program that's right out of George Orwell's '1984.' 

The administration hastened from the beginning to persuade us that defending America against terror cannot be done without seriously abridging the protections of the Constitution for American citizens, up to and including an asserted right to place them in a form of limbo totally beyond the authority of our courts. And that view is both wrong and fundamentally un-American." 

Going on to national security and environmental responsibility he stressed the urgency of our situation. 

". . . the most urgent need for new oversight of the Executive Branch and the restoration of checks and balances is in the realm of our security, where the Administration is asking that we accept a whole cluster of new myths: We need to face the fact that our dangerous and unsustainable consumption of oil from a highly unstable part of the world is similar in its consequences to all other addictions. As it becomes worse, the consequences get more severe and you have to pay the dealer more." 

Damning Shrubco with faint praise he noted, "The removal of Saddam from power is a positive accomplishment in its own right for which the President deserves credit, just as he deserves credit for removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. But in the case of Iraq, we have suffered enormous collateral damage because of the manner in which the Administration went about the invasion. And in both cases, the aftermath has been badly mishandled. 

The administration is now trying to give the impression that it is in favor of NATO and UN participation in such an effort. But it is not willing to pay the necessary price, which is support of a new UN Resolution and genuine sharing of control inside Iraq. If the 21st century is to be well started, we need a national agenda that is worked out in concert with the people, a healing agenda that is built on a true national consensus. Millions of Americans got the impression that George W. Bush wanted to be a 'healer, not a divider', a president devoted first and foremost to 'honor and integrity.' Yet far from uniting the people, the president's ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America. His most partisan supporters have launched a kind of 'civil cold war' against those with whom they disagree." 

He made his position on running for election clear.

"I am proud that my party has candidates for president committed to those values. I admire the effort and skill they are putting into their campaigns. I am not going to join them, but later in the political cycle I will endorse one of them . . ." 

This badly needed public announcement that the emperor really is naked needs to be heard. What right does CNN have to lure viewers to its channel, keep them waiting in a bait-and-switch scheme, and fail to deliver? It's times like this when I see our beloved country in a similar situation to Germany as Hitler rose to power. Many of the middle class did not recognize the manipulation and loss of freedom they were experiencing until it was too late, because, after all they weren't Jews and they still didn't have to eat grass or live in a cave and those easy, simplistic, blame-it-on-someone-else solutions were, well . . . so easy. 

An old saying from WWII goes something like this: When they came for the Jews I saw but I did nothing because I wasn't a Jew. When they came for the gypsies I saw but I did nothing because I wasn't a gypsy. When they came for the Catholics I saw but I did nothing because I wasn't a Catholic. When they came for the lesbians and gays I saw but I did nothing because I wasn't gay. And when they came for me, it was too late . . . there was nobody left." 

He promised to advise and support the Democratic candidate of his choice, ". . . because I believe that we must stand for a future in which the United States will again be feared only by its enemies; in which our country will again lead the effort to create an international order based on the rule of law; a nation which upholds fundamental rights even for those it believes to be its captured enemies; a nation whose financial house is in order; a nation where the market place is kept healthy by effective government scrutiny; a country which does what is necessary to provide for the health, education, and welfare of our people; a society in which citizens of all faiths enjoy equal standing; a republic once again comfortable that its chief executive knows the limits as well as the powers of the presidency; a nation that places the highest value on facts, not ideology, as the basis for all its great debates and decisions."

To date no one as highly placed in government as Al Gore has spoken as bluntly and as pointedly as Mr. Gore did today. No more pussy footing around the issues. This time around more than an election is at stake -- the future of democracy is on the line. So why did CNN refuse to deliver the live coverage they promised -- why did they refuse to air Gore's speech when they were all set up to do it? Why did they neglect to discuss the content of his speech, choosing instead to divert our attention to the party line lies of Shrubco? Keep in mind that this censorship is happening before the FCC's proposed further deregulation of media ownership. Think of how it will be if Michael Powell and friends get that through congress. Dissent is no longer an option. It's a responsibility.