Public diplomacy is a catchall term for the various ways in which the United States promotes itself to international audiences (as opposed to “regular” diplomacy, which targets foreign governments). These include international media, such as the Voice of America; cultural and educational exchanges, such as the Fulbright Program; and a wide range of information activities, including foreign press centers, speaking events and publications. As the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy notes, the term “was developed partly to distance overseas governmental information activities from the term propaganda, which had acquired pejorative connotations.”

In the United States, public diplomacy’s legislative history also involves propaganda. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which provided a legal framework for public diplomacy activities, forbids the government from disseminating within the United States information intended for foreign audiences. Other legislation, such as appropriation bills, theoretically reinforces the ban on using taxpayer money for “publicity or propaganda purposes.”

From 2002 to 2008, the Defense Department secretly cultivated more than seventy retired military officers who frequently serve as media commentators. Initially, the goal was to use them as “message force multipliers,” to bolster the Bush administration’s Iraq War sell job. That went so well that the covert program to shape US public opinion—an illegal effort, by any reasonable reading of the law—was expanded to spin everything from then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s job performance to US military operations in Afghanistan to the Guantanamo Bay detention center to warrantless wiretapping.

David Barstow of the New York Times wrote on April 20, 2009, “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” a stunning exposé of the Bush administration’s most powerful propaganda weapon used to sell and manage the war on Iraq.  This involved the embedding of military propagandists directly into the TV networks as on-air commentators. We and others have long criticized the widespread TV network practice of hiring former military officials to serve as analysts, but even in our most cynical moments we did not anticipate how bad it was. Barstow painstakingly documented how these analysts, most of them military industry consultants and lobbyists, were directly chosen, managed, coordinated and given their talking points by the Pentagon’s ministers of propaganda.

Thanks to the two-year investigation by the New York Times, we today know that Victoria Clarke, then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, launched the Pentagon military analyst program in early 2002. These supposedly independent military analysts were in fact a coordinated team of pro-war propagandists, personally recruited by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and acting under Clarke’s tutelage and development.

One former participant, NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard, has called the effort “psyops on steroids.” As Barstow reports, “Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as ‘message force multipliers’ or ‘surrogates’ who could be counted on to deliver administration ‘themes and messages’ to millions of Americans ‘in the form of their own opinions.’ . . . Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war.”

Clarke and her senior aide, Brent T. Krueger, eventually signed up more than seventy-five retired military officers who penned newspaper op/ed columns and appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the military analysts, which continued as of April 20, 2008, when the New York Times ran Barstow’s story. The program proved so successful that it was expanded to issues besides the Iraq War. “Other branches of the administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts.”

The use of these analysts was a glaring violation of journalistic standards. As the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists explains, journalists are supposed to

* Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

* Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

* Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel, and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office, and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.

* Disclose unavoidable conflicts.

* Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.

* Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

* Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money.

The networks using these analysts as journalists shamelessly failed to vet their experts and ignored the obvious conflicts of hiring a person with financial relationships to companies profiting from war to be an on-air analyst of war. They acted as if war was a football game and their military commentators were former coaches and players familiar with the rules and strategies. The TV networks even paid these “analysts” for their propaganda, enabling them to present themselves as “third party experts” while parroting White House talking points to sell the war.

Since the 1920s there have been laws passed to stop the government from doing what Barstow has exposed. It is actually illegal in the United States for the government to propagandize its own citizens. As Barstow’s report demonstrates, these laws have been repeatedly violated, are not enforced and are clearly inadequate. The US Congress therefore needs to investigate this and the rest of the Bush propaganda campaign that sold the war in Iraq.

The Iraq war would likely never have been possible had the mainstream news media done its job. Instead, it has repeated the Big Lies that sold the war. This war would never have been possible without the millions of dollars spent by the Bush administration on sophisticated and deceptive public relations techniques such as the Pentagon military analyst program that David Barstow has exposed. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Victoria Clarke, who designed and oversaw this Pentagon propaganda machine, now works as a commentator for TV network news. She may have changed jobs and employers since leaving the Pentagon, but her work remains the same.

In April 2008, shortly after the New York Times first reported on the Pentagon’s pundits—an in-depth exposé that recently won the Times’ David Barstow his second Pulitzer Prize—the Pentagon suspended the program. In January 2009, the Defense Department Inspector General’s office released a report claiming “there was an ‘insufficient basis’ to conclude that the program had violated laws.” Representative Paul Hodes, one of the program’s many Congressional critics, called the Inspector General’s report “a whitewash.”

Now, it seems as though the Pentagon agrees. On May 5, 2009, the Defense Department Inspector General’s office announced that it was withdrawing its report on the Pentagon pundit program, even removing the file from its website.

“Shortly after publishing the report . . . we became aware of inaccuracies in the data,” states the “withdrawal memo” (PDF) from the Inspector General’s office. The office’s internal review of the report—which it has “refused to release,” according to the Times—“concluded that the report did not meet accepted quality standards.” The report relied on “insufficient or inconclusive” evidence, the memo admits. In addition, “former senior [Defense Department] officials who devised and managed” the Pentagon pundit program, including Victoria Clarke and Lawrence DiRita, “refused our requests for an interview.”

While the Inspector General’s “highly unusual” about-face is welcome, it gets us no closer to accountability. “Additional investigative work will not be undertaken,” the withdrawal memo states, because the Pentagon pundit program “has been terminated and responsible senior officials”—such as Allison Barber—“are no longer employed by the Department.”

Of course, accountability for the Pentagon pundit program was never likely to come from the Defense Department itself. Now it’s up to Congress to demand—and the Government Accountability Office and the Federal Communications Commission to carry out—real investigations into the elaborate propaganda campaign.

There is a long history of various administrations seeking to propagandize the American people. The Bush administration, and the Clinton administration before it, funded video news releases (VNRs) that television stations across the United States aired as independent “reports” during their news programming. Not surprisingly, the VNRs portrayed government actions and policies in a favorable light. One on educational assistance under No Child Left Behind concluded, “This is a program that gets an A-plus.”

Congress’ investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), repeatedly ruled that government VNRs are illegal covert propaganda unless their source is made clear to viewers. The Bush administration rejected the GAO’s rulings, substituting their own intent-based standard. They argued that government VNRs are permissible, whether disclosed or not, as long as the intent behind them is to inform, not to persuade.

The Department of Defense has also relied on intent to dismiss concerns about propaganda blowback. The Department’s 2003 Information Operations Roadmap admits, “Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP [psychological operations], increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.” However, it argues that, “the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [US government] intent rather than information dissemination practices.”

The 8,000 pages of Pentagon pundit documents, which the New York Times obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request (backed up by lawsuits) and the Department of Defense later made public, reveal the daily operations of the program.

The morning of June 20, 2006, an email message circulated amongst US Defense Department officials.” Jed Babbin, one of our military analysts, is hosting the Michael Medved nationally syndicated radio show this afternoon. He would like to see if General [George W.] Casey would be available for a phone interview,” the Pentagon staffer wrote. “This would be a softball interview and the show is 8th or 9th in the nation.”

Why would the Pentagon help set up a radio interview? And how did they know that the interview would be “softball”?

From early 2002 to April 2008, the Department of Defense offered talking points, organized trips to places such as Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, and gave private briefings to a legion of retired military officers working as media pundits. The Pentagon’s military analyst program, a covert effort to promote a positive image of the Bush administration’s wartime performance, was a multi-level campaign involving quite a few colorful characters.

One Pentagon pundit arguably steals the spotlight: Jed Babbin. A former Pentagon official himself, the retired Air Force officer served as a deputy undersecretary of defense with the George H.W. Bush administration. Since then he has kept busy authoring books, serving as a contributing editor to the conservative monthly American Spectator, frequently filling in for right-wing radio hosts such as Laura Ingraham and Hugh Hewitt, and appearing as a military pundit on cable television.

Babbin repeatedly appears in the Pentagon pundit documents, usually either emailing his American Spectator articles to Pentagon officials, or using his special access to arrange interviews with high-ranking government and military officers for his articles and radio guest host gigs.

In February 2006, Babbin emailed Pentagon legal advisor Thomas Hemingway. “I’m subbing for Hugh Hewitt again tomorrow and want to bash the UN report,” he wrote, referring to an inquiry into conditions at Guantánamo Bay that led the United Nations to call for the detention center to be closed. “I asked for [US Army Major General] Jay Hood and got the answer that the military isn’t going out on that now. Can you do it? Please call asap.” Babbin didn’t just use Pentagon public affairs staffers as his radio bookers. He also asked them for their thoughts on what he should say, as a pundit.

“I just got a call from Jed Babbin,” wrote one Pentagon public affairs officer in October 2006. “He is going to be on [the CNBC show] Kudlow [& Company] tonight and want [sic] to be prepared if they ask him about the [Al-Qaeda] threat to Saudi oil fields. . . . Anything we could share with him??”

The Pentagon was also more than proactive. “[Fox News’] Hannity and Colmes is having Jed Babbin on today to talk about North Korea,” emailed Pentagon public affairs staffer Dallas Lawrence to Ruff and Whitman in February 2005. “We are getting Jed a one pager on the status of forces in the Korean Peninsula (the message being, we still have a massive deterrent there for [North Korea]). We will also put him into touch with State for talking points on the 6 party talks.”

In a phone interview, Babbin defended his communications with the Pentagon. “I am a journalist,” he told me. “I have information that’s given to me by sources of all sorts. Private information is what you normally do in Washington. You get confidential sources and you rely on them. I’m not compromised. I can’t speak for anybody else other than myself, but I have no relationship with defense contractors, I have no contracts with the Pentagon. There’s no conflict there.”

But Babbin’s contacts with the Pentagon are still problematic, according to Kelly McBride, Ethics Group Leader at the Poynter Institute for media studies. “When you hire a former general [as a media commentator], you’re hiring him for his expertise and his ability to independently analyze what’s going on,” she explained. “If you’re assuming because he’s retired he has a measure of independence and then you find out, no, he’s actually been to all these trainings where he’s received talking points, that’s a problem. You have promised your audience that you’re going to deliver them independent analysis—not a mouthpiece for the Pentagon.”

That raises the question of whether the responsibility to ensure the integrity and independence of military analysts lies with the pundits themselves or with the media outlets that hired them. In this case, says McBride, it’s the latter.

“The journalists had the obligation to figure out if their sources were independent,” she said. “Each show decided how they were going to use these people, and at that point, somebody should’ve been having a conversation about what they’re bringing to the product and how that works, and then finally, there should be an overall standard that says when we hire people, here is what we should ask of them.”

In his defense, Babbin said that “everyone I wrote for and so forth knew I was talking to people in the Pentagon.” Babbin also went on government-funded trips to Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, but said he doesn’t believe that any of the media outlets he writes or appears on-air for have policies against such activity. So, Babbin concludes that he had no conflicts of interest.

Do the media outlets that Babbin appeared on feel the same way? Salem Radio Network, which produces both “The Hugh Hewitt Show” and “The Michael Medved Show,” radio programs that Babbin appeared on while participating in the Pentagon’s pundit program, refused comment. Phone calls to the American Spectator and WMET of Washington, DC were not returned.

Todd Meyer, a producer for Greg Garrison’s show on Indianapolis radio station WIBC, one of Babbin’s more frequent stomping grounds, said, “I’m not sure if Jed mentioned he was a part of [the Department of Defense’s military analyst program]. He might at some point. He said over the years, though, that he’s been part of many, many briefings at the Pentagon, most when he was actually working there under Bush.”

Meyer added that Babbin was never presented on the show as an independent analyst. “Jed Babbin is the editor of Human Events, he wrote for National Review, he wrote for American Spectator. He’s conservative,” stressed Meyer. “We’re a conservative talk show. Mr. Babbin’s been on our show many, many times over the years and he comes from a conservative background. He was privy to a number of briefings. We took advantage of hearing what was in those briefings.”

But is being conservative synonymous with being a mouthpiece for the Pentagon?

Babbin contends that he was nothing of the sort. “If they were buying my loyalty, they got a pretty bad bargain. If they thought they were buying my reporting, they really had a very poor investment. Look at my stories, look at what I’ve written. I’ve been very highly critical at times of the president and a lot of the people who conduct the war.”

Judging by the Pentagon pundit documents, the Department of Defense sees Babbin as an ardent supporter. “Babbin will do us well,” Pentagon PR staffer Bryan Whitman wrote in a March 2005 email. In June 2005, Larry Di Rita told fellow Pentagon public affairs officers, “We really should try to help [Babbin secure guests for his radio hosting gigs]. . . . He is consistently solid and helpful.” Another message, this one from Thomas Hemingway to Eric Ruff in June 2006, reads: “I’m sure all your folks are familiar with the tremendous support we’ve received from Jed.” And that’s in addition to the aforementioned “softball interview” comment.

While Jed Babbin was only one of some seventy-five retired military officers that the Department of Defense used as their so-called “message force multipliers” and “surrogates,” and while he wasn’t seeking defense contracts like some of his fellow pundits, his case is representative of the breakdown of transparency and accountability consequent to the Pentagon’s covert program. Babbin’s experience also shows that someone could consistently parrot the administration’s talking points, while believing himself to be independent and even, at times, critical of the official narrative.

But the pundits weren’t just selling government talking points. As Robert Bevelacqua, William Cowan and Carlton Sherwood enjoyed high-level Pentagon access through the analyst program, their WVC3 Group sought “contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq,” reported Barstow. Cowan admitted to “push[ing] hard” on a WVC3 contract, during a Pentagon-funded trip to Iraq.

Then there’s Pentagon pundit Robert H. Scales Jr. The military firm he co-founded in 2003, Colgen, has an interesting range of clients, from the Central Intelligence Agency and US Special Operations Command, to Pfizer and Syracuse University, to Fox News and National Public Radio.

Of the twenty-seven Pentagon pundits named publicly to date, six are registered as federal lobbyists. That’s in addition to the less formal—and less transparent—boardroom to war-room influence peddling described above. (There are “more than seventy-five retired officers” who took part in the Pentagon program overall, according to Barstow.)

The Pentagon pundits’ lobbying disclosure forms help chart what can only be called a military-industrial-media complex. They also make clear that war is very good for at least some types of business.

Fox News analyst Timur J. Eads works for the military contractor Blackbird Technologies. His job title there, “vice-president of government relations,” is often used to describe someone who crafts lobbying strategies but may not take part in lobbying meetings. So, it’s not surprising that Eads isn’t listed on Blackbird’s lobbying disclosure forms. (In 2007 and 2008, Blackbird lobbied Congress on “communications technologies” and the National Guard on “information systems.”)

From 2001 to 2003, Eads was in the lobbying trenches for EMC Corporation, a multinational “information infrastructure” company. Eads helped lobby Congress and a long list of federal agencies—including the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard—for “funding for data storage infrastructure.” EMC’s annual report (PDF) for 2003 lists the Air Force Materiel Command and Pentagon Renovation and Construction Program Office among its US government clients.

Prior to EMC, Eads lobbied for the major defense contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). In 1999 and 2000, he was on SAIC’s million-dollar-plus lobbying team, influencing federal spending on the armed services, foreign operations, national security and Veterans Administration, among many other appropriations bills.

A January 2009 public diplomacy conference was organized in Washington, DC to critically reconsider Smith-Mundt. Many presenters supported changing the Act; specifically, removing or watering down its restriction on domestic dissemination. Among the reasons given were that the restriction, which effectively divides the world into US residents and everyone else, is outdated in the global information age; that it hampers public diplomacy efforts; that it suggests to foreign audiences that U.S. government-provided information is suspect, since it can’t be shared with US residents; that it denies US residents useful information; and that it keeps US residents from accessing information necessary to evaluate work done overseas, in their name and with their tax dollars. On the other side, there were conference attendees who argued that the Smith-Mundt restriction doesn’t impact work in the field, and that it helps insulate sensitive international work from domestic political pressures.

