Comments on Woodward's book

Email from October 2006

A friend sent me an email praising Woodward’s latest book, and this is what I responded with:

Deb, just a little information on why I don't like Woodward and his book, from the anti-war blog website:

"The War Party did more to enlist journalists in the cause of invading
Iraq than deploying Judith Miller. Bob Woodward's new book, State of
Denial, reveals a top secret meeting chaired by Paul Wolfowitz, on
November 29, 2001, attended by thinktank wonks, government officials,
and two "journalists": Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international
edition of Newsweek and columnist for that magazine, and Robert D.
Kaplan, currently on the staff of The Atlantic Monthly. The purpose of
the group was to produce a paper dealing with the aftermath of the
invasion of Afghanistan and which countries to invade in the Middle
East. President Bush reportedly found the paper illuminated the
"malignancy" of all those damn Ay-rabs in the Middle East, especially
Iraq, who had yet to be "liberated."

Both Zakaria and Kaplan signed confidentiality agreements, and the
former, at least, appears to be living up to his as best he can: Zakaria
denies that he knew a document would come out of the meeting, although
Kaplan says most of the meeting was spent drafting the document. The New
York Times asked Senor Kaplan: "Could any of the participants have been
unaware there was a document in the making?" "No," averred Kaplan,
"that's not possible." Who's lying, here?

These guys are "journalists" in the same sense that the old staff of
Pravda, the mouthpiece of the Soviet Kremlin, are "journalists" - that
is, they aren't real journalists in any meaningful sense of the term.
They are propagandists, pure and simple: shills for the government. When
the State is pushing a course of action - an invasion, either of a
foreign country or the rights of its own citizens - these people respond
like Pavlovian parrots, rationalizing and "explaining" from their
perches in the "mainstream" media, outdoing one another in their
obeisance to Power, in the hope that they'll be invited to the next
secret meeting of shills and ass-kissers."

Woodward would have nothing in his book that I have not known for years now (I certainly knew those meetings were going on - yet he waits years to mention the fact), and further, Woodward is still (in a different way) shilling for the military-media-industrial complex. That "complex" is only turning against the Bush administration because they are becoming unpopular. But the media is still, underneath it all, still shilling for them.

We had Clinton on FAUX News last month bragging about how he could have bombed more and better, if only the right wing branch didn't tie his hands behind his back. What that means is he could have killed more innocent people (Clinton bombed A LOT during his presidency), since our intelligence agencies SUCK. (I'm sure you have noticed!). I am sick to death of all these people in power and in the media who think killing is okey-dokey as long as it is NON-Americans. When the political winds shift and the public turns against a war (which the American public is doing only because we are losing, not because it was immoral and illegal and a violation of our constitution), then the slimy "journalists" turn against it too - and the US public and the slimy politicians go their merry little way and forget about the death and suffering they have caused.

But you can count on the fact that we will pay a price one day.

9/11 happened for a reason.

As of recently, Bush has killed more Iraqis than Saddam has. In overall killing, Saddam is still ahead, because he killed a lot of Iranians too. But Bush is catching up quickly. It is all so disgusting, and people like Woodward and John Edwards have made a TON of money off of it, with no pangs of conscience to be found anywhere.

The corporate media of the USA is now going on and on and on about how Iran is developing nuclear weapons when in truth, there is NO evidence to support this claim. But they don't give a damn. They just go on shilling for our goverment of the corporations, for the corporations and by the corporations. Who cares about truth and useful information when you can help get a war on? God help us.