Synchronized Media and the Club of the "Mad"

Synchronized Media and the Club of the “Mad”

Interview with Ray McGovern, former co-worker of the CIA, on the brave soldier Colin Powell, synchronized media and the Club of the “Mad”

[This interview originally published in: Freitag 08, February 13, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,
http://www.freitag.de/2004/08/04080701.php.]

Not entirely unexpectedly, president Bush has become politically defensive. The widespread certainty in the US that the reason for the Iraq war was based on invented or manipulated evidence drives the administration to take the bull by the horns. Nato should now care for the relief troops politically and militarily. Germany is involved as the Munich security conference showed.

Freitag: Secretary of State Colin Powell was the first member of the administration to admit there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In an interview, he expressed doubt in the legitimation of the Iraq war. Does that suggest a turn of American foreign policy?

Ray McGovern: Rumsfeld and Cheney determine American foreign policy especially toward Europe, not Powell and the State Department. They have sliced open Colin Powell whenever they could. As a good soldier Schweijk, he followed, saluted and only asked to play in the common sandbox in the future. Powell’s talk about multilateralism and the necessity of cooperating with partners may express what he actually feels but has no practical significance. He bows again and again to Cheney and Rumsfeld. That is what counts. To the Washington Post, he expressed the doubt last week whether he would have voted for the war if he had known there were no weapons of destruction in Iraq. Then the White House intervened and Powell said he was convinced of the correctness of the war decision – whether or not the weapons existed.

Nevertheless Powell was more resolute than his cabinet colleagues. Compared to his colleagues, he may be a dove. But what does it matter if he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions? Remember what happened in February 2003. Within four days, Powell prepared his speech in the CIA headquarters that he would give to the UN Security Council. Rumsfeld summoned him to the Pentagon. He had to survive a dress rehearsal and accept instructions before the assembled political aristocracy of Kissinger, Brzezinski and Albright.

His speech was a fiasco because he presented fabricated “evidence” and stood like a dope before the world public. In the United States, the speech was hardly recognized as propaganda.

The political scene in the US diametrically changed after the Vietnam War, after the experiences of the Watergate scandal and the Iran-Contra scandal. The opinion-making media are co-opted and are practically synchronized. Today the government and the large corporations determine what most American citizens see and hear. The majority still believe that Iraq had something to do with September 11 – a dangerous erosion of democracy. Germans should know where such synchronization could end up.

Isn’t there any professional ethos among US journalists that resists nationalism?

The US media is uncritical and unprofessional. They didn’t take note of what Powell and Condoleezza Rice said before September 11 about Iraq and its alleged weapons of mass destruction. The Australian journalist John Pilger pointed out that Powell denied the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in a press conference on February 24, 2001 and added that Iraq didn’t represent a danger for its neighboring states. The American press did not report this. Condoleezza Rice also said this in July 2001. However no American journalist reported this.

Now the president wants to set up a commission to review how the information about Iraq arose. Isn’t he endangering his re-election?

The whole event is an attempt to deceive because there can be no talk of independence and the official results will be presented after the presidential election. Even if there were interesting indiscretions, the crucial question is whether the American people see through the intrigues of its government. The mammoth media will hardly understand. Three other factors could provide the necessary enlightenment: firstly the daily attacks on US troops in Iraq, secondly, the stories told by those soldiers who return home rotationally in the spring and thirdly some journalists who may want to revenge themselves since they were so wickedly deceived.

In the debate over the falsified dossier, why isn’t it emphasized that those who were obviously open for every lie to strengthen their preventive war are a danger for the world since these gamblers control nuclear weapons?

One could be seized with fear in thinking about this. The people around Bush junior, the “mad” as they are called by insiders, are not aware – unlike past governments – that nuclear weapons cannot be compared with other weapons and require a special statesmanlike reserve. This obvious fact has obviously disappeared. One can hardly imagine what these people will do when faced with the choice of backing away or using nuclear weapons.