It was an informed, in-depth debate, led by people with extensive State Department and military experience. But until Rep. Hodes spoke—during the last session of the day—no one mentioned that, until just nine months ago, there had been an active covert campaign to influence US public opinion: the Pentagon’s pundit program.

Let me posit what I believe should be the rule,” said outgoing Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James Glassman, a keynote speaker at the conference. Domestic dissemination should be permissible, he suggested, “if the intent of the work involving domestic audiences is to influence foreign audiences.” According to Glassman the government’s motivation behind engaging US residents is key. “The reasonable way to judge whether the State Department should be prohibited from disseminating a film, or a television program, or a speech, or a magazine, is the intention of the department,” he declared. While “traditional American concerns about government involvement—not merely in influence, but in information—are deeply rooted and appropriate . . . intent should be our guide. If our target is foreign audiences, as it must be in public diplomacy, then we should be able to engage domestic individuals and groups in this effort.”

Glassman’s emphasis on intent is nothing new. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether material designed to influence foreign audiences—including, in the case of military information operations and psychological operations campaigns, material that may be misleading—is conveyed to US residents as “news.” All that matters is that the responsible government officials’ hearts are pure.

We know that the conveniently slippery standard of intent has already resulted in fake TV news that would make Soviet-era propagandists proud. As professor Marc Lynch noted at the conference, “Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow knows, but State Department lawyers don’t, which makes it very difficult to build a regulatory foundation on questions of intent, particularly when . . . intent can be multi-faceted and highly complex.”

The State Department—and the US Information Agency, before it was folded into State—used to be responsible for public diplomacy. In 1999, then-President Clinton tasked numerous federal agencies with “influenc[ing] foreign audiences.” He established an International Public Information group, comprised of officials from the State, Defense, Justice, Commerce, and Treasury departments, along with the FBI and CIA. Post-9/11, the Pentagon’s budget ballooned and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed that communications must be “a central component of every aspect of this struggle.” As a result, the US military has become increasingly involved in public diplomacy.

On the question of Smith-Mundt, its ban on domestic dissemination has clearly been rendered moot by Google. Instead of using that as an excuse to burn down firewalls, the US government should follow strict media ethics standards, regardless of whether its intended audience is in Iowa or Islamabad. All public diplomacy communications and activities should be clearly attributed. Information operations and psychological operations, which require a lack of transparency, should be kept completely separate from public diplomacy and public affairs. Lastly, the military’s role in public diplomacy should be decreased and, perhaps, ended.

Instead of loosening propaganda restrictions by relying on intent, why not adjust to the global information era by ensuring clear attribution of all government communications? Truth is an obvious second standard, but public diplomacy, by definition, deals with issues in which the US government is an interested party. It’s therefore naive to claim that a standard of “truth”—which must transcend, or at least fairly acknowledge, competing interests—could be upheld.

Today, the broadcast and cable networks are steadfastly refusing to cover or otherwise address the Pentagon military analyst program, with very few exceptions. In this case, though, the pundits’ undeclared financial interests are only part of a larger and much more serious problem. These officers participated in a covert government program designed to shape US public opinion—an illegal program, and one that relied on the willingness of major media to play along, without asking too many questions. And that’s exactly what happened. The media outlets that featured the Pentagon’s pundits need to address both aspects of this debacle: that they failed to identify or disclose conflicts of interest, and that they helped propagandize US news audiences.

Increasingly, news audiences are realizing the many ways in which interested parties skew media coverage. Media outlets need to wake up to that reality and work to strengthen their safeguards in defense of the public interest. Their only alternative is to start composing their next weak and belated mea culpa, in a desperate attempt to protect their ever-dwindling credibility.

Diane Farsetta is the Center for Media and Democracy’s senior researcher.

Searchable versions of the Pentagon pundit documents available at http://www.prwatch.org/pentagonpundits.

The human family consists, for the most part, of wonderfully ordinary people who work hard to care for themselves and their children. However, there are a few people who aspire to positions of power, and then work to use their authority to manipulate and control all the others.

This nation’s teenage children are currently being tracked, targeted, and sometimes captured by a global dominance military-industrial-media complex under orders of an exceptionally callous neo-conservative group now in control of the US government. The people in power today systematically use armed services recruiters – motivated by rank and bonus – as the agents of control and manipulation of US youth.

Parents of teens and preteens are seldom aware of how their children are at increasing risk of being systematically targeted, manipulated into recruiter offices, and psychological remodeled for use within the war machine. Military planners, hungry for new recruits, commission psychological research and carefully read neuro-psychiatric literature as it pertains to adolescent behavior. They then apply that research information to their recruitment efforts that focus on the vulnerability of the teenage mind.

As the 9/11 wars continue and as the numbers of dead and disabled young men and women climb, civilian doubts over the purpose and direction of the conflict has evolved and grown. As a result, convincing new potential recruits to enlist has become an increasingly difficult task. The Pentagon addresses this recruitment problem by spending thousands of millions of our tax dollars on programs designed to deceive, seduce, and to capture our youth. Military recruiters have been granted full access to our children at home, at school, and wherever else they can be tracked. The Pentagon has invaded our movies, our televisions, and our minds, and has invited our children to play violent, and damaging video games while feeding them emotionally charged materials designed to manipulate and reformat them into replacement soldiers.

A Brief & Recent History Of US Military Recruitment

Ending the Draft

The Vietnam War was fought by a generation of young men whose teen experiences were distorted by a persistent and disruptive force – conscription. That constant threat helped fire the tremendous social unrest that attended those war years.  As the war came to its painful end, Pentagon planners moved to eliminate future reliance on draftees. The recommendation was tendered and Congress agreed to end the draft, replacing it with an all volunteer armed services system.

Building and maintaining an all volunteer military during peacetime worked reasonably well. The process during war however, has proven to be problematic.  After years of war and violent occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, public perception of military life has gradually soured. And, as civilian jobs – albeit low paying for many – continue to be available, the recruiting process has become increasingly difficult. The Pentagon has responded by offering, or giving the appearance of offering, a set of incentives to potential enlistees.  Bait has since included cash and promises (frequently unfulfilled) of job training, educational funding, and future medical care.

Teenagers Increasingly Targeted

After recent Pentagon research revealed that the desire and intention to enlist is highest among younger recruits (six in ten current US soldiers entered the military as teenagers),1, 2, 3 a level of subtlety, or rather subterfuge has been employed to guide teens toward recruiter offices. As one example of the many available: the US Army sponsors a website labeled “eCybermission.” It offers “web-based science, math, and technology competition” for 11, 12 , and 13 year olds, and the services of on-line uniformed Army personnel “CyberGuides.”4

Since 2002 the Pentagon has developed a massive teen data base gleaned from sources, including records obtained via the “No Child Left Behind Act.” That information is filed in JAMRS, the “Joint Advertising and Marketing Research & Studies” system – a giant Pentagon run, privately subcontracted (Equifax) database containing contact and identification data on over thirty million 16-25 year olds.5

Plummeting Numbers / Plummeting Standards

Despite recent reports of an increasing rate of suicides among US troops,6 and despite news reports of “stop-loss” troop recycling and declining troop moral, the Pentagon’s recent recruiting and retention report for 20077 implies success. The facts underlying the statistics offered, however, tell a different story: “The number of wavers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds [125,000] has grown about 65 percent in the past three years…,”8 and the percentage of minimally qualified recruits has quadrupled since 2002.9

Representative Martin T. Meechen, Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight: “The data is crystal clear; our armed forces are under incredible strain, and the only way that they can fill their recent quotas is by lowering their standards.”8

Recruitment Funding

Pentagon spending on recruitment has increased dramatically over the past few years, approaching $4 billion by 2003.10 As of 2006, there were over 22,000 recruiters nationwide,11 charged with signing up between 180,000 and 200,000 new active duty recruits,10, 11 and approximately 120,000 new reservists per year.11 In 2000, the US House of Representatives determined that $6400 was being spent to sign up each marine,12and by 2005, the military spent approximately $16,000 in total promotional costs to enlist each new recruit.11, 13

Despite the enormous sums spent attempting to maintain an all volunteer military during these times of growing anti-war sentiment, the armed forces have been unable to meet new recruit sign-up quotas.  There is always a way, however, and here the balance sheets have been righted by dropping ballast, also known as “standards,” and by implementing military contract fine-print: Executive Order #12728, dated 8/22/90 referring US Code, Title 10, section 12305 and Title 3, section 301, better known as “Stop Loss,” which allows troops to be returned to battlefields again by delaying their removal from active duty indefinitely. In this way, military statisticians have forced the claim that recruitment quotas are being fulfilled.14

TARGETING THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN

Adolescence has long been recognized as a time when impulsive and risk-taking behaviors increase. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, learning to gauge risk with greater precision gradually proceeds. Modern neuroscience tools, including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning techniques have now shown that adolescent stereotypic behavior is based on a phase of structural brain development.15, 16, 17

In a recent study,15 multiple high-tech scans were collated over time, and were combined with serial assessments of neuro-developmental function. It was discovered that the adolescent brain exists as a structurally and functionally distinct entity from that found earlier in childhood, or later in adulthood. The adolescent brain develops structurally enlarged, but functionally immature prefrontal and limbic grey matter areas.  Those structural features appear to result in a change in balance between limbic reward and prefrontal higher executive assessment functions, and helps to explain typical adolescent behaviors of increased novelty and sensation, or thrill-seeking on the one hand, and limited consequence analysis on the other. By the early twenties, as the structurally enlarged areas decrease to typically adult volumes, brain function settles into adult patterns. These changes are accompanied by recognized adult thought processes and behaviors.

It is during adolescence, when changes in brain structure and function result in the characteristic behaviors of that age, that teens are actively recruited toward and into the military. The techniques employed by military recruiters directly target the unique functional brain development characteristics of the adolescent; that targeting is undoubtedly purposeful.18, 19

HIGH SCHOOLS AS “MARKETS”

“No Child Left Behind” – Section 9528

The Bush Administration wrote and signed into law the “No Child Left Behind Act,” January 8, 2002,20 with subsequent reauthorization in 2007.21As is now widely known, included in the 670 pages of that voluminous act – within section 9528 – is a provision enabling military recruiters to access high school students’ records, and to access the students themselves as they attend high-school campuses throughout the country.  Students and/or their parents are offered the choice to “opt-out” of this demand, but they must actively do so, requiring of course, that they are first informed of this option. As will later be documented, this is often not the case.  If school districts otherwise fail to provide military recruiters with the required information and access, millions of dollars in federal funding for that district can be cut.

Military recruiter manuals then provide guidance on how to maximize the effect of the law on targeted adolescents.22 Here are a few examples of advice given to recruiters:

School Recruiting Program [SRP] Handbook22 (Excerpts)

From section 1-4 c: “The objective of the SRP is to assist recruiters with programs and services so they can effectively penetrate the school market. The goal is school ownership that can only lead to a greater number of Army enlistments. Recruiters must first establish rapport in the schools. This is a basic step in the sales process and a prerequisite to an effective school program. Maintaining this rapport and establishing a good working relationship is next. Once educators are convinced recruiters have their students’ best interests in mind the SRP can be effectively implemented.”

From section 2-4: “Some influential students such as the student president or the captain of the football team may not enlist; however, they can and will provide you with referrals who will enlist.”

And from section 5-1-f-4: “Don’t forget the administrative staff…. Have something to give them (pen, calendar, cup, donuts, etc.) and always remember secretary’s week, with a card or flowers.”

Using computers fed with socioeconomic census data, past recruiting numbers, and other demographic information, recruiters target specific schools where students are less likely to go on to college and are more likely to sign up with the military.23, 24 Then, school yearbooks, newspapers, and any other pertinent local informational sources are scrutinized, allowing recruiters to simulate familiarity and interest in a few of the more popular kids on campus. As those kids are approached and befriended, others are attracted to the social bait and, seeking approval, gather around.

Once a student swims anywhere near the hook, recruiter anglers use every trick available.11 Students are phoned and written to without end, and are offered visions of a virtual cornucopia of money, education, training, and adventure.25, 26, 27 All responses are, of course, tracked.28

ASVAB “Realize your strengths. Realize your dreams.”

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)29 is a three hour test, offered to, and taken by nearly one million high school students every year. It is placed before them ostensibly as a helping hand – as a way to explore their career potentials, and to guide them toward appropriate life choices. The offer and the test are scams.

Here is what the military tells the parents of teenage students in this confidence game:

“The ASVAB Career Exploration Program includes eight individual tests covering verbal and math skills, mechanical knowledge, electronics, and several other areas. It also produces three Career Exploration Scores for Verbal Skills, Math Skills, and Science and Technical Skills. These three scores serve as one of several pieces of information about your child that can aid in the exploration of a wide variety of career options.” 30

Recruiters, on the other hand, understand the ASVAB recruitment tool quite well.  From the Commander, Navy Recruiting Command, Policy and Programs Division, 2002 – Recruiting Manual:

“The ASVAB is used by the Armed Forces for recruiting purposes… The ASVAB’s ability for determining civilian job skills has not yet been proven.”31

Because the ASVAB is exempt from the provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, students are given the test and information acquired is released to the military without parental consent.32 Furthermore, military recruiters are free, at the option of school administrators, to contact test takers – even if the student, or their parents opted-out of Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act.27, 32

Exam information is then forwarded to the DoD JAMRS database for further analysis.5, 31

The JAMRS Database:

In 2002, the Pentagon joined forces with the corporate database industry and began gathering, organizing and analyzing personal information on the military’s “market” of teens and their families. The Joint Advertising and Marketing Research & Studies (JAMRS) database now includes the records of over thirty million US 16 – 25 year olds.5

As families soon discovered they were unable to control the records collected on them, an ACLU lawsuit was brought against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense David Chu, and JAMRS Program Manager Matt Boehmer in April 2006.33 It was settled a few months later, and became effective January, 2007, specifying that families have the power to opt-out of the database.34 To date, as both the database and the option to opt-out of it is known to only a handful of families, opt-in remains the rule.

A Department of Defense survey taken November 2004, found that “only 25 percent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent in August 2003.”35 The Pentagon responded with a media campaign featuring faux-parents and their faux-children discussing enlistment in a positive light.36 In addition, the Pentagon tasked JAMRS with studying “influencers,” – parents, teachers, clergy, and the like – in the hope of minimizing and/or neutralizing their interference.5

JROTC:

The “Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps” system was created through the National Defense Act of 1916.  It offers high schools federal subsidies in the form of funding, equipment, and supplies,37,38 which appear to be a good deal for cash-strapped school districts. In fact, this too good to be true deal turns out to be – just that. After a short time, schools discover they have ended up on the red side of the balance sheet – paying out more than they receive. Hidden costs include additional insurance coverage, new facilities construction and maintenance, a portion of JROTC instructors’ salaries, benefits, taxes, etc. In short, school districts and the children they support are ripped-off by the program. 39

In exchange for the faux-benefits offered, school districts must allow retired military personnel to act as instructors, and they must allow instructors to offer students a course of training that is authorized by the military, as opposed to local school boards. 37, 38 Classes can be taught by either accredited or non-accredited instructors, and reading and study materials have been found to include racist versions of history, and which stress a military approach to social and political change.37

JROTC courses are now offered in over 3000 high schools as of June 2003,40 and bend the minds of over 500,000 teenage children toward the military.39 Former United States Secretary of Defense William Cohen described the JROTC program as: “one of the best recruitment programs we could have.”39 And, true enough, forty percent of those entering the program go on to enlist.38

THINGS RECRUITS AND RECRUITERS PROMISE

Recruits and the Military Contract

A promise is a promise, unless it is offered by a military recruiter.  After a recruit is promised the moon, they are asked to sign on the dotted line, most often missing the fine print:

“Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document.”41

In other words, recruits may be promised specific training and assignments, lofty jobs, or anything at all. The only contract made – despite any oral or written promise – is that the recruit will serve under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)42 rather than under civilian Constitutional law until full and final discharge is allowed (sans “Stop-Loss”).  Any other statements, assurances, or promises – written or otherwise, do not apply.

