U.S. Coming Around To The Truth
by Robert Fisk, Seattle Post Intelligencer, December 7, 2005

Watching the pathetic, old, lie-on-its-back frightened Labrador of the American media changing overnight into a vicious Rottweiler is one of the enduring pleasures of society in the United States. I have been experiencing this phenomenon over the past two weeks, as both victim and beneficiary.

In New York and Los Angeles, my condemnation of the U.S. presidency and Israel's continued settlement-building in the West Bank was originally treated with the disdain all great papers reserve for those who dare to question proud and democratic projects of state. In The New York Times, that ancient luminary Ethan Bronner chided me for attacking American journalists who -- he quoted my own words -- "report in so craven a fashion from the Middle East -- so fearful of Israeli criticism that they turn Israeli murder into 'targeted attacks' and illegal settlements into 'Jewish neighborhoods.' "

It was remarkable Bronner should be so out of touch with his readers that he did not know that craven is the word so many Americans apply to their groveling newspapers.

But the moment a respected Democratic congressman and Vietnam war veteran in Washington dared to suggest the war in Iraq was lost, that U.S. troops should be brought home now -- and when the Republican response was so brutal it had to be disowned -- the old media dog sniffed the air, realized that power was moving away from the White House and began to drool.

On live TV in San Francisco, I could continue my critique of the U.S. folly in Iraq uninterrupted. Ex-Mayor Willie Brown exuded warmth toward this pesky Brit who tore into his country's policies in the Middle East. It was enough to make you feel the teeniest bit sorry -- though only for a millisecond, mind you -- for the guy in the White House.

All this wasn't caused by that familiar transition from Newark to Los Angeles International, where the terror of al-Qaida attacks is replaced by fear of the ozone layer. On the East Coast, too, the editorials thundered away at the Bush administration. Seymour Hersh, that blessing to U.S. journalism who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story, produced another black rabbit out of his Iraqi hat with revelations that U.S. commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency is now out of control.

When those same Iraqi gunmen last week again took control of the city of Ramadi (already "liberated" four times since 2003), the story shared equal billing on prime time television with Bush's latest and infinitely wearying insistence that Iraqi forces -- who in reality are so infiltrated by insurgents that they are a knife in the United States' back -- will soon be able to take over security duties from the occupation forces.

Even in Hollywood hitherto taboo subjects are being dredged to the surface of the political mire. "Jarhead," produced by Universal Pictures, depicts a brutal, traumatized Marine unit during the 1991 Gulf War.
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- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:54 pm