Protest CNN's War Coverage Noon Wed.

the coverage of the war is disgusting and very far from the truth. the brainwashing this countries media is doing is unnaceptable. way to go, something needs to be done, and this is a start!

My impression is CNN is doing better than Fox TV which is blatant propoganda watched by more people.
Where are their offices?

> Bring signs with pictures of Iraqi and American victims of war...

... but be sure not to say how they were actually injured.

> This weekend the United States dropped more than
1500 bombs and missiles on Baghdad, a city the
size of Los Angeles....

... and when the antiaircraft guns inside city limits were firing ineffectively they actually had to stay indoors. Worse, if they lived near a military target, or a hospital or TV station which was also used for war they had to move to friends who lived in an area that was not infiltrated by the war machine.

> In Basra, a city of more
than 1 million, the U.S. military actions left
the population without water and electricity....

... the coalition "military action" here being "merely existing", because the people of Basra had been under dictatorial food restrictions for a long time, and the suicide troops shut off the water before the coalition arrived.

> The reality of war is not antiseptic - it is
bloody and has devastating consequences on
human beings and the environment....

This is true, and for that reason we need to finally shut down the dictator's war on his people, and on innocents elsewhere too.

> Join Media Alliance, Global Exchange, and CodePink
for a rally and picket ... Also check FAIR, Media Views, Common Dreams and MediaNews. ...

... and picket at the IRS for these groups to divulge their financial sources just as other corporate bodies do. You deserve to know where the bias comes from and why it lies so often.

I think carrying pictures of bloodied soliders is a really bad idea. See my post here.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/03/1590485.php

If a subject is more subtle than a horse race or more sophisticated than a dog fight, the American TV public don't want anything to do with it. CNN is there not to inform, but to amuse and entertain. The commercial media will continue to "cover" wars as if they were roller derbies until they are owned by a public that believes citizens in a democracy ought to be educated.

The 'dictator's war on his people' is largely made up. Over a million Iraqis have died, but that is directly due to a calleous U.S. strategy during the 1991 war on Iraq which aimed to wipe out Iraqi infrastructure, and drive the people into a disease-ridden poverty Harlan Ullman has the effrontery to call "exhaustion."

Saddam is there for power and Pan-Arabism. He's now pretty much a sitting duck whom even his neighbors don't consider a threat. The idea that he poses the slightest threat to me is laughable. Is he a bloody dictator? Yup. But so is Bush.
Both are in practice totally unrestrained by their populations.

Basra might have fared better through the 90's if BLOODY U.S. SANCTIONS hadn't starved the country out of funds to rebuild the infrastructure the U.S./British bombs destroyed. What little it did rebuild with Halliburton's help (whose CEO had just finished orchestrating the destruction of Iraq as Secretary of Defence) was predictably oil-related.

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The 3 Big Lies About Iraq
By John Pilger
7-30-2

http://www.rense.com/general27/3big.htm

1) Lie Number One is the justification for an attack on Iraq - the threat of its "weapons of mass destruction".
 
Few countries have had 93 per cent of their major weapons capability destroyed. This was reported by Rolf Ekeus, the chairman of the United Nations body authorised to inspect and destroy Iraq's arsenal following the Gulf War in 1991. UN inspectors certified that 817 out of the 819 Iraqi long-range missiles were destroyed. In 1999, a special panel of the Security Council recorded that Iraq's main biological weapons facilities (supplied originally by the US and Britain) "have been destroyed and rendered harmless." As for Saddam Hussein's "nuclear threat," the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iraq's nuclear weapons programme had been eliminated "efficiently and effectively". The IAEA inspectors still travel to Iraq and in January reported full Iraqi compliance. Blair and Bush never mention this when they demand that "the weapons inspectors are allowed back". Nor do they remind us that the UN inspectors were never expelled by the Iraqis, but withdrawn only after it was revealed they had been infiltrated by US intelligence.
 

2) Lie Number Two is the connection between Iraq and the perpetrators of September 11.
 
There was the rumour that Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, had met an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech Republic last year. The Czech police say he was not even in the country last year. On February 5, a New York Times investigation concluded: "The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is convinced that Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaeda or related terrorist groups."
 

3) Lie Number Three is that Saddam Hussein, not the US and Britain, "is blocking humanitarian supplies from reaching the people of Iraq." (Foreign Office minister Peter Hain).
 
The opposite is true. The United States, with British compliance, is currently blocking a record $5billion worth of humanitarian supplies from the people of Iraq. These are shipments already approved by the UN Office of Iraq, which is authorised by the Security Council. They include life-saving drugs, painkillers, vaccines, cancer diagnostic equipment."
 
The number of MPs who have signed an early day motion against an attack on Iraq is now at 148.
 
EDM 927 MILITARY ACTION AGAINST IRAQ
 
Mahon/Alice
 
'That this House is aware of the deep unease among honourable Members on all sides of the House at the prospect that Her Majesty's Government might support United States military action against Iraq; agrees with Kofi Annan that a further military attack on Iraq would be unwise at this time; believes that such a course of action would disrupt the already fragile stability in the Middle East; and instead urges the Prime Minister to use Britain's influence with Iraq to gain agreement that United Nations weapons inspections will resume.