The Mirage of Jobs and College Funding

Congress and the Department of Defense have long understood that as civilian jobs and educational opportunities decline, the military option becomes more attractive to potential recruits. Military Recruiters – and a vast expanse of advertisement copy – hammer the idea home that joining the military and serving it for a few years will open to an oasis of educational and job opportunities. The oasis is a mirage.

A typical recruitment advertisement reads: “Join the Army and earn up to $70,000 for college.”27 The truth is, nearly all enlistees join the Montgomery GI Bill on entering the military, but only one in twenty qualify for the higher Army College Fund or Navy College Fund benefits.43 In fact thirty percent of those joining the program receive nothing from it,44 and the rest, nearly always receive only a fraction of the benefits promised.43, 45

There are conditions:

In order to be allowed entry into any of the college fund programs, recruits must first pay $100 per month for the first twelve months of service. That $1200 is fully non-refundable.44,46
A full honorable discharge from the military is required.27, 46 One in four fail to achieve that condition.27

For those who do achieve full honorable discharges, the payout is tricky: it is made over a total of no more than 36 months of educational expenditure (9 month academic year x 4 years = 36 months). If, as is typical, a veteran is unable to take full course loads over each of those 36 months, the payout is less, and will still be terminated after a total of 36 months in any case. So, for example, if a war-traumatized veteran is able to maintain only a one-half coursework load, the total payout would be – at a maximum – only one-half of that originally promised.47 Most veterans (56%) using the Montgomery GI Bill begin by attending community colleges or vocational schools spread out over time, and therefore receive only a fraction of the maximum promised for full time, full coursework study.47
The cost of education has continually increased while educational benefits have increased less rapidly. As benefits lag further and further behind the inflation curve, the value of the original promise is equally degraded with time.47
In summary, recruits rarely collect on the military’s “big print” promise to provide significant educational funding.

RECRUITMENT TOOLBOX: Movies, Toys, TV, & Computer Games

Blackhawk Helicopters on High School Campuses

As US families pushed back against the slogans “Be All You Can Be,” and “An Army of One,” and as potential new recruits increasingly said “no” to joining up, military planners moved new people into command chairs, ramped up their efforts, crafted new slogans, and basically pulled out the stops.27 Fully camo’ed military recruiters now land Blackhawk helicopter warships on elementary, middle and high school campuses around the country, and issue promises of fun, excitement, and glory to the overwhelmed kids.

Children as young as 6-8 years old are sometimes invited to these landing events, where they are rewarded with tiny black (hawk) footballs after they gather close around recruiters. 48,49

______________________________________

Photo Credit: Kent Porter / The Press Democrat

18-Wheeler “Recruiting Vans,” on high school campuses

The US Army, in a well-funded effort to recruit children, has decked out seven “Cinema Vans” with multiple slide projectors, viewing screens, and rock-climbing walls. Another 18-wheeler, the “Army Adventure Van,” features a helicopter simulator, an M-1 Tank simulator, and an M16 Machine-gun simulator, allowing high school kids to practice and to visualize cutting enemies to pieces. Other vehicles include a “Nuclear Power Van,” an “America’s Sea Power Van,” etc. Together, these propaganda shows on 18 wheels visit nearly 400,000 of America’s children each year.50

“‘The vans zero in on our target market, and that’s in high schools,’ explained Fred Zinchiak, Public Affairs Specialist in the Sacramento Army Recruiting Battalion.”50

The targeted markets – this nation’s teenagers – are offered a vision of military life as being sexy and exciting.  The reality of post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and traumatic brain injury suffered by over one-third of a million troops returning from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan51 is ignored.

Recruitment via Television

As of March 2008, over 11,000 schools have contracted with “Channel One,” an organization which promises to provide schools with free television equipment and wiring in exchange for a mandatory daily viewing of the programs produced, edited, and broadcast by them.

The twelve minute programs, aired daily, are interspersed with two minutes of “corporate sponsorship” messages, half of which are paid for by US taxpayers c/o the Department of Defense, and in the form of military recruitment pitches to the captive children who are required to watch.27

From the Channel One Network website: “Nearly 30 percent of all American teens are in classrooms that show Channel One News.” In other words, over six million middle and high school students are presently forced to receive daily military recruiter pitches during classroom time.52,53,54

Recruitment via Hollywood Movies

The Pentagon has had a cozy relationship with the entertainment industry for many years, providing open door base access, material, and consultation to movie studios… for a price.55

“We may think that the content of American movies is free from government interference, but in fact, the Pentagon has been telling filmmakers what to say – and what not to say — for decades.  It’s Hollywood’s dirtiest little secret.”56

It is now widely known that the Pentagon has influenced film producers and studios for years – trading access to military resources for censorship rights. Under authority of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, the Pentagon’s film liaison office trades script changes – acceptable to the brass – with access to otherwise impossibly expensive military material, locations, and expertise. In the end, we the taxpayers pay for our own propagandizing.  Recent movies that were given a “hand” by the Pentagon include: “Stripes,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Top Gun,” “The Great Santini,” “The Right Stuff”, “Apollo 13,” and many others.56,57 From David Robb’s book “Operation Hollywood: “… the Pentagon is quite candid about why it provides this assistance to Hollywood. According to the army’s own handbook, A Producer’s guide to U.S. Army Cooperation with the Entertainment Industry, this collaboration must ‘aid in the recruiting and retention of personnel.’”56

Recruitment via Video Gaming

The Pentagon has vigorously supported development of PC war game software after discovering their use as both recruitment and as military training vehicles. Take, for example, the Microsoft X-Box game “Close Combat: First to Fight” – created by and for the military, but soon ported directly to “T” for Teens.57

Another “success” story, in terms of the number of teens and young adults participating, is the US Army’s video game project “America’s Army,” accessed by several million “players” as of 2007.58“America’s Army” is a highly graphic, fast paced and graphically violent battle simulation for youthful players. The army states that the game is for growing adults, but it is freely available on the Internet without age restriction and is widely distributed to children.59

It has been argued that “America’s Army” is blatant government propaganda pitched to those who are least able to understand the effects of exposure to its various subtle and not-so-subtle messages.60

VIOLENT VIDEO / VIDEO GAMING IS HARMFUL TO CHILDREN

Despite the overwhelming raft of data documenting ill effects in children and adolescents exposed to violent video and video games, the military services continue to support delivery of those images and experiences to children, seen only as potential future recruits.57

From the Committee on Public Education of the American Academy of Pediatrics:

“The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes exposure to violence in media, including television, movies, music, and video games as a significant risk to the health of children and adolescents. Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed. Pediatricians should assess their patients’ level of media exposure and intervene on media-related health risks. Pediatricians and other child health care providers can advocate for a safer media environment for children by encouraging media literacy, more thoughtful and proactive use of media by children and their parents, more responsible portrayal of violence by media producers, and more useful and effective media ratings.”61

From the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry:

“Studies of children exposed to violence have shown that they can become: “immune” or numb to the horror of violence, imitate the violence they see, and show more aggressive behavior with greater exposure to violence. Some children accept violence as a way to handle problems. Studies have also shown that the more realistic and repeated the exposure to violence, the greater the impact on children. In addition, children with emotional, behavioral and learning problems may be more influenced by violent images.

“Youth who exposed themselves to greater amounts of video game violence saw the world as a more hostile place, were more hostile themselves, got into arguments with teachers more frequently, were more likely to be involved in physical fights, and performed more poorly in school. Video game violence exposure was a significant predictor of physical fights even when respondent sex, hostility level, and weekly amount of game play were statistically controlled.”62

Summary of the Evidence: Exposure to violent video, whether in the form of video games, television, or theater movies is linked to, and causal of, increases in aggressive cognition, affect and behavior.63,64,65,66,67,68,69

STUDENTS, PARENTS, SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES RESPOND

Here is a small sampling of student, parent, school, and community responses to predatory military recruiters and the tactics they employ:

Vallejo, Ca. School Board Addresses The Opt-Out Clause

2008 – Vallejo, California: The Vallejo School Board voted to end the practice of providing military recruiters with complete and unrestricted access to student information.  District spokesman Jason Hodge: “This action brings the school district into compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act which requires parents and students be given the option to ‘opt out’ of having military recruiters gain access to their personal information.”70

Berkeley, Ca: City Council Resolution

2008 – Berkeley, California: The Berkeley City Council passed a resolution that initially stated Marine recruiters were “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” The council later issued a clarification, stating that the recruiting center retains the legal right to exist, but telegraphed to citizens that vigorous protesting of the center’s existence is also a protected right.71

Seattle’s Garfield High School Pta: “No” To Recruiters

2005 – Seattle, Washington: The Garfield High School PTA voted to adopt a resolution stating in part: “public schools are not a place for military recruiters.”72

National PTA Position: Protect Students’ Privacy

2005 – “National PTA seeks to increase awareness and community sensitivity about the collection and dissemination of information regarding students and believes that such records should respect the rights to privacy and be relevant to a child’s education.

“National PTA will continue to support legislation and policies [that] would change current law by providing for an ‘opt in’ policy where interested students and families can instead choose to request contact from military recruiters. Parents and students deserve to know who has their information, and parents should be involved in the important decision to enlist in military service.”73

High School Students Take Action Against The Asvab Scam

2006 – Lindale, Georgia: Two seventeen year old Pepperell High School students confronted recruiters, the school board, and the school’s administration, who had insisted students were compelled under law to take the ASVAB military (recruiting tool) test. As the result of their ad-hoc plan to distribute anti-ASVAB flyers to their fellow students and despite the argumentative efforts of local recruiters, an estimated two-thirds of the eligible students present refused to be “tested.”74

CONCLUSION

Military recruiters have been given legal authority to openly recruit adolescents on high school campuses, and tacit authority to recruit both adolescents and younger children through more subtle means. Techniques employed include those that are known to be harmful to children, including repeated exposure to violent games and images. Recruiters rely on the immature status of their prey to capture them with false promises, and subterfuge. Military recruitment of children must be understood for what it is: predatory.

The highest calling of any society is to protect its young from harm. Our society is failing to heed this call.

With many thanks to Rick Jahnkow, Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities.

Gary Evans MD is a practicing pediatrician and activist in Sonoma County California. He maintains a website – www.ringnebula.com – dedicated to peaceful activism.

FOR MORE INFORMATION (in alphabetical order):

• American Friends Service Committee: Youth & Militarism http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/default.htm

• Code Pink: Women for Peace
  http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=3911

• Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft
  http://www.comdsd.org/

• National Network Opposing Militarism In Our Schools
  http://www.nnomy.org/joomla/index.php


• Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities
  http://www.projectyano.org/

OPT-OUT FORMS:

• No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB):

  English: http://themmob.org//lmca/lmca_forms/Opt_Out_Form_Schools.pdf
  Spanish: http://themmob.org//lmca/lmca_forms/lmca-e.pdf

• The Joint Advertising and Marketing Research & Studies (JAMRS) Database:

  Note: ”Opt-Out requests will be honored for ten years. However, because opt-out screening is based, in part, on the current address of the individual, any change in address will require the submission of a new opt-out request with the new address.”

  English: http://themmob.org//lmca/lmca_forms/JAMRS_OPT_OUT.pdf
  Spanish: http://themmob.org//lmca/lmca_forms/lmca-pentagon-espanol.pdf

REFERENCES

1. Population Representation in the Military Services, Fiscal Year 2004; Table A-1: DoD new recruits ages 16 – 17 = 22.22%, age 18 = 23.53, age 19 = 14.48 (tot = 60.23%): http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2004/download/2004report.pdf,http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2004/download/2004appendices.pdf

2. “America’s Child Soldier Problem”; In These Times, May 17, 2007: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3199/americas_child_soldier_problem/

3. “Pentagon’s Teen Recruiting Methods Would Make Tobacco Companies Proud”: http://www.alternet.org/story/51889/

4. US Army’s e-Cybermission Website: http://www.ecybermission.com/base_public.cfm?url=38500C5F40530E011C27501A1D4A564C

5. DoD’s “Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies” database website: www.jamrs.org

6. “’Epidemic’ of military suicides investigated,” The Seattle Times, Nov. 17, 2007:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004019358_aliciacol17.html

7. “DoD Announces Recruiting and Retention Numbers for FY2007,” U.S. Department of Defense, News Release No. 1202-07, Oct. 10, 2007:http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11398

8. “Army Giving More Waivers in Recruiting,” New York Times, Feb. 14, 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html

9. “Recruiters struggle to find an Army,” The Seattle Times, Nov. 12, 2007:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004008540_recruit12.html

10. ”MILITARY RECRUITING: DOD Needs to Establish Objectives and Measures to Better Evaluate Advertising’s Effectiveness;” GAO 03-1005:http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d031005.pdf

11.: “MILITARY RECRUITING: DOD and Services Need Better Data to Enhance Visibility over Recruiter Irregularities;” GAO 06-0846, Aug. 2006:http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06846.pdf

12. Hearings On National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001—H.R. 4205 and Oversight of Previously Authorized Programs Before the Committee On Armed Services – House of  Representatives, 106 Congress, 2nd Session, Full Committee Hearings on Authorization and Oversight; Feb. 10, 2000: http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has041000.000/has041000_0f.htm

13. “Army Recruiters Take Show On Road,” CBS News, Mar. 16, 2005:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/16/eveningnews/printable681055.shtml

14. “MILITARY PERSONNEL: Preliminary Observations on Recruiting and Retention Issues within the U.S. Armed Forces;” GAO 05-419t (released Mar. 16, 2005): http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05419t.pdf

15. Article: “The Teen Brain: Insights from Neuroimaging” by Jay N. Giedd, MD (Nat. Institute of Mental Health); Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 42, Issue 4, April 2008

16. Editorial: “Adolescent Brain Development: Forging New Links?” by Elizabeth R. McAnarney, MD; Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 42, Issue 4, April 2008

17. “In vivo evidence for post-adolescent brain maturation in frontal and striatal regions”; Nature Neuroscience  2, 859 – 861, 1999: doi:10.1038/13154:http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v2/n10/full/nn1099_859.html

18. Re: military recruitment and sensation-seeking propensities and risk-taking propensities; National Research Council. Evaluating Military Advertising and Recruiting: Theory and Methodology. Committee on the Youth Population and Military Recruitment—Phase II. Paul R. Sackett and Anne S., pg. 25:http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10867

19. “Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth: Implications for Military Recruitment”: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10478&page=R1

20. NCLB of 2001, signed 1/8/02 (Contained in § 9528 of the ESEA (20 U.S.C. § 7908), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (P.L. No. 107-110), and in 10 U.S.C. § 503, as amended by 544 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 (P.L. No. 107-107):http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107-110.pdf

21. NCLB Reauthorization 2007:  http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/reauth/index.html

22. United States Army Recruiting Command: USAREC Pamphlet 350-13; 2004: http://www.nodraftnoway.org/public_html/USAREC%20Pam%20350-13%2020040901.pdf

23. “Military Recruits by High School, Zip Code, Community, State,” Bulletin, National Priorities Project, Nov. 1, 2005:http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=9492

24. Pentagon Creating Student Database, Washington Post, June 23, 2005: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062202305.html

25. “Army Offers $40K Recruiting Bonus to H.S. Grads,” NPR, Feb. 5, 2008: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18710386

26. “Earn Money For College” (US Navy): http://www.navy.com/benefits/education/earnmoney/

27. “Army of None,” David Solnit & Aimee Allison, Seven Stories Press, 2007

28. “Modeling the Individual Enlistment Decision: Final Study Report” (June, 1999); US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences:http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA364946

29. The ASVAB Program: http://www.asvabprogram.com/
30. “Parent Fact Sheet” from the ASVAB program website: http://www.asvabprogram.com/downloads/ASVAB_factsheet-parents.pdf

