EXACT NRM TACTICS!!!
MK
The Grey Lie
The grey lie does not need to be proven; fear of terrorism has convinced a confused public that their government MUST keep secrets in order to keep security. The question is never asked, "Security for whom?"
By Wanda Fish
07/25/03: The American General was adamant. "No one who wears this uniform is free to question the President or the Secretary of Defense. None of us are free to do that." His emphatic statement responded to journalists’ questions about the low morale of American soldiers in Iraq, when a few brave soldiers, perhaps touched by the Iraqi sun and depleted uranium, complained bitterly on camera about President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
The journalists at the briefing were neither shocked nor surprised. The war against terrorism had delivered censorship, propaganda, and restricted access to full information about 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq for nearly two years. They were also aware of how the wrong question could easily end a journalist’s career.
One journalist who had been invited to a special media briefing about the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay commented, "I never again want to hear these words: ‘for reasons of operational security I cannot answer that question’." Security has locked away the truth in this war without boundaries. Journalists searching for the truth are given oblique explanations and half-truths. The other half is the grey lie.
Grey lies contain a broad truth or assumptions that cannot be verified – like the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The grey lie does not need to be proven; fear of terrorism has convinced a confused public that their government MUST keep secrets in order to keep security. The question is never asked, "Security for whom?". Personal safety is compromised along with personal rights in new anti-terrorism legislation, now enacted in all three Coalition countries. Many professional groups – lawyers, teachers and journalists to name a few – now risk of detention without warning simply because they might possess some information. Yet the grey lie convinces us that this new legislation is necessary for "our" security.
Grey lies are repeated often because "mud sticks". A few minutes of viewing a parliamentary sitting or congressional hearing is a graphic lesson in how politicians from every country mask the truth and hurl slander at their opponents. When the lies become too distasteful or dangerous, an internationally renowned PR firm is hired to spread the lies and make them legitimate. If the media start to ask difficult questions, their access to information or press briefings is limited. Eventually the grey lie becomes accepted as universal truth where the colors of reality have been mixed into grey.
Our perception of "fact" has devolved with the grey lies. Is it fact that the United States is a democracy when the President is elected by less than a third of the voting population? Is it fact that people are generally "better off" today because they live in a home owned by the bank, drive a car owned by a finance company, and are enslaved in jobs to pay off their mounting debt? Is it fact that capitalism is a successful economic model because less than 10% of the world’s population owns the rest of the world? Is it fact that we have become environmentally responsible because we have simply slowed down the burning of our sky and the depletion of our water?
Not much has changed since the serfs tilled the land for the lords. The tools have changed and the lords have institutionalized themselves into banks, but the principle of exploitation remains the same. What has changed is our acceptance of the grey lie.
The grey lie that justified the invasion of Iraq accused Saddam Hussein of harboring significant quantities of weapons of mass destruction. This was presented as a global threat, with a clear inference that the type and quantity of WMD could destroy entire cities and decimate the global population. President Bush repeatedly presented beliefs, estimates, and educated guesses as established fact. In the months since the cessation of formal war in Iraq, the American, British and Australian governments have been busy with press conferences where they continue to defend the grey lie about weapons of mass destruction. "Saddam has hidden them….it is only a matter of time before we find them…for reasons of security we cannot answer that question."
When questioned about his comments in the state of the union address relating to the now discredited claim that Iraq tried to buy Uranium yellowcake from Niger, President Bush brushed aside the specific question and answered generally: "The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power., along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful."
The reality is that the UN inspectors were in Iraq and the Iraqi government was providing increased access to UN weapons inspectors. UN inspectors were busy dismantling Iraqi missiles when they were instructed to leave Iraq, prior to the US, UK and Australian invasion.
When one grey lie is exposed, another is created as a cover. The process relies on the public’s short memory and fear campaigns about terrorist attacks. In turn the fear campaigns rely on the credibility of intelligence reports.
Whistle blowers have now emerged from American, British and Australian intelligence agencies. Their evidence that intelligence reports were "sexed up" gave the media an acceptable framework for questions they had not previously been allowed to ask. When questions are asked about the integrity or motivation for the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Coalition governments rush to discredit the media reports and the journalists filing those reports.
During the Iraq war, the Australian Broadcasting Commission gained international popularity with its comprehensive reports. The ABC news contained more information than CNN, and Americans desperate for more news and less propaganda about the war in Iraq, began to use the net and the ABC website. The growing popularity of these reports, and the questions they raised, worried the Australian Government at a time when it was under significant pressure from the Bush Administration. The Minister for Communications publicly accused the ABC of inaccurate reporting with an "anti-American bias". The subsequent review into ABC reports found that "on the whole" the ABC delivered objective coverage of the Iraq war. The Minister kept insisting that reports of a looming humanitarian crisis were intentionally exaggerated, and the story had no factual basis because there was "no humanitarian crisis".
