Saddam Paper Shredder Shocker a Fiction Concocted and Spread by Rev. Moon and Pat Robertson

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Americans have a very short memory or they would have recalled that during Gulf War I, outrageous claims made about Iraqi atrocities were later admitted to be propaganda lies. Remember the "Kuwaiti babies ripped from incubators" story in 1991? That tale really got Americans whipped into a frenzy, cheering the bombers on. Then, after the war, the woman who disseminated the story for the U.S. gov. tearfully exposed the story as a total fabrication during a Congressional hearing.

Now the Bush II folks are spreading similar "urban myths" to keep American bloodlust at fever pitch. The latest: UPI (now owned by Bush's friend the Reverend Moon) and his fellow rightwing religious fanatic Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network are currently spreading around a manufactured story about how Saddam fed an officer into a paper shredder, delighting in his screams...this lurid fiction was reported "first hand" by a "human shield pastor" who from the "Assyrian Church of the East." Turns out there is no such "pastor," and, by extension, no such person.

Here's a letter sent to Democrats.com and forwarded to me:

I suspected the often quoted UPI story about a human shield "pastor" who "was shocked back to reality", and claimed to have proof of Saddam shredding people, was a lie, so I contacted the Assyrian Church of the East, asking for confirmation. The e-mail I sent to Bishop Soro is below, I received this reply from the Bishop:

From: ABSoro@aol.com
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 08:17:47 EST
Subject: Re: Can you confirm this story?

Johnny:

The only thing that I can confirm is that Kenneth Joseph, IS NOT a pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East nor has he been associated with the Assyrian Church in any shape or form.

Bishop Soro
Secretary General of Interchurch Relations
Assyrian Church of the East

So, Robertson and Moon have added yet another new dimension to what it means to be a "good Christian": lying to promote bloodshed

MEDIA/PENTAGON LIES: 1. The Americans met some resistance and had trouble "securing" the "town" of Basra. 2. The British sent a few troops to help out. 3. The Allies decided it would be more "strategic" to consider Basra a "military target."

TRUTH: 1. The American marine unit sent to "take" Basra were overwhelmed because they were completely out of their depth and experience in this mission. No wonder - Basra is not a "town," is Iraq's second largest city. 2. The Americans were be pulled back and replaced by British troops 3.The bombing is punitive because the city gave unexpected strong resistance rather than, as predicted by Franks and Rumsfeld, welcoming the US as "liberators."

MEDIA/PENTAGON LIE: The loss of electrical power to Basra was sabotage perpetrated by the Iraqis themselves.

TRUTH: The lack of power is due to the destruction of high-power lines by U.S. bombs.

LIE: The Red Cross has restored 30% of the water supply to Basra

TRUTH: As of last night (3/24), the Red Cross Says it hasn't even been able to get into Basra, let alone supply it with water.

MORE ON BASRA:

The importance of Basra to the US is all about the oil: As a March 21 BBC report observes, "It is the "key to Iraqi's southern oil wealth. " But, ironically, to secure the oil fields, the U.S. and UK will now be bombing a city that could have been the most likely US sympathizer. As the BBC points out, "The population of Basra is made up largely of Shiite Arab Muslims, most of whom have little affection for Saddam."

This is, alas, a city that has not yet recovered from its battering by the US in 1991, when the US and UK rained down tons of depleted uranium in the area in another "precision" attack: According to a report by the Military Toxics Project, only about one-fourth of the DU projectiles found their targets, "whereas 76 per cent projectiles are presumably lying buried in sand. On hitting its target, DU catches fire and burns to oxides of uranium. Forty six per cent of this DU converts itself to depleted uranium dioxide aerosol (DUDA). Roughly, half of the aerosols are of respirable size. DUDA stays in the area for a long time. It has been fund that it survived over two years in air in Kuwait City and most certainly in Basra as well." http://www.miltoxproj.org/assesment.htm THE MEDIA EXPERTS: Patriarchal Parade of aging white men and rightwing corporate front group reps.