31. Navy Recruiting Manual 1130.8F, pg 2-59 (2I-2-5a): http://usmilitary.about.com/od/navyregs/p/usmilitary.about.com/library/pdf/navrecruit.pdf

32. ASVAB Counselor Manual; Nov. 2005, pg. 13:
http://www.asvabprogram.com/downloads/asvab_counselor_manual.pdf

33. ACLU Complaint/Lawsuit re: JAMRS: http://www.nyclu.org/files/hanson_v_rumsfeld_complaint_042406.pdf

34. DoD’s Answer to ACLU – Revised JAMRS Plan, Jan. 9, 2007:  http://www.nyclu.org/files/jamrs_revised_rules_notice_0109007.pdf

35. “Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents,” New York Times, June 3, 2005: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/nyregion/03recruit.html?oref=login

36. “Army, Marine recruiters shift focus to wary parents,” USA Today, Apr. 4, 2005: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-04-recruiters-parents_x.htm

37. “Making Soldiers in the Public Schools,” American Friends Service Committee, 1995: http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/militarism-in-schools/msitps.pdf

38. “Recruiting the Class of 2005”; Mother Jones, Jan-Feb, 2002: http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2002/01/rotc.html

39. “Trading Books for Soldiers: The True Cost of JROTC,” Philip Clark; American Friends Service Committee; 2000: Summary available at:http://web.archive.org/web/20000816192857/www.afsc.org/youthmil/html/issues/schools/jrotcost.htm)

40. “Feeding the military machine: JROTC expansion and inner-city academies mark recruiting incursion into U.S. public school classrooms, critics say”; Mar. 28, 2003, National Catholic Reporter: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_21_39/ai_99849547

41. Enlistment Contract: DD FORM 4/3, Oct 2007, page 2, section C. 9(b): www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/infomgt/forms/eforms/dd0004.pdf

42. Uniform Code of Military Justice Legislative History (and general information): http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/UCMJ_LHP.html

43. “Joining the Military is Hazardous to Your Education”: http://www.objector.org/before-you-enlist/gi-bill.html

44. “Lawmakers Urge GI Bill Extension,” Military.com website, May 9, 2007, : re: 30% of veterans cannot or do not use benefits:http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,135109,00.html

45. “Why aren’t military vets going to college?,” Orange County Register, Mar. 10, 2008: http://www.ocregister.com/news/veterans-college-state-1995807-people-military

46. US Dept. of Vet. Affairs, Montgomergy GI Bill - CH30 Pamphlet (honorable discharge required):http://www.gibill.va.gov/pamphlets/CH30/CH30_Pamphlet_General.htm;  (For the entire program, see US Dept. of Veterans Affairs, GI Bill Website:http://www.gibill.va.gov/GI_Bill_Info/benefits.htm)

47. “GI Bill falling short of college tuition costs,” Boston Globe, Feb. 10, 2008:http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/02/10/gi_bill_falling_short_of_college_tuition_costs/

48. “Hanna grad flies Blackhawk to school,” Sonoma Index-Tribune, Mar. 20, 2008:http://www.sonomanews.com/articles/2008/03/21/news/doc47df124d179b9525933769.txt

49. “Black Hawk touches down at schools,” Press Democrat, Mar. 15, 2008:http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080315/NEWS/803150397/1033/NEWS&template=kart

50. “Mobile Recruiting 2001”: http://www.objector.org/awol/mobile.html

51. “One In Five Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Suffer from PTSD or Major Depression”; RAND Corporation, Apr. 17, 2008 News Release: http://rand.org/news/press/2008/04/17/

52. “Why Go to College, When You Can be Cannon Fodder?,” Counterpunch, Feb. 17, 2005: http://www.counterpunch.org/whitehurst02172005.html

53. “Fast Facts,” Channel One News website: http://www.channelonenetwork.com/corporate/fast_facts.html

54. “FAQS,” Channel One News website: http://www.channelonenetwork.com/corporate/faqs.html

55. “The Pentagon Goes Hollywood,” Time Magazine, November 24, 1986: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962933,00.html

56. “Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies”, David Robb, 2004; “Operation Hollywood” author David Robb interview here: http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/09/09_403.html

57. “The Complex,” Nick Turse; Henry Hold & Co., New York (2008); ppg. 115-117

58. “Gamers Downloading America’s Army,” Jan. 12, 2007: http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2007-01/2007-01-12-voa35.cfm

59. US Army’s “Official Army Game” website: http://www.americasarmy.com/

60. “Army’s War Game Recruits Kids” Joan Ryan; SF Chronicle, (Orig. pub. Sept. 24, 2004): http://www.twincitiesvfp.org/army_09_11_04.htm

61. “Media Violence,” American Academy of Pediatrics, Policy Statement, Pediatrics, Vol. 108#5, Nov. 2001, pp.1222-1226:http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;108/5/1222 [Full Article]

62. “Children and Video Games: Playing with Violence,” American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Facts for Families: No. 91:http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_and_video_games_playing_with_violence; also No. 13, “Children and TV Violence”:http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_and_tv_violence

63. “An update on the effects of playing violent video games,” Anderson CA; Journal of Adolescence, 2004; 27: 113-122

64. “The Effects of Violent Video Game Habits on Adolescent Aggressive Attitudes and Behaviors,” Lynch, Paul J.; University of Oklahoma Medical School; Gentile, Douglas A., National Institute on Media and the Family; Olson, Abbie A., University of Minnesota; van Brederode, Tara M., University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development (Paper presented at the Biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (Minneapolis, MN April 19-22, 2001)

65. “Short term and long term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults,” Bushman BJ, Huesmann R.; Arch Pediatr Adolesce Med., 2006; 160:348-352.

66. “Television and adolescent aggressiveness,” Chaffee SH.  In: Comstock GA, Rubinstein EA eds. “Television and social behavior: a technical report to the Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior,” Vol. 3. Television and adolescent aggressiveness (DHEW Publication No. HSM 72-9058). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972;  pp. 1-34).

67. “Deciding to defect: the effects of video game violence on cooperative behavior,” Sheese BE, Graziano WG.; Psychol Science, 2005; 16:354-357.

68.  “The effects of violent video game habits on adolescent hostility, aggressive behaviors, and school performance,” Gentile DA, Lynch, PJ, Linder JR, Walsh DA; Journal of Adolescence, 2004; 27; 5-22

69. “Exposure to violent video games increases automatic aggressiveness,” Uhlmann, E, Swanson J.. J.Adolescence, 2004; 27:41-52

70. “Vallejo School District Votes To Shut Out Military Recruiters,” NBC.com, March 20, 2008:http://www.nbc11.com/newsarchive/15655946/detail.html

71. “The Military vs. Berkeley,” Newsweek, Feb. 13, 2008: http://www.newsweek.com/id/110911

72. “Rift Over Recruiting At Public High School,” Christian Science Monitor, May 18, 2005: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0518/p02s01-ussc.html

73. “Military Recruitment in Schools,” Military recruitment in schools and DOD database information, National PTA, August 2, 2005:www.pta.org/documents/military.pdf

74. “Teens Frustrate Military Recruiter’s ASVAB Scam,” Antiwar.com, Nov. 24, 2006: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=10055

The suspension of habeas corpus for “any person” by the 2006 Military Commissions Act, as reported by Robert Parry and Thom Hartman, was Project Censored’s top-ranked story of 2006-2007.[1] Habeas corpus protects individuals against unlawful exercises of state power; it is so fundamental to the United States that the Framers wrote it into the Constitution, establishing that it could only be suspended “in cases of rebellion or invasion.”[2] Identifying habeas corpus as the greatest security to “liberty and republicanism” contained in the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton drew insight from the eighteenth-century British legal scholar Blackstone, who championed habeas as a protection against the “dangerous engine of arbitrary government.”

Civil rights activists, constitutional law experts, and the public have been outspoken in their criticisms of the Military Commissions Act (MCA).  For example, in analyzing how it “purports to confer rights that, upon close inspection, prove illusory,” one legal scholar concludes that the Act is “an exercise in misdirection.  It is, in a word, ‘Orwellian.’”[3] Deceptive though its language may be, the Act’s political significance is straightforward, as Michael Dorf concludes:  ”It is difficult to imagine a greater denial of individual liberty than the prospect of indefinite executive detention without recourse to the judiciary.”[4]

To what extent have the corporate media done an adequate job of informing the public about the Military Commissions Act?  William Parry and Thom Hartman’s stories earned the #1 spot in Project Censored’s 2006-2007 rankings precisely because corporate media were not adequately covering the MCA and, in particular, its suspension of habeas corpus.  Parry and Hartman’s reportage reveals both (a) how little the corporate media do to inform the public about the Act’s sweeping implications and that (b) good reporting can convey the necessary understanding to a lay public, despite the Act’s Orwellian logic.  Furthermore, in reporting on the Act’s suspension of habeas, Parry noted that “the public’s lack of a clear understanding of the law’s scope has undercut efforts to build a popular movement for repeal or revision of the law” (Censored 2008, p. 39).

Inspired by Parry and Hartman’s work, and committed to the belief that habeas corpus for all persons is a cornerstone of democratic government, we examined subsequent newspaper coverage of the Military Commissions Act to determine how adequately the corporate news media fulfills its inter-connected functions as:  (1) a watchdog against abuse by those in positions of power, (2) a source of substantial information for citizens about social and political issues, and, (3) a forum in which diverse opinions are communicated to others.[5] In this chapter, we examine three fundamental causes for the public’s lack of understanding and consequent inaction:

(1) a continued deficit in coverage of the Military Commissions Act by corporate news media, compounded by

(2) reliance on a narrow range of sources in stories that do report on the MCA, resulting in

(3) the framing of public discourse about the Act as legitimate controversy, rather than the unconstitutional, counter-democratic law that it is.

MEDIA STANDING AND SPHERES OF CONSESUS, CONTROVERSY, & DEVIANCE[6]

Media scholars pay attention to the role that news sources play in the construction – and slant – of news stories.  Following the research of sociologist William Gamson, we use the term media standing to refer to who gains status as a regular media source, including especially those whose claims and views journalists quote directly.  According to Gamson, media standing is “a measure of achieved cultural power”:  Journalists grant media standing to individuals and organizations because these sources are understood to

speak as or for serious players in any given policy domain:  individuals or groups who have enough political power to make a potential difference in what happens.[7]

Typically journalists bestow the cultural power of media standing on sources whose official, bureaucratic statuses already establish them as “serious players” due to their political power.  Thus sociologists who study news production typically conclude that elites are both “the sources and subjects of most political stories”[8] because, for journalists, “‘news’ is about what those in power say and do.”[9]

By treating news as primarily, if not exclusively, a matter of what the powerful elite say and do, corporate news media provide the public with distorting perspectives on crucial issues, in at least two ways.  First, and most obviously, by affording media standing to a partial range of sources, news media can convey a false sense of consensus.  Second, and perhaps less obviously, by presenting a narrow range of competing perspectives, news media can convey a sensation of robust debate – even as such coverage functions to define narrowly the limits of acceptable political debate.[10]

In his influential study of US media during the Vietnam war, Daniel Hallin conceptualized three spheres of news coverage, (1) the sphere oflegitimate controversy, in which journalists seek conscientiously for balance and objectivity, (2) the sphere of consensus, in which journalists take for granted shared values and assumptions, and (3) the sphere of deviance, in which journalists understand themselves as authorized to treat marginal figures or positions without regard for the conventional professional commitments to balance or objectivity.[11]

Where journalists adhere most closely to professional norms of balance and objectivity, they contribute to the definition of the story, or the issues the story addresses, as matters of legitimate controversy.  One way journalists accomplish this is by quoting multiple, often competing sources to represent “both sides” of an issue, a standard practice for achieving “balance.”[12] In doing so, journalists contribute to the framing of the issue as one outside of shared consensus, but worthy of serious news coverage.

Though this might seem to exemplify how a free press ought to function in a democratic society, this scenario is not always ideal.  Most relevant for the purposes of this study, if individuals or groups come to (re)frame the protections afforded by habeas corpus — which US political leaders and the American public have historically treated as a matter of fundamental consensus — as subject to political debate, then the suspension of habeas corpus is repositioned as a (potentially) legitimate legal and political act.

Informed by Gamson’s conception of media standing and Hallin’s model of spheres defining consensus, controversy and deviance, we examine newspaper coverage of the Military Commission Act to determine how broad a spectrum of perspectives on the Act the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post present, and whether these papers treat the Act as a matter of consensus, legitimate controversy, or deviance.

DATA AND METHODS

Our data consist of news stories in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post between 17 September 2006 and 17 November 2007.  We selected these three newspapers as exemplars of corporate news media; and we chose the date range to span the time between one month before the Military Commissions Act became law (on 17 October 2006) and one month after the first anniversary of its passage.

Using Lexis/Nexis Academic and Proquest Newstand, we searched for all print news references to the Military Commissions Act in the three newspapers during that period.  Our search generated 189 records, comprised of 76 items from the New York Times, 62 from the Washington Post, and 51 from the Los Angeles Times.  We excluded a number of these items from analysis because they were not news stories (e.g., editorials, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor) or they were news stories that made only passing reference to the MCA.  This left us with a data collection of 75 relevant news stories (36 from the L.A. Times, 21 from the Post, and 18 from the N.Y. Times).

Following prior work on “media standing,” we were most interested in how each article identified its news sources and whom journalists quoted directly.  Thus our unit of analysis is the individual quotation.  The 75 stories in our data collection include 237 direct quotations.  We coded each quotation for its source identification using the following categories:  legal (with subcategories for lawyers, judges, constitutional rights advocacy organizations, and professors), congress, executive, military, other government officials, human rights advocacy groups and other source types, a residual category.

We also coded each quotation for its position toward the Act (pro, con, or neutral) and whether it made explicit reference to habeas corpus or not.  In determining each quote’s position toward the Act, which involves some subjective judgment on the coder’s part, we sought to minimize ambiguity by restricting use of the “pro” and “con” categories to quotations that clearly took one position or the other.  All other quotations were treated as “neutral.” We only coded quotations as making reference to habeas corpus if the source referred to it by name, synonym (e.g., “the great writ” or “the writ”) or pronoun (e.g., “it,” as employed in the phrase “referred to it,” in this sentence).

Finally, we coded for the location in the newspaper (i.e., front page or not) of the story in which each quotation appeared.  This last coding category gives an imprecise but useful measure of the quotation’s prominence.  The measure is ‘imprecise’ because we cannot determine the exact location of specific quotations based on electronic reproductions of the original newsprint stories.  The measure is useful, nonetheless, because front-page stories are more likely to attract the reader’s attention.

Working as a team to code the data, we sought to develop coding categories that required a minimum of subjective interpretation.  We met regularly to compare coding decisions and to refine our shared sense of how to code ambiguous, “borderline” cases.  When tested, this effort paid off with a high degree (93.5%) of inter-coder reliability.  Even our most difficult, subjective category — position toward the MCA — yielded a solid 82.2% inter-coder reliability score.  Thus, we report the findings that follow with strong confidence in their reliability.

WHO’S QUOTED?

The range of source types quoted in stories about the MCA is typical of conventional news coverage:  It reflects the strong journalistic bias for sources with official, bureaucratic statuses.  Table 1 summarizes our findings regarding whom the three newspapers treated as newsworthy sources of quotations.  The legal category accounts for nearly a majority (49%) of the 237 quotations in our data collection.  Government officials (including representatives of the executive and congressional branches) constituted the next largest (28%) source category.  Within this category, Congress accounted for 14%, the executive branch accounted for 5%, and other government officials (e.g., State Department officials) accounted for 9% of the total quotations in our data.  Spokespersons for human rights advocacy groups — such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights First, and the International Council of the Red Cross — contributed 9% of the quotations.