The fact that millions of Iraqis now live in devastated cities without adequate sanitation, water or health care does not appear to constitute a humanitarian crisis. Is this true or another grey lie? Thousands of families struggle to survive chaos in the streets, attacks from angry rebels and growing resentment from their nervous and armed occupiers. While the Americans spread the grey lie that Iraq has been "liberated", the civilians of Iraq cope with plunging living standards, lawlessness, and the dangers of foreign occupation after a devastating war.
People around the world are now questioning the veracity of "facts" generated by their governments. Those who have a choice are tuning into alternative sources, such as Internet and email, for their news. The public cynicism grows as more people began to suspect that the prime motivation for both wars was American access to valuable oil reserves. Their prior belief that Uncle Sam was a benevolent global peacemaker is seen as another grey lie. Keeping the peace with guns is not logical, yet we have legitimised the use of invading armies to "keep peace". The vision of armed soldiers "liberating" troubled countries has become commonplace. We are asked to believe that some countries invite the occupation of their country by another country’s army in order to "restore law and order". Australia’s deployment of "peace keeping" troops to the Solomon Islands may be the first step in a new "Pacific Solution".
Similarly, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq fit the Pentagon plan for the new American Century. Although this plan has been revealed, and is available for public scrutiny via the internet, many people still cling to the grey lie that the United States is the "protector", not the aggressor. Perhaps this is the result of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence, intended to provide news items, and possibly false ones, to foreign journalists to influence public sentiment abroad. Although Mr. Rumsfeld was forced to publicly disband the plan, the New York Times reported in December 2002, " Senior Pentagon officials say Mr. Rumsfeld is deeply frustrated that the United States government has no coherent plan for molding public opinion worldwide in favor of America in its global campaign against terrorism and militancy."
It would be a fair assumption that the Pentagon, responsible for the press briefings about military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, would ensure that certain stories are embellished (like the adventures of Private Jessica), while others are classified (like the numbers of civilians who were killed, wounded or displaced by the invasion). There may have been a public gesture of closing down a particular office in the Pentagon, but the propaganda machine continues to generate grey lies.
While this kind of propaganda might be expected and even tolerated during a war, the manipulation of a nation through the brainwashing of its children is abhorrent. Towards the end of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, as part of a covert strategy to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation. The primers, with talk of jihad and drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, became part of the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, although the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code. Humanitarian workers have criticized those textbooks as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence.
When Afghan schools reopened in April 2002, the United States began pumping out a new version of Islamic textbooks. President Bush announced during his weekly radio address that the 10 million U.S.-supplied books being trucked to Afghan schools would teach "respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry." He omitted the part about the earlier strategy designed to stir Islamic fervor to fight communism.
Conveniently, this "Islamic fervor" has been blamed for terrorist attacks, and in particular for the events of 9-11 that catapulted the world into a war with racial profiling, pre-emptive invasions of "rogue" countries, and the removal of civil liberties. The grey lie moves quickly and changes its form, like the grey dust that smothered Manhattan when the twin towers collapsed. Hard questions about the events of that day and the flawed logic of the official story still need to be asked in the mainstream media. However, investigative journalism is flourishing on the net where theories range from credible to incredible. The families of the victims of 9-11 have been most outspoken and vigilant in searching for the truth and exposing the grey lies. They believe that their President has lied about the terrorist attacks, and they want to know why. Some Americans are calling for Bush’s impeachment and accuse the Pentagon of exploiting the tragedy to implement a long-term plan for American military domination.
Millions of Americans, Britons and Australians marched in massive protests in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq. The grey lie has been exposed and even the American people are beginning to awaken from their complacency. The Washington Post reported on July 22, "About 400,000 people from every state have contacted members of Congress in the past three weeks as part of a MoveOn.org petition that asks Congress to investigate the controversial claims that led to the war on Iraq."
The world is slowly awakening to the grey lie. Let us hope that the awakening will give us the courage to put some color and truth back into our world.
Sources and Further Information:
"The ABC’s of Jihad in Afghanistan, Courtesy of the US." http://emperors-clothes.com/news/abc.htm
"President Caught in Another Lie", Information Clearing House, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4110.htm
William Bowles, "Opening a Can of Worms", http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4171.htm
John W. Dean, "Why a Special Prosecutor’s Investigation is needed to sort out the Niger Uranium and Related WMD Mess", http://writ.findlaw.com/dean/20030718.htm
"Pentagon Debates Propaganda Push in Allied Nations", by Tom Shanker and Eric Schmitt. New York Times, December 16, 2002.
"Antiwar Groups Say Public Ire Over Iraq Claims is Increasing" by Evelyn Nieves. Washington Post, July 22, 2003.
Website: "The Four Reasons why We the People Must Remove the Current Administration of the United States of America", http://www.thefourreasons.org/
Website: "The People’s Investigation of 9-11", http://www.911pi.com Wanda Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is a freelance journalist. She offers this article for publication in part or whole in the interests of encouraging more people to seek the truth.