I have noticed a significant lack of current, active Pentagon officials being paraded before the network news cameras. Instead, I have seen an endless parade of aging white male "retired generals" - almost all, without exception, from the Reagan or Bush I years. In addition to the this stable of patriarchal hawks, I have noticed that a growing number of "experts" being relied on for "commentary" come from rightwing corporate front outfits like the "Cato Institute" (funded in large part by oil and tobacco corporations). Meanwhile, there is a stunning lack of commentary by real, independent military experts and historians.

AOL, Home of the "Free" (er, Safe) and Not So Bright Spins Out of Control

AOL has gone from spinning headlines to telling viewers how they are supposed to react to the headlines. On the morning of 3/25 one of the mainpage "blaring" headlines was: "POW Drama Rivets America." The only way this statement could have non-propaganda validity is if AOL had 1. taken a vast, comprehensive poll of all networks, servers, radio stations to see if this specific news story was causing a dramatic surge in ratings when aired and 2 Taken a similarly comprehensive survey of Americans soliciting their personal response to the story. In short. This headline proclaims an opinionated assertion that cannot be confirmed..

Translating this headline from propagandese we get: "You are supposed to be riveted by this story because we need you to be." Why? To keep Americans focused on our POWs, not on the deaths and maimings of children and other innocent civilians in Baghdad or the miserable conditions and dangers being experienced by 250,000 other U.S. soldiers.

Another of AOL's headlines on 3/25 AM wins the Goebbels award for heavy-handed propaganda: In big bold letters on the mainpage we see "Freedom VS Safety?" The photo next to this headline is an armed soldier or swat team person - hard to tell, as he's dressed in dark blue, but has a military helmet on - standing next to a building swathed in a big US flag. In smaller letters beneath the headline is: "Sacrifice Privacy for security?"

What this propaganda tableau is saying is that Freedom = Sacrifice of privacy, and Safety = security. Lack of privacy is synonymous with freedom?

Freedom is a word being as thrown around and cheapened as the word love was during the early days of the sexual revolution. Freedom now is synonymous with everything it is NOT, from sacrificing privacy to fried potatoes....soon no American will really know what the word truly means anymore. And then, what is left of it will be so easy to take away.

Other AOL headlines are simply irresponsible: "KNOCKING ON SADDAM'S DOOR!" This implies we are on the verge of a victorious assault on Baghdad, while "WE KNOW WE HIT SADDAM!" implies we have all but triumphed over the "Evildoer." To fuel such a false sense of positive expectation in Americans, many of whom have family members in the front lines to me constitutes a psychological war crime - in fact, it amounts to aiding and abetting the enemy, by inducing dangerous overconfidence in Americans, who will thus root the war on, not knowing that they are pushing their own men into what will likely prove a protracted hell.

American Media War Propaganda Widening Gulf between Us and Rest of World

On C-SPAN on the morning of 3/25, during the short segment I caught, there was seriousd concern raised by callers on the lack of coverage by the American mainstream media of the "other side" - the damage sustained by Iraqis. One woman had been shocked when she had seen photos of injured and dead Iraqi children on the BBC. These photos had hit home, she said - there were real people, real children caught in beneath the bombs of "shock and awe." Other callers expressed similar concerns.

But to hear the American media cover it, this war is all about "speeding through the desert," Americans being shot down or captured, grieving American families, reporters standing statically in front of tanks, and aging generals (dozens and dozens of aging generals, enough to go around to every TV and radio station in the country, apparently, as "commentators"). War, according to the American media, has nothing to do with the suffering of the opposition - with little girls with their heads half-blown off (see http://democrats.com ) or homes and livelihoods destroyed forever, or grieving Iraqi families.

Yet, the rest of the world is seeing both sides, and sees that what the American soldiers are enduring is but a tiny fraction of the suffering the war is inflicting on Iraqi civilians - worse, that this entire scenario is being forced on Iraq by Bush. Even the Christian Science Monitor ran a story today about how American media is creating, through its one-sided coverage, a widening gulf between Americans and the rest of the world. While we are led to believe through a steady diet of propaganda that our war really is "just" afterall, the rest of the world sees reality: this is a bloody, brutal, cruel war, just like most wars, and we are inflicting, promoting and, worse yet, glorying in it.

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