TABLE 1. Distribution of Quotations by Source Type

Source Type Quotes Total (%)
Legal 115 49
Government 67 28

Military 23 10

Human Rights 22 9

Other 10 4

TOTAL 237 100

*Government category excludes military sources
Notably, in the Other category, we found just a single instance of a direct quotation attributed to a detainee:  Describing Salim Hamdan as a “ambassador of sorts for frustrated detainees,” the New York Times quoted him as saying, “There is no such thing as justice here,” during a war crimes court hearing.

The preponderance of quotations by legal sources warrants a closer look at this category, as provided in Table 2.

TABLE 2. Distribution of Quotations by Legal Sources

Source Type Quotes Total (%)
Detainee Lawyer 28 24
Judge (non-military) 26 23

Professor 23 20

ACLU/CCR * 12 10

Military Lawyer 10 9

Other Lawyer 6 5

Attorney General 5 4

Military Judge 3 3

Other 2 2

TOTAL 115 100

*CCR refers to the Center for Constitutional Rights
Detainees’ legal counsel were the most frequently quoted subcategory of legal sources (24%), followed closely by non-military judges (23%) and law professors (20%).  Spokespersons for the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union accounted for 10% of the legal category.

Though detainees almost never achieved media standing in our data, journalists frequently quoted their lawyers.  Notably, a majority of the quotations attributed to judges, and many of the quotations attributed to lawyers, derived from transcripts of legal proceedings.

The preceding distributions give a clear picture of who achieved media standing.  Overwhelmingly, the three newspapers we examined treated legal experts and political officials as the most frequently quoted source types.  Next we turn to examine the positions of these quoted sources toward the Military Commissions Act itself.

WHAT POSITIONS DO SOURCES TAKE ON THE MCA?

We were initially surprised to find that most of the quoted sources (43%) in our data collection expressed opposition to the Military Commission Act in one way or another; and just 22% of the quoted sources expressed support for the Act, as summarized in Table 3:

TABLE 3. Distribution of Quotations by Position on Military Commissions Act

Position Quotes Total (%)
Opposes MCA 102 43
Neutral 82 35

Supports MCA 53 22

TOTAL 237 100

We had expected that quoted sources would split evenly between support for and opposition to the Act, reflecting journalists’ commitment to the objectivity norm of “balance.” Instead, by nearly a 2-1 ratio, quoted sources spoke in opposition to the Act, which might be interpreted as evidence of the newspapers fulfilling their “watchdog” role.  This interpretation is complicated, however, by looking in more detail at variation in the degree of criticism expressed in these oppositional quotations.  To exemplify this point, consider the similarities and differences between the following two quotations:

1) ”Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Hamdan’s defense attorney, said the Military Commissions Act ‘demonstrates once again that if you put a statute together in three weeks and rush it through … you end up with a process that doesn’t work’” (Los Angeles Times, 5 June 2007, ellipses in the original)

2) ”‘Habeas corpus was recklessly undermined in last year’s legislation,’ said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT.), the [Judiciary] committee’s chairman, referring to the Military Commissions Act.  ’I hope the new Senate will reconsider this historic error and set the matter right’” (Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2007)

Both quotations identify the sources in terms of their official statuses, quote those sources directly, and the quotations themselves express criticisms of the Act.  By contrast, however, the first quotation expresses what might be understood as a limited criticism:  The “process doesn’t work” because it was put together hastily.  Insofar as this comment registers a criticism of the Act, it is one with a relatively ready remedy, namely slower, more careful revision of the statute.  By contrast, the second quotation assesses “last year’s legislation” (i.e., the MCA) as having “recklessly undermined” habeas corpus, and Leahy’s call for the Senate to “set the matter right” can only be understood, in context, as a call to fundamentally revise the Act by restoring habeas corpus.  The second quote is, in sum, a more fundamental criticism of the Act.

Qualitative analysis of the quotations that referenced habeas, such as the previous quotation from Senator Leahy, led us to employ references to habeas corpus as indicators of more fundamental critiques of the Military Commissions Act.  We sought to determine how often quoted sources invoked habeas corpus.  Table 4 summarizes our findings on the frequency with which quoted sources invoked habeas corpus.

TABLE 4. Distribution of Quotations by Invocation of Habeas Corpus

Invocation Quotes Total (%)
No Mention
of Habeas 193 81

Mentions Habeas 44 19

TOTAL 237 100

Overwhelmingly the sources quoted in our data do not mention habeas corpus (81%):  Just 19% of the quotations refer to it, by name, synonym (e.g., “the writ” or “the great writ”), or pronoun (e.g., “it,” where the pronoun clearly linked to a prior reference to Habeas).

Does the position of the quoted source toward the Military Commission Act bear any significant relationship to the source’s likelihood of mentioning habeas corpus explicitly?  Based on qualitative analysis, we expected that the MCA’s opponents would be more likely than supporters to mention Habeas.  The data (summarized in Table 5) confirm our expectation of a strong correlation between position on the MCA and reference to habeas corpus.

TABLE 5. Position on Military Commissions Act and Invocation of Habeas Corpus

Position on MCA Mention Habeas No Mention Total
Support MCA 6 (11%) 47 (89%) 53 (100%)
Oppose MCA 26 (25%) 76 (75%) 102 (100%)

We found a 14% difference between mentions of habeas corpus by position on the MCA, a difference of considerate importance.  (A chi-square test yields a p-value of .031, well within the conventional standard [.05] of statistical significance.)

Quoted sources’ invocations of habeas corpus typically represented the strongest critiques of the Military Commissions Act.  (Recall, for example, Leahy’s characterization of it as “reckless”).  These quotations raised fundamental questions about the counter-democratic consequences of the Act and its questionable constitutionality.

By contrast, supporters of the MCA seldom referenced habeas corpus.  The following two instances may be treated as exemplary.  The first comes from a news story that recalled an exchange in January 2007, between President Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales and Senator Arlen Specter, during Gonzales’ confirmation hearing:

3) ”Gonzales responded by suggesting the Constitution does not protect habeas corpus at all.  ’The fact that the Constitution—again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.  There is a prohibition against taking it away.’” (Los Angeles Times, 30 January 2007)

The article went on to report Specter’s challenging response (e.g., “‘Now wait a minute,’ Specter interrupted, ‘The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion.  Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?’”) and to report other legal scholars’ positions on Gonzales’ assertion (e.g., “‘He is completely wrong on the history,’ said Eric freedman, a Hofstra law professor and expert on habeas corpus.”).

A second case: In December 2007, Solicitor General Paul Clement urged the Supreme Court to uphold the federal appeals court’s February 2007 decision that detainees had no constitutional rights in the first place.  Clement argued that the MCA provided detainees more access to judicial review than afforded by habeas corpus:

4) ”‘This is the remarkable liberalization of the writ, not some retrenchment or suspension of the writ,’ Mr. Clement declared.” (New York Times, 6 December 2007).

To describe the tribunals established by the MCA as a “liberalization” of habeas corpus echoes the Orwellian “doublespeak” of the Act itself.

In sum, then, we proceeded by treating invocations of habeas corpus as indicators of the strongest critiques of the MCA.  Their relative scarcity in our data, despite the preponderance of quotations expressing opposition to the MCA suggest that the newspapers we studied were not providing their readers with as full a range of the critical perspectives on the Act as existed.  Subsequent analyses build on this finding.

HOW PROMINENTLY PLACED ARE CRITIQUES OF THE MCA?

We hypothesized that quotations expressing support for the MCA would be more likely to appear in prominently located stories (i.e., in front-page stories) while quotations expressing opposition to the Act would be more likely to appear in less prominently located stories (i.e., in stories not originating on the front page).  However, our data do not support these hypotheses.  Of 49 quotations from stories originating on a newspaper’s front page, 53% expressed opposition to the MCA, and 27% voiced support for it.  (The remaining 20% were neutral.) Of 188 quotations from stories not originating on the front page, 41% expressed opposition to and 21% voiced support for the Act (with 38% neutral).

Three aspects of these findings are important.  First, stories originating on the front page are more likely to feature quotations that take a definite position (i.e., pro or con), accounting for 80% of the “front-page” quotes but just 62% of the quotes in stories not originating on the front page.  This correlation makes sense in the context of news values, where the clash of competing views on a contentious social issue probably contributes to an editor’s sense of the story’s appeal to readers and, hence, its deserving more prominent placement.  Second, as previously noted, quotations expressing opposition to the Act appear more frequently in stories that originate on the front page, by a difference of 12% (i.e., the percentage difference of 53% and 41%).

Third, and finally, before concluding that the prevalence of oppositional quotes in prominently positioned stories constitutes evidence of thenewspapers’ oppositional stance, note that (a) quotations supporting the MCA are also more likely to appear in stories originating on the front page, by a difference of 6% (i.e., 27% – 21%), and (b) we found little difference between front-page and other stories in the frequency with which quotations invoked habeas corpus.  Of quotations from front-page stories (N=49), we found 16% that mentioned habeas, compared with 19% of the quotations from stories not originating on the front page (N=188).  The slight difference (3%) in mentions of habeas corpus by story location is most likely a product of random variation.  What is significant, though, is that the greater proportion of oppositional quotes in prominently placed stories didnot yield an increase in the frequency with which quoted sources invoked habeas corpus.  Since we understand references to habeas as indicative of more fundamental criticisms of the MCA, this finding suggests that, although the newspapers in our data gave prominent placement to quotations critiquing the MCA, those critiques were not the most fundamental ones.  This dynamic contributes to the overall frame established by the papers in covering the Act:  namely, the appearance of healthy debate, including frequent — albeit relatively superficial — criticism of the Act and its consequences.

THE 2006 ELECTION AS REFERENDUM

Many pundits, and perhaps also the American public, oriented to the November 2006 mid-term elections as a referendum on the Bush Administration’s policies in general and its “Global War on Terrorism” in particular.  Thus, we sought to determine whether the corporate media were more likely to afford media standing to critical perspectives on the Military Commissions Act after the Democrat Party’s convincing November victories.  We found this to be true, as Table 6 documents:

TABLE 6. Position on Military Commissions Act Before and After 2006 Election

Time Period Support MCA Oppose MCA Total
Before Election 16 (46%) 19 (54%) 35 (100%)
After Election 37 (31%) 83 (69%) 120 (100%)

Compared with the period before the election, quotations expressing opposition to the Act increased by 15% in the period after the election.  Before the election, the newspapers in our data presented an almost evenly divided spectrum of expert opinion on the merits of the MCA, with a slight tilt toward critique (54% opposed versus 46% supportive).  After the election, the 15% increase in sources critical of the Act shifted the balance strongly toward opposition (69% opposed versus 31% supportive).[13] Consistent with our prior findings, this post-election increase in the percentage of quotations opposing the MCA might be interpreted as evidence that the newspapers, spurred by public opinion, roused to fulfill their role as “watchdogs” against governmental abuses of authority.  Unfortunately, a secondary analysis cautions against any hasty embracing of this conclusion. As before, we use explicit references to habeas corpus as our indicator of more serious critiques of the MCA.  Comparing mentions of habeas, before and after the election, reveals no significant change, as evident in Table 7:

TABLE 7. Mentions of Habeas Corpus Before and After 2006 Election

Time Period Mention Habeas No Mention Total
Before Election 10 (20%) 41 (80%) 51 (100%)
After Election 34 (18%) 152 (82%) 186 (100%)

In fact, there was a very small (2%) decrease in the frequency of quotations that referenced habeas corpus after the 2006 election.  This difference is much too small to rule out the possibility of random variation as the best explanation.

Combining the findings summarized in Tables 6 and 7, we conclude that although the newspapers in our data did increase the number of quotations opposing the MCA after the 2006 elections, this did not result in an equivalent increase in fundamental critiques of the Act.  Consistent with our prior findings, the coverage gives the appearance of healthy, legitimate political debate, with the balance shifting toward an oppositional perspective after the elections – but with no more room for critiques that frame the Act, with its unconstitutional suspensions of habeas corpus, as beyond the pale of legitimate political debate.

CONCLUSIONS

The patterns of corporate newspaper coverage identified in this study provide an important contribution to understanding why the US public continues to lack a strong grasp of the Military Commissions Act’s significance.  Our examination of 237 direct quotations regarding the Act, drawn from three major newspapers over a 15-month period, lead us to conclude that, although the papers present critical perspectives on the Act:

1) these oppositional quotations only infrequently invoke the most fundamental criticisms against it, including especially its suspension of habeas corpus for “any person,” and

2), ironically, in this context, the relative balance of supportive and critical quotations contributes to the framing of public discourse about the Military Commissions Act as a matter of legitimate controversy.

Should the suspension of habeas corpus, historically a pillar of western democratic government, be subject to the type of political debate — not to mention journalistic coverage — usually reserved for mundane partisan politics?  Does presenting it that way fulfill the functions of a free press in a democratic society, including the media’s responsibility as watchdog, information source, and forum of diverse public opinion?

Blackstone warned against secret, indefinite government detention without recourse to judicial review as a “a dangerous engine of arbitrary government.” Extending his metaphor, we understand news coverage of the type analyzed in this chapter as oiling the dangerous engine. Incomplete coverage of the (full range of critical) perspectives on the MCA, framed in a context of legitimate controversy, keeps the public inadequately informed and thus aids a powerful elite in their efforts to extend governmental authority at the expense of individual liberties.

If the American public is to mount an effective, popular movement for repeal of the Military Commissions Act, it must first understand the Act.  As this chapter shows, two crucial steps in that direction are, first, to expand the scope of sources whom journalists treat as worthy of media standing, to include more frequently those who will voice fundamental critiques of the Act; and, second, drawing on Hallin’s theoretical model, to reposition public discourse about the Act’s suspension of habeas from the sphere of legitimate controversy to the sphere of deviance, because habeas corpus is a cornerstone of American law.  Its affirmation as such is all the more important in the context of the current administration’s unconventional, unlimited “Global War on Terrorism.”

[1] See Chapter Two, Censored Déjá Vu, in this volume for an update on “No Habeas Corpus for ‘Any Person.’”
[2] See, e.g., Jonathan Hafetz, “Ten Things You Should Know about Habeas Corpus,” Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law, White Paper, 2007; accessed online: http://www.nimj.org/documents/HabeasPaperFinal.pdf

[3] Michael C. Dorf, “The Orwellian Military Commissions Act of 2006.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 5 (2007): 10-18; quotes at p. 10.

[4] ibid., p. 18.

[5] For a critical discussion of the functions of the free press, see David Croteau and William Hoynes, By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1994; especially pp. 10-22.

[6] This section extends prior work by Andrew Roth and Emilie Vander Haar, “Media Standing of Urban Parkland Movements,” City & Community, vol. 5, no. 2 (June 2006):129-151.

[7] William Gamson, “Media and Social Movements,” pp. 9468-9472 in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by N.J. Smelser and P.B. Baltes.  Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 2001; quotes at p. 9471.

[8] Robert Entman and David Paletz, “Media and the Conservative Myth,” Journal of Communication, vol. 30, no. 4 (1980):154-165; quote at p. 164

[9] Croteau and Hoynes, op cit; quote at p. 177.

[10] See, for example, Croteau & Hoynes’ groundbreaking study of television news, By Invitation Only, op cit.

[11] Daniel Hallin, “The Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.  See also, Stuart Hall, “A World at One with Itself,” pp. 85-94 in The Manufacture of News, edited by S. Cohen & J. Young.  Beverly Hills, CA:  Sage, 1973; esp. p. 88.

[12] See, e.g., Robert Entman, “Objectivity, Bias, and Slant in the News,” pp. 30-38 in Entman, Democracy without Citizens, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

[13] A chi-square test of this distribution yields a p-value of .051, a hair’s breadth short of the conventional standard (.050) of statistical significance: Put another way, it is extremely unlikely that the observed distribution is the product of random variation in the data.

