A Sorry Anniversary
by digby
It seems like it was only yesterday that I posted this terse announcement at the end of a long, difficult day:
The opening stages of the “disarmament” of Iraq has begun. The President will speak to the nation at 10:15.
Fasten your seatbelt and start praying. Human beings are on the other end of those bombs.
Seven years later, human beings are still being blown up in Iraq. What a horrible, wasteful folly.
Brave New Films has put together a great film looking at where we’ve come since that memorable day:
Today is the seventh anniversary of the Iraq invasion. There’s a temptation as we begin to end our combat presence in Iraq to search for a happy ending. But there has been no ‘victory’ in Iraq. We created this video as a reminder of the damage done to Iraq and to our country over the last seven years. We also know that there will be no economic recovery here at home as long as we’re spending $100 billion a year on another war that isn’t making us any safer – the war in Afghanistan. That’s why we’re asking you to report the Afghanistan War as an example of waste, fraud and abuse on the White House’s official economic recovery website, Recovery.gov, today. Simply scroll down to the field marked “What” and paste this message into the text box: “I’d like to report the waste of billions of dollars of our national wealth in Afghanistan on a war that doesn’t make us safer. It’s fraud to portray this as a war that increases our security, and it’s abusive of U.S. troops and local civilians to drag out this war any longer. End the war so we can have real economic recovery.”
Along those lines, I just heard Ohio Rep John Boccieri, an Iraq war vet, explaining his “yes” vote on HCR as stemming from when he was a pilot during the war and hearing that HHS secretary Tommy Thompson was in Iraq to deliver a check which would ensure that every “man woman and child” in the country would have health care. He said that he couldn’t explain to his constituents in Ohio why they shouldn’t have the same thing. It’s a good point.
Update: When I went back to look up what I was saying that day, this post came up first:
I find that my earlier post, “where’d they get all those flags?” has been answered. Jesse links to the Chicago tribune article reporting that Clear Channel “sponsored” all those pro-war rallies of the last few days. Now, why do you suppose they did that?
Clear Channel is by far the largest owner of radio stations in the nation. The company owned only 43 in 1995, but when Congress removed many of the ownership limits in 1996, Clear Channel was quickly on the highway to radio dominance. The company owns and operates 1,233 radio stations (including six in Chicago) and claims 100 million listeners. Clear Channel generated about 20 percent of the radio industry’s $16 billion in 2001 revenues.
The media giant’s size also has generated criticism. Some recording artists have charged that Clear Channel’s dominance in radio and concert promotions is hurting the recording industry. Congress is investigating the effects of radio consolidation. And the FCC is considering ownership rule changes, among them changes that could allow Clear Channel to expand its reach.
Now, let me get this straight. Celebrities are stepping out of bounds when they express political views opposing the President. But, large media companies sponsoring phony pro-military “rallies” replete with free flag swag is perfectly a-ok. Just trying to get the rules straight.
“I think this is pretty extraordinary,” said former Federal Communications Commissioner Glen Robinson, who teaches law at the University of Virginia. “I can’t say that this violates any of a broadcaster’s obligations, but it sounds like borderline manufacturing of the news.”
No kidding. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is the fact that while rallies were extremely well covered this past week-end, they were presented as spontaneously growing up out of the pro-military grassroots. They were not portrayed as having corporate sponsorship and they certainly were not reported as being a product of a concerted talk radio campaign of right wing nut jobs and their GOP corporate masters.
Plus ca change and all that rot, eh?
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