“The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished.” – Jimmy Carter, 2008

In June of 2007, Israel imposed full sanctions on the Gaza strip, creating a virtual prison camp of 1.5 million people. Food, fuel, medical supplies and basic essentials are all in short supply. Intermittent electricity makes daily work mostly impossible, resulting in an almost total collapse of the economic infrastructure, massive human suffering, and daily deaths.  This study reviews the history of the Gaza strip over the past two and half years and the US television news coverage of this human rights tragedy in the Middle East.

Nora Barrows-Friedman reports from the Jebaliya Refugee Camp, Gaza, June 11, 2008: “ In the brightly painted new intensive care unit wing of al-Awda, northern Gaza’s only emergency medical facility in the massive Jebaliya refugee camp, doctors, nurses, aides and administrators are ready to provide emergency surgery services for the area’s 300,000 people.

“But the metal bed frames remain empty of patients — and of mattresses, and IV bags, and heart monitors, and other basic supplies needed at a basic medical facility. The equipment has been purchased, but remains in the occupied West Bank city Ramallah, prevented by Israel from being taken into Gaza.

“In the last year, the service burden on al-Awda was tripled. We had difficulty, especially after the Fatah-Hamas fighting, and through the closures beginning last year,” says Nehal Mehanna, program officer at al-Awda tells IPS as she walks around the empty rooms.

“Israel is not letting certain medication and supplies into Gaza, through any checkpoint. For example, we have been waiting for seven months to have the operation tables to be shipped and enter Gaza through the Erez checkpoint — the equipment is only one hour away by car, but we’ve been waiting for seven months. Sometimes we can get supplies through the Red Cross, but they’re helping many organizations at the same time. They have limited supplies. It’s a long, complicated procedure, and it all has to be approved by the Israeli authorities.”

“According to doctors in Gaza, over 180 patients have died as a result of lack of essential supplies since the Israeli-led blockade began in June 2007. Palestinians seeking medical treatment for cancer, heart disease, and kidney failure, among other illnesses, cannot access the services they need — as Israel has prevented chemotherapy, heart, and dialysis medications from entering Gaza. They have to look for treatment abroad, either in Egypt or in Israel. But since the blockade, even with written permission and international coordination, Israel has shut the borders to Palestinian patients coming from Gaza, resulting in many preventable deaths.

“We try to provide the best services we can,” Mehanna tells IPS. “We have a colleague here, a nurse at the hospital, who has kidney failure. She has received written permission four times to leave and get treatment in Egypt, but the Israelis have prevented her from leaving. We hope she can get out and get treatment. She’s our friend. It’s a difficult situation.”

“Al-Awda hospital staff says they are quickly running out of anesthesia. The hospital’s pharmacist, Dr. Akram Naffar, shows IPS his small cache of anesthetic medications, small boxes stacked on a spare white shelf at the back of the storage room. “We only have enough left for two, maybe three weeks,” Naffar says. “I don’t know what will happen at the end of the month. We can only live day by day.”

“Naffar tells IPS that if another massive Israeli attack comes soon, people may not get even present levels of treatment.

“When other hospitals around Gaza have medicine we need for an operation, or for emergency services, we trade with them,” Naffar tells IPS. He says this is both a dangerous and a demoralizing system, but there is no alternative until the Israeli blockade is lifted.

“Mehanna tells IPS that the medical staff at al-Awda is under extreme stress. “We try to provide as much care as we can,” she says. “We have a procedure for receiving medicines and supplies. We make a list every six months and update it, but lately we’ve needed more and more emergency medications. We have an obstetrics department, and we need labor and delivery medication. Also for emergency needs — we anticipate more Israeli incursions and attacks, so we need to be ready.”

“Riyad al-Adassi, of the Union of Health Work Committees in Gaza City, expects the situation to get much worse. “A hundred and eighty patients died in 12 months, and this number is expected to increase day by day. In the past, three to four hundred patients a day used to travel abroad to get treatment. Now, we can hardly get thirty people to travel out of Gaza. They’re prevented from leaving. There are many waiting lists to get special permission from the Israeli side.”

“IPS asked al-Adassi to define the effects of Israel’s policies towards Gaza from the health workers’ perspective. “Palestinians are dehumanized. In the past, we used to have a concept of freedom, having a state, fighting for our rights. Now, it’s shifted to providing for our families and surviving. We live in a jungle — and the concept of living in a jungle is to try and adapt to survive. All of us are frustrated and suppressed. This is not healthy at all, even for Israel itself. At a certain point, it will explode. And who will take responsibility? Those with the keys to the occupation.”

Circumstances in Gaza are significantly under-covered by the US media. Other than NPR’s All Things Considered, May 16, 2006, and theWashington Times, January 22, 2000, no mention of the health care crisis in Gaza has occurred in US corporate media over the past two and half years, since Hamas democratically won the Palestinian general election in January of 2006. Americans know very little about this de facto prison camp of one and half million people in the Gaza strip.

The following is a short historical timeline of the Gaza situation since January 2006:

2006

January 25: Hamas wins Palestinian general elections gaining 76 of 132 seats.

January 29: Western governments threaten to halt financial aid to Palestinians.

January 30: The UN, EU, US and Russia announce “all members of a future Palestinian government must be committed to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations.”

March 18: Hamas submits its cabinet to President Mahmoud Abbas (twenty-four ministers including eight MPs). In response, the US, EU, and Israel boycott the new government and say they will suspend aid to the government.

April 16: Iran announces an offer of $50 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority.

May 8: Three Palestinians are killed and ten wounded in clashes in southern Gaza, near Khan Yunis, between rival Hamas and Fatah supporters.

May 17: Hamas deploys a new 3,000-strong force on the streets of Gaza.

May 11: Prominent Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails release a document calling for a national unity government between Hamas and Fatah.

June 3: A new security force loyal to Abbas is deployed in the West Bank.

June 16: The EU endorses a new policy to channel aid directly to the Palestinians, bypassing the Hamas government.

June 25: Palestinian fighters launch an attack in Israel that results in the deaths of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of another, Corporal Gilad Shalit.

June 27: Hamas and Fatah reach an agreement based on the May 11th prisoners’ document, which includes the forming of a national unity government.

June 28: Israel launches Operation Summer Rains, in what it claims is an attempt to recover the captured Corporal Shalit. The ongoing operation initially consists of heavy bombardment of bridges, roads, and the only power station in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians are killed during aerial and ground attacks over the following months.

June 29: Israel detains 64 Hamas officials, including eight Palestinian Authority cabinet ministers and up to 20 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

September 1: Abbas says Hamas and Fatah have agreed on the principles of a power-sharing government and may soon form a new cabinet to lead the Palestinian Authority. Under the plan, Abbas is to dissolve the current Hamas-led cabinet within 48 hours.

September 8: UN officials say Gaza is at “breaking point” after months of economic sanctions and Israeli attacks.

September 23: The agreement breaks down. It is reported to be Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel at the heart of the continued disagreements.

October 1: Eight people are killed in Gaza in factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah as a new wave of violence erupts.

October: A number of mediation attempts take place. Egypt and Qatar send their foreign ministers to meet both sides. Other Palestinian groups such as Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine mediate between the two sides to stop the clashes.

November 13: Following talks between Hamas and Fatah, both sides agree to form a government of technocrats unaligned with either party. Muhammad Shbeir, a Gaza academic who is close to Hamas but not a party-member, accepts the offer to head the government.

November 14: Hamas again asserts that it will not recognize Israel and the agreement stalls.

December 15: Hamas accuses Fatah of involvement in a gun attack on Ismail Haniyah, Palestinian prime minister, as he crosses the border from Egypt into Gaza.

December 16: Abbas calls for new elections as a solution to the ongoing crisis.

2007

January 21: Abbas meets Khaled Meshaal of Hamas in Damascus in response to an invitation by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

January 30: Fatah and Hamas reach a ceasefire agreement mediated by Egypt after a series of clashes lead to the death of 32 Palestinians. Both sides welcome a Saudi initiative to meet in Mecca.

February 8: Hamas and Fatah agree to a deal in Mecca to end factional warfare that has killed scores of Palestinians and to form a coalition, hoping this would lead Western powers to lift crippling sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led government.

February 9: The Quartet welcomes the role of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in reaching the agreement to form a Palestinian National Unity government. It later reaffirms that it must obey international demands to recognize Israel, renounce violence, and abide by previous peace agreements.

February 15: Haniyah and his cabinet resign. Haniyah is re-appointed by Abbas and begins the process of forming a new Palestinian unity government.

March 15: Palestinians reach agreement on the formation of the government.

March 20: Jacob Walles, the US consul-general to Jerusalem, meets Salam Fayad, the Palestinian finance minister, marking the first contact between the US and the recently formed Palestinian Unity government.

March 21: The EU and UN hold talks with non-Hamas cabinet ministers.

March 22: Fighting erupts again between Hamas and Fatah fighters, with one Fatah fighter killed and seven people injured.

April 10: US announces it is to give Abbas $60 million to boost his presidential guard and for other security expenses.

April 23: Interior Minister Hani al-Qawasmi resigns, citing resistance to his planned reforms for the security services.

April 24: The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, fires scores of rockets into Israel, saying a truce “no longer exists.” At the same time, the Hamas-led Palestinian government calls for the truce to be restored.

April 30: Palestinian teachers hold a one-day strike over unpaid wages. This prompts Azzam al-Ahmad, the deputy prime minister and a member of Fatah, to suggest that the unity government be disbanded if the Western embargo is not lifted.

May 10: Unity government deploys a joint Hamas-Fatah police force to deal with growing lawlessness in Gaza

May 11: Clashes erupt between Fatah and Hamas factions.

May 13: Factions agree to a truce, brokered by Egypt, but skirmishes continue to be reported and the ceasefire quickly disintegrates. Over the next few days, ceasefires are continually agreed to but broken hours later. Meanwhile Israel continues to bomb Gaza in response to rockets fired by Hamas fighters.

May 24: Abbas calls for Hamas rockets to be stopped, but is rebuffed as factional fighting continues.

May 30: The UN Security Council calls for an “immediate end” to the faction fighting in Gaza.

June 7: A Fatah fighter is killed, the first person killed in internal fighting in more than two weeks.

June 10: Further clashes between the rival factions leave more dead and scores injured.

June 12: Fatah declares it is withdrawing from the unity government until there is an end to recurring street battles.

June 13: Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, which has gained ground across much of Gaza, orders Fatah security forces to surrender their weapons. The group launches attacks on a number of Fatah bases.

June 14: Abbas sacks the Hamas-led unity government and declares a state of emergency. Haniya defies Abbas and promises the government will continue to function.

June 15: Hamas seizes several senior officials and appears effectively in control of Gaza. The group declares an amnesty for Fatah fighters.

June 16: Abbas, in the West Bank, signs a decree allowing a Palestinian emergency government to take office without parliamentary approval. Fayad, an independent parliamentarian, is made prime minister. The Palestinian territories have become split between the West Bank, controlled by Fatah; and Gaza, run by Hamas.

2008

January: Israel announces that it will close all border crossings into Gaza, intensifying a six-month blockade imposed on the territory.

It says this is in response to continued rocket fire from the territory.

Severe fuel and food shortages are reported in Gaza.

Managers at Gaza’s only power plant, which supplies a third of the territory’s electrical supplies, shut down its generators saying there is a lack of fuel. UN officials in Gaza say the measure amounts to collective punishment of the territory’s population of 1.5 million people.

At night, much of Gaza City is plunged into darkness because of electrical shortages.

Palestinians hold candlelight vigils in the city protesting the embargo.

Israeli officials insist there is enough fuel to keep the power plant running and blame Hamas, Gaza’s de facto rulers, of staging the crisis.

Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas wins international support for a proposal to take responsibility for the Palestinian side of all Gaza’s crossings. However Hamas says that past arrangements imposing a blockade on Gaza were “history” and it must have a role in future border control.

Hamas fighters co-operate with Egyptian forces to patch up parts of the frontier barrier. People continue to pass into Egypt through Rafah, though in greatly reduced numbers.

Shops in eastern Sinai start running low on supplies, prompting complaints from local people about the situation.

Egyptian roadblocks in the Sinai Peninsula prevent thousands of Palestinians from traveling to mainland Egypt.

Rival Palestinian delegations head for Cairo, where Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says talks with Hamas are out of the question unless it ends its “coup d’etat” in Gaza.

February: Egyptian forces use barbed wire and metal barricades to seal the last remaining gap on the Egyptian side of the frontier at Rafah, ending twelve days of freedom of movement for Palestinians.

The Egyptian authorities say their nationals, visiting Gaza and Gazans who traveled to Egypt, would be allowed to return home.

Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar says Hamas has reached an understanding with Egypt to control the breached border between Egypt and Gaza. This is denied by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who lost control of Gaza in June and refuses to negotiate with the de facto rulers, Hamas.

March 2008: Israeli occupational forces with kill over 120 Palestinians in one week, twenty-seven of which are children.

Sources: BBC, Al Jazeera, and Reuters.

US Media Coverage of Hamas

The New York Times ran a front page story June 15, 2008 entitled, “A Year Reshapes Hamas and Gaza,” by Ethan Bronner.  The article focuses on how the Hamas government is enforcing strict laws, such as those prohibiting kissing in public and improper behavior in the streets. Essentially the article criticizes the Hamas government as fundamentally extremist, but acknowledges that it is more solidly in place than ever. Bonner writes, “Whereas Hamas says it will never recognize Israel, its leaders say that if Israel returned to the 1967 borders, granted a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and dealt with the rights of refugees, Hamas would declare a long-term truce. This is not much different from what the rest of the Arab world says or the Fatah positions in peace talks with Israel.”

Given that the NY Times acknowledges that Hamas is willing to accept the existence of the State of Israel and that Hamas’ position really isn’t any more radical than many other Arab states, why do so many Americans see Hamas as a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s total destruction?

The words “Palestinians” or “Hamas” are translated into “terrorists” and “violence” in the minds of many people in the United States. This translation did not simply appear on its own.  US television news media continuously reinforce a mindset in the American people that dehumanizes Palestinians. This dehumanization allows for a democratically elected government, such as Hamas, to be labeled endlessly as a terrorist organization. Palestine is seen as a breeding ground for violence and terror. American mass media portrays an image of Palestinians as victimizers rather then victims of an oppressive military occupation. Even when it is clear that Palestinians are the victims of the Israeli military, American television has a way of twisting the story and blaming Palestinians for the violence.

On June 27, 2006, the Jim Lehrer News Hour reported that 3,000 Israeli troops had just entered Gaza. The program reported that Israeli warplanes, flying over Gaza, had completely sealed off all the borders. Yet, after Lehrer described Israel’s actions, he justified it as a form of collective punishment by reporting on the two Israeli soldiers captured prior to the invasion. Framed in this way, Israel’s cruel treatment of Palestinians, specifically in Gaza, then becomes acceptable.

On March 3, 2008, when ABC reported on the deaths of over one hundred Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, these deaths were justified as a retaliation to Hamas rockets that had been previously fired into Israel.  In almost all of the news reports regarding Hamas, the media has referred to Hamas using negative language. The same terms are used repeatedly: “violent, extremist and terrorist.”

Political commentator and MIT professor Noam Chomsky writes in “Elite policy and the ‘Axis of Evil,” Z Magazine, 02/05/08 that, “in a remarkable act, tens of thousands of the tortured people of Gaza broke out of the prison to which they had been confined by the US-Israel alliance as a punishment for the crime of voting the wrong way in a free election in January, 2006.” It goes unrecognized that Palestinians have the right to elect their own representative government.  Instead, Palestinians are punished for electing a government that supports them and their right for autonomy, “failing to recognize the unpeople of the Middle East are too backward to appreciate democracy- another principal that traces back to ‘Wilsonian Idealism,’” scathes Chomsky.

Hamas, in most US television news programs, is not even presented as a democratically elected government. On June 15, 2007, CBS news reported on the chaos in Gaza. In this report the elected Hamas government was referred to as a forced government, “Masked Hamas gunmen have taken over Gaza Strip.” Not only was there no acknowledgement that Palestinians elected the Hamas government, the adjectives used to describe Hamas created a violent image justifying its vilification.  In the same CBS news report, the reporter Charles Osgood interviewed Mr. Michael Oren, a Middle East analyst, in which he stated that the violence and deaths in Gaza are to be blamed on Hamas, “Hamas has to stop terrorizing the Palestinian people.”

The following are descriptive terms and editorial comments regarding Hamas used by US television news stations over the past two and half years. Stories also link Hamas to other middle eastern “terrorist’ organizations and countries.  Negative terms are in bold.

ABC News Now

May 9, 2006 Tuesday

SHOW: World View 12:42 PM EST ABC

Hamas Versus Fatah; Factions Fight For Control

Anchors: Mike Lee, Reporters: Simon McGregor Wood (Gaza, Jerusalem)

The situation has deteriorated significantly. As you say, since the Hamas organization won the Palestinian elections, what we’ve had is almost daily clashes between armed gunmen from the Fatah organization, which lost power in the elections, and gunmen from Hamas. And, in the last two days, yesterday, three people were killed. And this morning’s incident produced nine injuries and we read from the sources that we have in Gaza that up to five or six of those were school children.

MIKE LEE (ABC NEWS)

(Voiceover) Of course, the danger is that the Palestinians will become ungovernable and that could lead to further chaos.

And, in many cases, we’ve seen, particularly recently in Gaza, they’re refusing to play the Hamas’ game. And there is this enormous tension on the streets almost every day now because the guys with the guns are not necessarily obeying the orders of the new government.

MIKE LEE (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) And, because Hamas is in control, refuses to amend its charter, saying that Israel should be abolished. The West is still withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in funds that should be going to the Palestinian people. Now, there is a medical crisis there, as you’ve reported before. President Bush says he’s going to send some emergency medical aid but is that going to be enough?

The News Hour with Jim Lehrer

June 27, 2006 Tuesday

Hamas and Fatah Struggle for Power within Palestinian Government

BYLINE: Jim Lehrer, Jonathan Miller, Margaret Warner, Kwame Holman, Alexis Bloom, Jeffrey Brown

JIM LEHRER: A major Israeli military strike into Gaza appeared imminent late today. Warplanes attacked a bridge in central Gaza, and tanks began moving nearby.

Meanwhile, there were conflicting reports about Hamas accepting a plan that implicitly recognizes Israel. The militant group now runs the Palestinian Authority.

CNN

June 29, 2006 Thursday

Show: The Situation Room 7:00 PM EST

Supreme Court Rules on Military Tribunals for Terror Suspects

BYLINE: Wolf Blitzer, John Vause, Brian Todd, Ed Henry, Jack Cafferty, John Roberts, Susan Roesgen, Zain Verjee, Andrea Koppel, Bill Schneider, Mary Snow, Paula Zahn, Chris Lawrence

Jack Cafferty in New York.:

And this just coming in, the Israeli Defense Forces telling CNN that a third and fourth Israeli air strike have been launched. One target, according to the Israelis, one target including a Hamas training site in Gaza. Another target, Hamas offices in Gaza City.

VAUSE:

In the short time since then, there’s been a total of five air strikes tonight in and around Gaza. Apparently a Hamas training camp in the north has also been targeted; an Hamas office; and, also, possibly, a storage house used by Hamas militants for explosives and other weapons — Wolf.

BLITZER: The Israelis say, John, they’re doing this to try to get their one kidnapped Israeli soldier released. …We have been told by the IDF that they’ve targeted a Hamas training ground. They’ve also targeted a Hamas office, as well as what could have been a storage place for Hamas ammunitions, and bomb-making facilities as well, that kind of thing. …

VAUSE: Well, really in many ways Palestinians are split about what to do with Gilad Shalit, the 19-year-old soldier, who’s currently being held by the militant wing of Hamas. Some say if it avoids bloodshed, hand him back, enough is enough.

ABC News Now

July 28, 2006 Friday

Show: ABC World View 7:09 Pm EST

Crisis In The Middle East; Al Qaeda Announces Holy War Against Israel

Anchors: Nick Watt, Reporters: Jeremy Bowen (Gaza Strip)

…Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah is not his leader because he’s fighting Israel to help the Palestinians. Secular Palestinian nationalists in this camp are turning to resistance movements inspired by Islam, their own homegrown Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The al Qaeda broadcast suggests it’s trying to get on the bandwagon.

CNN, July 14, 2006 Friday

Show: Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees 11:00 Pm EST

Hezbollah Drone Packed with Explosives Hits Israeli Gunship; Hezbollah Fires Rockets at Israeli Towns; Hezbollah Leader Declares Open War on Israel; Two Wildfires Consume Over 60,000 Acres in California

BYLINE: Anderson Cooper, Nic Robertson, Paula Hancocks, Suzanne Malveaux, Candy Crowley, John Roberts, Joe Johns, John Vause, John King, Chris Lawrence

GUESTS: Martin Indyk, Edward Djerejian, Robert Baer

COOPER: A video from Gaza where Hamas had a demonstration calling for people to take to the streets, to support Hezbollah and praise them for what they have done with the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

It may represent a growing linkage between Hamas and Hezbollah, a linkage which worries many not only here in Israel but also in the US government and in this region.

KING: Now this additional common ground. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are holding kidnapped Israeli soldiers, looking to exchange them for prisoners held by Israel and looking to draw attention to their shared political agenda.

CLAYTON SWISHER, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE

Hamas is blamed for more than 350 attacks in the past dozen years, killing more than 500.

KING: Iran has offered Hamas more support since its dramatic gains in January’s Palestinian elections, saying it would make up for any aid the West cuts off because of Hamas ties to terrorism.

The Newshour With Jim Lehrer

June 13, 2007 Wednesday

SHOW: NEWSHOUR 6:00 PM EST

Fighting Between Palestinian Factions Rages Out of Control

BYLINE: Jim Lehrer, Kwame Holman, Margaret Warner, Tom Bearden, Jeffrey Brown

GUESTS: Ghaith al-Omari, Mark Perry, Damien Cave, Barbara Goff

HIGHLIGHT: Fighting between Palestinian factions raged out of control Wednesday with battles spreading across Gaza. A holy Shiite mosque in Iraq came under coordinated attack Wednesday, just 15 months after another bombing shattered the golden dome of the building.

JIM LEHRER: Battles spread across Gaza today, as fighting between Palestinian factions raged out of control. The Islamic militant group Hamas gained ground everywhere against its rival, Fatah. Hamas forces attacked three security bases in Gaza City and took control of a number of key positions. They also captured a main north-south road to block Fatah from moving reinforcements. … The conflict between Fatah and Hamas has paralyzed the already-fragile Palestinian National Unity government. Fatah, the nationalist, largely secular party, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, appeared to be losing significant ground in northern Gaza to the Islamist movement Hamas, which won control of the Palestinian Legislative Council in elections in January 2006.

Fox News Network

June 15, 2007 Friday

Show: Fox Special Report With Brit Hume 6:00 Pm EST

Panel Discussion on Latest Palestinian Crisis

BYLINE: Brett Baier

GUESTS: Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, and Mort Kondracke

BAIER: This gun battle is finished. Those were Hamas leaders holding a very unique news conference in the Gaza Strip today, fully masked, as you say there. Hamas now in control there, Fatah in the West Bank, what now?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: That clip is an extreme example of “we’re the government, and we’re here to help you.” Imagine a government run by masked terrorists. It’s ominous because you have men like that who are terrorists, run by a terrorist party, who are in control of Gaza, and even worse, this is an Iranian client, so Iran now has essentially a frontier with Israel in the south, and Egypt as well.…You now have Gaza, which is all Hamas, all rejectionist, all terrorists, and you’ve got the West Bank, run but Fatah, which is a lot stronger than the West Bank, run by Abbas.

KONDRAKE: Well, what I’m afraid of is that it’s (peace) not going to last for very long, that Hamas is on the ascendancy. In Gaza they’re going to get aid from the Iranians–it will be smuggled in, but they’ll get aid. Military aid as well as, probably, economic aid.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, no. Look, I think Fred is right. People have always assumed what the Palestinians wanted was a state. What they actually had wanted was the destruction of the Israel.

CBS News Transcripts, June 15, 2007 Friday

SHOW: The Osgood File Various Times CBS

Chaos in the Gaza Strip as Hamas takes control

REPORTERS: CHARLES OSGOOD

CHARLES OSGOOD: Masked Hamas gunmen have taken over the Gaza Strip, raiding and looting Fatah strongholds, dragging men into the street and shooting them. Hamas calling this liberation, the arrival of Islamic rule in Gaza.

CNN, June 17, 2007 Sunday

Show: Cnn Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer 12:00 PM EST

Interview With Fatah, Hamas Spokesmen; Interview With Hoshyar Zebari

BYLINE: Wolf Blitzer, Ben Wedeman, Ed Henry, Donna Brazile, Terry Jeffrey, Atika Shubert

GUESTS: Ahmed Yousef, Saeb Erekat, Seymour Hersh, Hoshyar Zebari, Jack Reed, Duncan Hunter, John Cornyn

BLITZER:

But it comes at a time of extreme tension throughout the region. A new Palestinian government was sworn in today, a government, though, without Hamas. While the radical Islamic Palestinian faction remains firmly in control of Gaza right now, its rival group, Fatah, is intent on maintaining control on the West Bank.

What is happening in Gaza now is a state of emergency. It is a situation out of our hands. You have seen who are sitting in Abu Mazen’s office — President Abbas’ office yesterday, gangsters and so on.

These descriptions of Hamas as a radical militant group, bent on the destruction of the state of Israel and supported by Iran and Hezbollah, are typical of the on-going coverage of the Middle East issues on US television news.  Increasing the blame of Hamas eases the responsibility of Israel for the dire humanitarian situation currently existing in Gaza. The fact that Israel’s continuing attacks and economic boycott, which has strangled the Gaza strip and created an unlivable situation for Palestinians, is accepted by most in the US as fully justified.

For the most part, Americans do not recognize the bias inherent in everyday reporting regarding the situation in Israel 0.and Palestine. Therefore when former US President Jimmy’s Carter visited with Hamas leaders in April 2008, the result was puzzlement and disgust in corporate media.

On April 13, 2008, former President Jimmy Carter landed in Israel at the start of a nine-day tour of the Middle East. The President’s itinerary took him to Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, where he met a number of political leaders from each of the countries, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abduallah II, and Syria’s President, Bashar al Assad.

However, President Carter’s meeting with top leaders of Hamas took center stage as the defining event of his trip. President Carter stated that he believes that Hamas can no longer be shut out of talks, if peace is to be established between Israel and Palestine. The former President tried to be clear that he was not going as a negotiator, but hoped that his visit would result in Syria and Hamas being included in talks that cannot succeed without them[1]. On April 17th and 18th President Carter met with Mahmoud Al-Zahar, Siad Siam, and Ahmed Yousef in Egypt, and Mashaal and other Hamas leaders in Syria. American mass media has focused almost exclusively on these meetings, just one part of his voluntary assistance, and the coverage has been almost entirely negative.

Fox News Network

January 15, 2007 Monday

Show: Fox Hannity & Co 9:30 Pm EST

Is Jimmy Carter Anti-Semitic?

BYLINE: Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes

GUESTS: Steve Berman

HANNITY: Steve, I want to specifically go — explain in detail why you think he (Carter) supports terrorism.

BERMAN: I wouldn’t say that Jimmy Carter supports terrorism. What Jimmy Carter does is he supports the underdog in this conflict. But what he fails to recognize, that the underdog in this particular conflict has choices and has made choices. …

When Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, unilaterally, how was that greeted? It was greeted with the election of Hamas, and it was greeted with the Kassam missiles falling on Sderot, the Israeli town…

BERMAN: Well, Israel is the victim of terror. But you know what? This is a — this is a complicated story, Sean, with dual narratives at work here, dual claims to — legitimate claims to the land. And to unwind this all to get to an essential truth where we can find, perhaps, a peaceful way of dealing with this situation, both sides have to be held accountable….

COLMES: Steve, did Jimmy Carter deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

BERMAN: At the time — at the time I was very proud of him. Three years ago I traveled to Geneva to witness the — witness and support the signing of the Geneva Peace Accord that was authored by very brave Israelis and Palestinians. The president was the keynote speaker. I think in that interim he’s lost his way.

The corporate media, during the week of President Carter’s trip, focused heavily on his meeting with Hamas leaders. Most of the network news stressed that President Carter is a private citizen and was acting in direct defiance of America’s foreign policy with regards to Hamas[2].  Many of the news stories featured US politicians who called for action against the President for meeting with Hamas while neglecting to present an opposing view on his trip.

A search of Lexis/Nexis found that no major news sources had a guest speaker who supported the President’s meeting with Hamas. Many news stories did not even touch on the reasons stated by President Carter for his meeting with Hamas.

Fox News had Representative Sue Myrick of North Carolina calling for his (Carter’s) passport and stating that “he is just deliberately undermining [US] policy.  And it’s wrong.”[3] Guest speakers like Sue Myrick and the accompanying negative attention were common on all the major news networks. Most of the networks reported that President Carter was told by the State Department prior to his trip that he shouldn’t meet with Hamas[4]. However, this was not the case: President Carter had contacted the State Department before leaving and informed them of his intended meetings with Hamas and he was never contacted back. While this information was made available and reported on, the major news channels did not correct this story and continued to report that President Carter was acting in direct defiance of the US State Department, after being told not to talk to Hamas[5].

The tone of most of the stories that covered President Carter’s trip was negative and hostile to the former President. President Carter was accused of “engage[ing] with terrorists,”[6] and “radical diplomacy.”[7] He was blasted as a “horrible President” who “is a stooge”[8] as a result of his meetings with Hamas leaders. This kind of language was common on news shows, presenting the issue as ridiculous rather than treating it as a serious news story. President Carter’s trip to the Middle East was reduced, in America’s mass media, to a couple meetings with Hamas that received little fair or serious coverage.

Current US corporate media coverage is as much a bias in favor of Israel as it is negative towards the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza. Both sides reflect a US policy of continuing three billion dollars in annual military support to Israel, making it the fourth most powerful military in the world. The negation of Hamas becomes itself a justification for the continued funneling of US tax dollars to Israel, most of which come back to the US military-industrial complex in the form of weapons purchases.

Without truthful, unbiased disclosures of the Israel-Palestine conflicts in the US media, massive human rights abuse in Gaza will likely continue unabated.

[1] Monday, April 21, 2008. THE SITUATION ROOM 5:00 PM EST. Final Push for Democrats in Pennsylvania; Clinton Gets Surprise Backing From ‘Pittsburgh Tribune Review’; What’s in Hamas Truce Offer?; Singer Shakira Works to Educate Poor Children
[2] Tuesday April 22, 2008. AMERICAN MORNING 7:00 AM EST. CNN

[3] Thursday April 17, 2008. Fox News Channel “America’s Pulse” Interview with Representative Sue Myrick (R-NC); interviewer: E.D. Hill; Subject: Efforts to Revoke President Carter’s Passport.

[4] Saturday April 19, 2008. GOOD MORNING AMERICA 8:31 AM EST NEWS HEADLINES

[5] Thursday April 24, 2008. FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME 6:00 PM EST Political Headlines

[6] Thursday April 17, 2008. Fox News Channel “Your World” Interview with Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA); Interviewer: Neil Cavuto: Subject: Federal Funding of the Carter Center following Former President Carter’s visit with Hamas.

[7] Thursday April 17, 2008. Fox News Channel “America’s Pulse” Interview with Representative Sue Myrick (R-NC); interviewer: E.D. Hill; Subject: Efforts to Revoke President Carter’s Passport.

[8] Monday, April 21, 2008. GLENN BECK 7:00 PM EST. American Facing Food Rationing?; Carter Doing More Harm than Good in Middle East; What`s Real Price of

The news from Obama’s speech at the U.N. this morning (September 25, 2009) was accusatory and grim: Iran is hiding a nuclear processing plant from the international community, to which the U.S. would not hesitate to respond militarily.[1] And so the drumbeat to war begins anew. While this may seem like a hasty and superlative conclusion given Obama’s remarks, this latest attempt to keep pressure on Iran to remain militarily weaker than Western nations has a historical precedent in U.S. interest in regional hegemony. The U.S. has given Iran plenty of reason for seeking a nuclear deterrent (i.e. by its complete economic and military support of Israel, and by its invasion of Iraq).[2] While I am not attempting to argue that a nuclear-armed Iran would necessarily make the world safer (one could turn the same argument made by Western leaders against them regarding the possession of nuclear weapons by the U.S. and especially by Israel), any analysis of the latest accusations made by Obama and western leaders must be put in historical perspective.

Although the circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that Iran did in fact hide this second processing plant from the IAEA, this accusation was strategically made by Obama at the U.N. to demonstrate Western resolve in the face of a threat to its hegemony in the Mideast. It is the beginning of the next chapter of our corporate wars—which we may rightly entitle “The Obama Wars”—which may not be televised, but can be recognized as being fought already: the continuing war in Iraq; the expansion of war in Afghanistan; drone use in the Pakistan war; and for now, new rhetorical (only) wars against Iran. The Obama administration is simply continuing with the long-running series of the historical U.S. push for world military dominance.[3] As is by now well-known, the U.S. has had its eye on control of Iran for many years, beginning with the U.S. installation of Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran in 1953. But before commencing with the next corporate-sponsored installment of America’s attack on other countries, whether it is Iran or not, perhaps we would benefit by a quick look back at how they led us into Iraq and Afghanistan. Understanding that history and its structure (contrary to the Obama desire to “look forward, not backward”) will allow us to see the manipulations and machinations that are and have been used by the corporate government to keep us at war with the world. If knowledge is indeed power, and power belongs to the people, we can stop future military attacks by the U.S. by knowing in advance how the government will attempt to manipulate citizens into believing that the U.S. (or its Israel surrogate) “must act” militarily against Iran.

Summary of How We Got into Iraq and Afghanistan

The book Anatomy of a Deception lays out the main premises of the decision of the U.S. government to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. In sum, there are at least four converging factors that led to the invasion of both countries: the general philosophy of Realpolitik of the U.S. government, which the U.S. has used with rigorous historical consistency to support Mid East, Central American, and other world-regional dominance; critical thinking derelictions and culpable information ignorance on the part of the media, passed on to the uncritical populace, particularly concerning the public debate on invading Iraq; violations of basic ethical principles; and violations of international law.

The book traces the philosophical reasons our government led us down this path to invasion stem from three things: the history of U.S. ambitions in the Middle East; the imperialist philosophy of the U.S. government; and the neoconservative philosophy of Leo Strauss and his followers. Specifically, there were numerous critical thinking failures made in the public debate over going to war on Iraq that are seen in this study. Just by way of example, here are a few of the critical thinking omissions we saw with regard to Iraq alone. When these categories are applied to Afghanistan, the same pattern can be observed. The interesting thing about these derelictions is that together they constitute the historical pattern the U.S. government uses when it wants to dominate another country or region. Watch for it again as Israel and the U.S. ramp up their rhetoric against Iran and other mideastern countries, such as Syria, Lebanon, and even the East, such as Pakistan, in order to increase its hegemony over this region.[4] Some call it “propaganda;” I call it the cultivation of “groupthink,” the antithesis to which is critical thinking. Applied to Iraq alone, here is what we saw (specific instances and the arguments given, along with supporting premises and footnoted evidence of the critique of those instances and arguments, can be seen in the book):

• A lack of evidence for justifying either invasion, seen especially in Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations regarding Iraq.


• Hasty Generalizations—i.e. drawing the strongest possible conclusions from weak evidence for the conclusions.


• Suppressed Evidence—i.e. picking only evidence that supported the predetermined U.S. administration conclusion that an invasion of Iraq was needed. This includes redefining terms to better suit their position (e.g. “deterrence;” “torture”). It also includes ignoring evidence such as increasing Iraqi compliance with U.N. mandates for inspections and WMD destruction; doubts about the American case for the invasion expressed other U.S. government agencies (e.g. CIA) as well as U.N. inspectors and groups (e.g. IAEA).


• False Premises—Facts given were erroneously stated or just plain false, and were shown to be so at the time they were being used.


• Questionable Sources—e.g. Iraqi defectors (some unnamed; some named), shown at the time they were being used to be bogus witnesses with bogus information; rejecting reports from other government agencies (e.g. CIA) in favor in insider administration reports (e.g. Douglas Feith).


• Arguments from Ignorance—e.g. Iraq did not prove that they did not possess WMD’s, so they are hiding something and/or they must have them.


• Non-sequiturs—when attempting to compile evidence to meet normative criteria (either ethical or legal), the premises given were in some cases not necessary and in nearly all cases insufficient to support the conclusion that the invasion of Iraq was justified.


• Vague and overly-broad generalizations in premises and conclusions—e.g. Iraq is “a terrorist entity that has attempted to reach beyond its own borders to support and engage in illegal activities” (John Nichols).


• Characterizations used in place of evidence—e.g. “Butcher of Baghdad;” “Dr. Death;” “Chemical Ali;” “he has gassed his own people,” etc.


• Use of circumstantial evidence to justify conclusions—e.g. Christopher Hitchens argued that Saddam Hussein “harbors every species of gangster” but presented only one very dubious case (al Zarqawi).


• Red Herring/Post hoc fallacies—e.g. “humanitarian intervention” in 2003 as necessary, but such arguments were based on pre-1991 actions done by Hussein. In addition, the same arguments ignored the fact that U.S. sanctions and regular missile attacks on Iraq both caused and deepened the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.


• Contradictions—e.g. U.S. does not have to follow the U.N., but the U.S. is fulfilling U.N. resolutions in invading Iraq.


• Failure to take proper accounting of potential consequences from the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

• Use of self-interest over principle—the latter is engaged with general or universal rules of conduct toward others.


• Ignoring or flatly rejecting international law—e.g. Nuremberg Charter; Geneva Conventions; U.N. Charter, etc.


• Moral inconsistency—i.e. picking and choosing which U.N. resolutions to follow, and also using principles to support self-interest.


• Interpreting U.N. resolutions narrowly or broadly to suit the U.S. interest in invading Iraq.


• Hubris—believing that conquering Iraq would be quick and easy (a “cakewalk” according to Assistant Defense Secretary Ken Adelman), and that we would be “greeted as liberators” (Vice President Cheney), and that, while the rest of the world disputed the U.S. concerning the morality of an invasion, the U.S., with its presumed exceptionalism, believed it had the moral and/or legal right to unilaterally invade anyway (with only a bit of assistance from a few other countries).


• Ignoring or giving only superficial acknowledgement of the rigorous requirements of Just War Theory.


• Refusal to negotiate with Iraq or cooperate with the United Nations—both are requirements of Just War Theory, but also related to hubris.


• Preventive war (as distinguished from pre-emptive war).


• Piling on the bad behaviors of person or country x, y, or z—in this case, Saddam Hussein—as premises for invasion, without listing or naming the distinctly moral premises needed to conclude from those bad behaviors that an invasion was justified.


• Double standards regarding U.S. actions and Iraqi alleged actions—e.g. support of terrorists, as in Luis Posada Carilles living with impunity in Miami, and Iraq allegedly harboring al Zarqawi.


• Duplicity (Machiavellianism)—appealing to high-sounding norms (e.g. freedom; liberation; democracy) while engaging in precisely the opposite behavior (e.g. invasion; domination; control; ethnic cleansing; targeting civilians and infrastructure; torture).


• Disrespect for the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq.


• Violation of Iraqi civilians—between 500,000 and one million Iraqi citizens are dead either through or as a consequence of the U.S. invasion.


• Ignoring predictable damage to America’s moral culture, its reputation, and its domestic economy that results from American bellicosity.


• American military casualties and the wrecked lives of the thousands of American families whose loved ones have been (and will be) killed in Iraq.


• Torture of citizens of the purported “enemy,” in violation of all ethical principles and international laws concerning the use of torture.

Given all this, the obvious question that arises is:

What Must We Do to Avoid this Deception in the Future?

First, we citizens must become—and remain—more informed about the workings of our government and what they are doing than we have heretofore been. Granting from the start that there is much that is kept secret from us, the fact of the matter, as has been demonstrated in the book, is that enough information was available to us prior to the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, to cogently debate the issue and to come to the conclusion that such a proposal was unfounded empirically, not logically sound, unethical in its formulation, and illegal according to international law. These are all categories of knowledge which citizens must be as adept at engaging as they can be. That is the only way to stop this type of action from happening again.

Second, we, the citizens of the United States, must return to distinctively ethical principles and values rather than purely pragmatic dialogue and actions. This must be accompanied by a development of critical thinking when it comes to government pronouncements and propaganda intended to take us to war. We must demand of government accountability, and that implies that we become informed of the issues at hand.

Third, we must demand more from our media. The media, from the ostensibly liberal New York Times to FOX News, was not only completely delinquent in actually investigating the government case for invading Iraq, but they in fact served as volunteer cheerleaders for the invasion. Judith Miller at the Times was responsible for pushing the now-famous “Iraq aluminum tubes” lie, and for reporting, on the basis of second-hand sources, that the U.S. had found the Iraqi WMD’s they were looking for. Katie Couric gushed as the anchor of NBC’s Today program that “I think Navy SEALs rock!”[5] and Dan Rather pandered that “I want my country to win, whatever the definition of ‘win’ may be. Now, I can’t and don’t argue that that is coverage without prejudice.” The American media was nothing short of disgraceful in its coverage of the planned Iraq invasion.[6] Even worse, this media, with few exceptions, has repeatedly shown its willingness to capitulate its duty to inform citizens and to challenge those in power, in favor of obliging the interests of those in power, to the point that one might rightfully ask what the difference is between American media and former Soviet-owned media.

This is not new: the same pattern has replayed throughout U.S. history. The government lies, the U.S. corporatized media uncritically and complicitly replays the lie and even magnifies it by advocating its support, in the face of evidence to the contrary, the war is commenced, the truth starts to overtake the lies, people withdraw their support, the war drags on. We have seen this pattern repeatedly in American history: USS Maine (1898); Gulf of Tonkin (1964); Dominican Republic (1965); Grenada (1983); Panama (1989); Kosovo (1999); Iraq (2002-2003), just to name a few of the more prominent cases.[7] The case of media complicity in the planned Iraq invasion is demonstrated clearly by the overwhelming voice given to pro-war advocates and the marginalization of dissenting voices. In one study, conducted by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the following media outlets were studied: ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The study lasted about two weeks, from 1/30/03-2/12/03.[8] A total of 393 on-camera sources were on these programs, more than two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, and more than 75% of whom were former military officials. Only three of the 393 sources used were anti-war, less than 1%. If media-maintained government propaganda trumping up war support is nothing new, then pre-Iraq invasion coverage fit right in with our history. We need news sources for democracy to function properly as invoking an open dialogue, not as Stalin-like propaganda machines for government manipulation of the populace by extreme one-sidedness. This is why it is critically important that citizens become more sophisticated about what they consume as truth. This implies using several sources of information, and that we avoid relying heavily on what is euphemistically called the “mainstream media.”

Fourth, we must demand that our government follow international law. If anything should convince us of the need for the adherence of all nations to international law and its standards, it is the shift of the United States from a nation which at least acknowledged the rule of law to the rogue state that we have become in foreign affairs through the policies of the Bush administration. This is particularly true with regard to our invasion and occupation of Iraq.  Condemned by international law and the world at large, it is a glaring instance of the need for compliance with international law on the part of all nations.  Without compliance with international law, no international cooperation is possible.  Nations need structure in order to work together, and international law is that structure. McGwire again writes that the most important reason to condemn the invasion of Iraq was that “such an operation threatened to undermine the very fabric of international relations. That decision repudiated a century of slow, intermittent and often painful progress toward an international system based on cooperative security . . . agreed norms of behaviour and a steadily growing fabric of law.”[9]

The importance of international law is underscored when we realize that there is no true security between nations without it.  How can one nation condemn another for its actions if there is no ground for condemnation?

More important that this, the United States representatives must acknowledge that all principles of ethical conduct and thus law are based on the principle of universality: “If one does it, then anyone may do it.” Think of what would happen if every nation in the world made the same claims that the U.S. has done, does now, and did with abandon under the Bush administration regarding invasion of other countries and the right to nuclear first strikes. For a specific example, since 1992, the United States has exported more than $142 billion dollars worth of weaponry to states around the world. [10] The U.S. dominates this international arms market, supplying just under half of all arms exports in 2001, roughly two and a half times more than the second and third largest suppliers.[11] U.S. weapons sales help outfit non-democratic regimes, soldiers who commit gross human rights abuses against their citizens and citizens of other countries, and forces in unstable regions on the verge of, in the middle of, or recovering from conflict.

Conclusion

The point of the book is not that we now know the Bush administration lied to us and to the world in order to take the United States into an unnecessary war—i.e. a war of aggression upon the sovereign state of Iraq. Rather, the point has been that all of the issues and problems of their deceit were there from the start, and could have and should have been noticed, and in some cases, unmasked, by a thinking and ethically conscious public and media. That it was not is to our collective shame. That we can avoid this in the future is the point of this book. We cannot expect a significant change in this type of U.S. action in the world in the administration of President Barack Obama. Not only does the United States have a long history of unethical and illegal behavior toward other nations (some of which has been spelled out in this study), but Obama himself pledged repeatedly to continue the “war on terrorism” (even in his inaugural speech), to step up the war in Afghanistan by deploying even more troops there, and has made no pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq. So although Obama may nuance U.S. actions abroad, by no means does he plan to change them. It is up to us, the citizens of the U.S., to put pressure not just on Obama, but on our alleged Representatives and Congress people, to make the change needed. They will not do so by themselves. By engaging the tools of critical analysis and moral principle, we will be able to recognize our government’s moral failures and their own terrorism, and then be in a position not to be led by the propaganda that the government and media use to direct our support for future wars. If we think these issues through by demanding more information and by weighing that information against the proposed action, and filtering it through the lens of ethical principles and international laws, we can stop our government from taking us down the dark road of wars of aggression and torture. It is our government, not theirs, and it is up to us to hold them accountable for their actions. With such information, critical thinking, and ethical consciousness, we can guide the U.S. back to a more positive relationship with the world, and restore democracy at home.

Notes

[1] Charles Babington and Robert Burns, “Obama Warns Iran: ‘Come Clean’ on Nukes,” Associated Press, September 25, 2009.

[2] For more on this, see Noam Chomsky, Failed States (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), p. 73.

[3] In addition to Failed States, see also Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003);

[4] See, for example, Pepe Escobar, Globalistan (Ann Arbor: Nimble Books, 2006).

[5] Today, NBC, April 3, 2003

[6] CNN, April 14, 2003

[7] For details on the media as megaphone for government interests in these and other military adventures, see Norman Solomon, War Made Easy (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005)

[8] “In Iraq Crisis, Networks are Megaphones for Official Views,” FAIR study, 3/18/03.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Data compiled from addition of Foreign Military Sales (FMS) deliveries and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) deliveries, FY1990-FY2000.  a. “Foreign Military Sales, Foreign Military Construction Sales and Military Assistance Facts as of September 26, 2001.” DSCA. Available online:DSCA 2001 Facts Book.

[11] “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1994-2001.” CRS Report for Congress, by Richard F. Grimmet. August 6, 2002. Order Code RL31529. Available online: Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations.