War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death (2007) Movie Script

Let us pray that peace
be now restored to the world
and that God will preserve it always.
These proceedings are closed.
The final United Nations
victory has been won.
The war is over. Peace is here.
The crowd of two million
review the greatest
parade of victorious
arms ever witnessed.
This is the news that
electrified the world.
Unconditional surrender
of a new world of peace.
Today the guns are silent.
The skies no longer rain death.
The entire world lies
quietly at peace.
On the way American
infantrymen once again
hit the road toward Korea's
capital city of Seoul.
US Marines were ordered into
the Dominican Republic.
The US Marines have also taken
center stage in South Vietnam.
This is what the war in
Vietnam is all about.
The first wave of marines
landed in Grenada.
Twelve hundred US Marines would
land in Grenada for several days.
Most of the Libyans were terrified
with last nights heavy bombing raid.
President Bush's
decision to neutralize
Panama's General Manuel Noriega.
Saddam Hussein's reign
of terror is over.
The war in Iraq.
Narrator: Since World War II, we
have seen a dramatic escalation
in the United States' military
actions around the globe.
Ranging from missile strikes
and rapid troop deployments
to all out wars and occupations.
The reasons for these military
interventions have varied,
each involving complex
geopolitical interests in
different parts of the world at
different times in US history.
But the public face of these wars
has not reflected this complexity.
Over the past five decades
the liberation and debate
about US Military actions
have largely been left
to a closed circle...
of elite Washington policy makers,
politicians and bureaucrats
whose rationals...
for war have come into public view
only with the release of leaked
or declassified documents,
often years after the
bombs have been...
dropped and the troops
have come home.
In real time, officials
have explained...
and justified these
military operations
to the American people by
withholding crucial information
about the actual reasons and
potential costs of military action.
Again and again choosing to present
an easier version of war's reality.
A steady and remarkably consistent
story line designed not to inform
but to generate and maintain
support and enthusiasm for war.
Nationally syndicated
columnist and...
author Norman Solomon
began to notice the
basic contours of this official
storyline during the war in Vietnam.
Norman Solomon: As
a teenager I read...
about the war in
Vietnam as it escalated.
I saw the footage on television.
In combat there are no niceties.
A dead enemy soldier is simply an
object to be examined for documents
and then removed as quickly as
possible - sometimes crudely.
Solomon: People that I knew
began to go to Vietnam
in uniform of the US military and
as time went on I began to wonder,
particularly as I became draft age,
about the truthfulness of
the statements coming from
the White House and top
officials in Washington.
We fight for the principal
of self-determination,
that the people of
South Vietnam should...
be able to choose their own course.
Choose it in free
elections, without...
bias, without terror
and without fear.
Solomon: And through that
process I began to really wonder
about whether we were
getting more truth or lies.
Narrator: In the years since,
Solomon has focused his attention on
a set of striking
parallels between the...
selling of the Vietnam
War and the way
Presidents have rallied
public support...
for subsequent military actions.
Solomon: Looking back on the
Vietnam War, as I did many times,
I had a very eerie feeling that while
the names of the countries changed
and of course each
circumstance was different
there were some parallels that
cried out for examination.
Rarely if ever does a war just
kind of fall down from the sky.
The foundation needs
to be laid and the...
case is built - often with deception.
In the background was
the growing struggle
between two great powers to
shape the post-war world.
Already an iron curtain
had dropped around Poland,
Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria.
It can't happen here? This is
what it looks like if it should.
Chief of Police is
hustled off to jail.
Public utilities are seized
by fifth columnists.
Editor who operates under a free
press, he goes to jail too.
This will account for
some of the enemy,
but some will get
through to your home.
Narrator: The use of
propaganda to arouse...
public support for war is not new.
Leaders throughout
history have turned...
to propaganda to
transform populations
understandably weary
of the costs of...
war into war's most
ardent supporters.
Invoking images of nationalism
and channeling fear and anger
towards perceived
enemies and threats.
And in the United States
since World War II,
government attempts to win public
support for military actions
have followed a similar pattern.
We are living in an era marked
by the growth of socialism.
Its basic Godless philosophy.
Lying. Dirty.
Its goal of world conquest.
Shrewd. Godless.
Its insidious tactics.
Murderous. Determined.
And its cunning strategy.
It's an international
criminal conspiracy.
Solomon: It's the same sort of
message that's utilized today
and often identical techniques.
States like these and their terrorist
allies constitute an axis of evil,
arming to threaten the
peace of the world.
These are barbaric people.
Servants of evil. The cult of evil.
A monumental struggle
of good versus evil.
But good will prevail.
Solomon: Whether it's the
Soviet Union or Al Qaeda,
it provides a way to
legitimize US plans for war.
You have the comparisons between
the enemy leader and Hitler.
President Bush calls Saddam Hussein
a little Hitler again today.
We are dealing with Hitler revisited.
Bin Laden and his terrorist
allies have made their intentions
as clear as Lenin and
Hitler before them.
Solomon: We don't get
information that...
would help us put the
images in perspective.
This mad dog of the Middle East.
I find that he's not only a
barbarian but he's flakey.
The drug indicted, drug-related
indicted dictator of Panama.
And to support their claim that
Noriega was out of control,
ghoulish evidence of Satanic
practices with dead animals
that one official called kinky.
Saddam Hussein is a
homicidal dictator
who is addicted to weapons
of mass destruction.
Solomon: And as Aldous
Huxley said long ago,
it's more powerful often to leave
things out then to tell lies.
For instance, quite
often the US government
directly helped the dictators
that were now being told
must be overthrown and it's
that selectivity of history
that's a very effective
form of propaganda.
Narrator: This selective
view of reality,
buttressed by these
fear-based appeals
represents a larger pre-war pattern.
The repeated claim that the
United States uses military force
only with great reluctance.
We still seek no wider war.
The United States does
not start fights.
America does not seek conflict.
I don't like to use military force.
Our nation enters this
conflict reluctantly.
Narrator: And only for the
most virtuous of reasons,
first and foremost to spread
freedom and democracy.
We want nothing for ourselves,
only that the people of South Vietnam
be allowed to guide their
own country in their own way.
Solomon: The rhetoric
of democracy is...
part of the process
of convincing people
that even though unpleasant things
must be done sometimes in its name,
like bombing other countries,
democracy is really what it's about.
The United States has been engaged
in an effort to stop the advance
of Communism in Central America
by doing what we do best.
By supporting democracy.
Solomon: And it's
almost as if though...
repeating it enough
times makes it so.
Our cause of liberty,
our cause of freedom,
our cause of compassion
and understanding.
People want democracy,
peace and the chance for a better
life in dignity and freedom.
We want to lift lives around
the world, not take them.
Solomon: These are forms of
propaganda that are insidious because
they tug at our heart strings.
We must get the Kosovar
refugees home safely.
Mine fields will have to be cleared.
Homes destroyed by Serb forces
will have to be rebuilt.
Homeless people in need
of food and medicine.
Solomon: Of course we want
to help other people.
These are propaganda
messages that say,
don't just think of yourself,
America can't just be selfish.
It makes bombing other
people ultimately seem like
an act of kindness, of altruism.
Today our armed forces joined
our NATO allies in air strikes
against Serbian forces responsible
for the brutality in Kosovo.
We are upholding our values,
protecting our interests and
advancing the cause of peace.
But even as planes from the multi
national forces attack Iraq,
I prefer to think of peace. Not war.
Solomon: If my motives are pure then
the fact that I'm killing people
may not be too upsetting.
It may indicate that I'm killing
people for very good reasons.
America will stand
with the allies of...
freedom to support
democratic movements
in the Middle East and beyond,
with the ultimate goal of
ending tyranny in our world.
Solomon: So you have kind of
the high ground president
with the lofty motives
being proclaimed...
or told that peace is being sought.
Alternatives to war
are being explored...
and that's kind of
the official story.
I am continuing and I
am increasing the...
search for every
possible path to peace.
Solomon: Whether we are talking about
Johnson, Nixon or
the president today,
you have one chief executive
after another in the White House
saying how much they
love peace and hate war.
We maintain our strength in order to
deter and defend against aggression,
to preserve freedom and peace.
No one, friend or foe, should
doubt our desire for peace.
The United States wants peace.
We seek peace. We strive for peace.
Solomon: Every President of the last
half century has gone out of his way
to say that he wanted peace
and wanted to avoid war.
I pledged in my campaign for
the presidency to end the war
in a way that we could win the peace.
Solomon: Even while
ordering military action.
Solomon: So you have
this paradox in a...
way of the president
who has just ordered
massive military violence and
lethal action by the Pentagon,
turning around and saying I want to
oppose violence and promote peace.
Nixon: I respect your idealism.
I share your concern for peace.
I want peace as much as you do.
Solomon: Actually war
becomes perpetual...
when it's used as a
rational for peace.
George W. Bush: We cannot
wait for the final proof,
the smoking gun that could come
in the form of a mushroom cloud.
Solomon: As Americans we
like to think that we're not
subjected to propaganda
from our own government.
Certainly that we are not
subjected to propaganda
that is trying to drag
the country into war,
as in the case for setting the
stage for the invasion into Iraq.
Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant...
quantities of uranium from Africa.
There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction.
Weapons of mass destruction.
Botulin, VX, sarin, nerve agent.
Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda.
Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Terrorism.
Cyber attacks.
Nuclear program.
Biological weapons.
Cruise missiles, ballistic missiles.
Chemical and biological weapons.
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
President Bush has said Iraq
has weapons of mass destruction.
Tony Blair has said Iraq has
weapons of mass destruction.
Donald Rumsfeld has said Iraq
has weapons of mass destruction.
Richard Butler has said they do.
The United Nations has said they do.
The experts have said they do.
Iraq says they don't. You can
choose who you want to believe.
Solomon: The war propaganda function
in the United States is finely tuned.
It's sophisticated and most of all
it blends into the media terrain.
The White House says it can
prove that Saddam Hussein
has weapons of mass destruction,
claiming it has solid evidence.
The White House insisted again
today it does have solid evidence
that Saddam Hussein is hiding an
arsenal of prohibited weapons.
Solomon: It's necessary to provide
a drum beat media echo effect.
They might fight dirty,
using weapons of mass destruction,
chemical, biological or radioactive.
There are ties between
Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
Anthrax, small pox.
Dirty bomb.
Dirty bomb.
Iraq-Al Qaeda connections.
Saddam Hussein and Al
Qaeda share the same goal.
Both of them want to
see Americans dead.
Solomon: And I was very
struck by the acceptance,
the tone of most of the media
coverage as the sabers were rattled,
as the invasion of Iraq
gradually went from
possible to probable
to almost certain.
President essentially giving
Saddam 48 hours to get out.
War now seems all but inevitable.
Short of a bullet to
the back of his head,
or he leaves the country,
war is inexorable.
I think that's exactly
right. War is...
inevitable and it is
approaching inexorably.
Is war with Iraq
inevitable right now?
I think it is 95% inevitable.
You at this point right now tonight,
don't see any other option but war?
Do you?
I'm asking you ambassador.
I agree. I don't think
there is a viable...
option for the administration
at this point.
We're way too far
out in front in this.
Send us over there guys. Let's get
on with it. Let's get it over with.
Showdown Iraq. If America goes to
war, turn to MSNBC and the experts.
Solomon: And in many ways, the US
news media were equal partners with
the officials in
Washington and on Capitol
Hill in setting the agenda for war.
We'll take you there, MSNBC.
Solomon: And although it's
called the liberal media
one has a great deal of
difficulty finding an example
of major media outlets
in their reporting
challenging the way in
which the agenda...
setting for war is well under way,
and when that reporting is so much
a hostage of official sources,
that's when you have a problem.
US officials tell CNN
Bush official says that
Analysts say
Pentagon officials tell us
According to US intelligence
Solomon: Often we're
encouraged to believe...
officials are the ones who make news.
US officials say
US officials say that
US officials here say
The US officials here at
the white house tell us
Solomon: They're the
ones who should be...
consulted to understand
the situation.
I just pulled these two things out.
I've laundered them so you can't
really tell what I'm talking about
because I don't want the Iraqis
to know what I'm talking about.
But trust me, trust me.
Solomon: If history is any
guide the opposite is the case.
The officials blow smoke and
cloud reality rather than clarify.
We will in fact be
greeted as liberators.
The notion that it will take
several hundred thousand US troops
to provide stability in post-Saddam
Iraq are wildly off the mark.
So the money's gonna come from Iraqi
oil revenue as everyone has said.
They think it's going to be something
like 2 billion dollars this year.
They think it might be
something like 15, 12 next year.
A country that can
really finance its...
own reconstruction
and relatively soon.
National security advisors
Ken Adelman and Richard Perle,
early advocates of the war, said
the war would be a cake walk.
Solomon: The sources
that have deceived...
us so constantly don't
deserve our trust
and to the extent that
we give them our trust,
we set ourselves up to be
scammed again and again.
There are reports that there is
no evidence of a direct link
between Baghdad and some of
these terrorist organizations.
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know there
are known unknowns.
That is to say that we know there
are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns.
The ones we don't know we don't know.
Excuse me, but is this
an unknown unknown?
There are several
unknowns. I just wanted...
to know if this was
an unknown unknown.
I'm not going to say which it is.
Mr. Secretary?
I'm right here, I'm right here.
Narrator: In the run
up to the war in Iraq,
the failure of mainstream news...
organizations to raise
legitimate questions
about the government's
rush to war was...
compounded by the
networks' deliberate
decision to stress
military perspectives...
before any fighting had even begun.
We've got generals and if you
ask them about the prospects
for war with Iraq they
think it is almost certain.
Narrator: CNN's use of
retired generals...
as supposedly independent experts
reinforced the decidedly military
mindset even as serious questions
remained about the wisdom and
necessity of going to war.
Solomon: Often journalists
blame the government for
the failure of the journalists...
themselves to do
independent reporting.
But nobody forced the major networks
like CNN to do so much commentary
from retired generals and
admirals and all the rest of it.
You had a top CNN
official named Eason
Jordan going on the
air of his network
and boasting that he had
visited the Pentagon with a list
of possible military commentators
and he asked officials
at the Defense Department
whether that...
was a good list of people to hire.
I think it's important to
have experts explain the war
and to describe the military
hardware, describe the tactics,
talk about the strategy
behind the conflict.
I went to the Pentagon myself
several times before the war started
and met with important people
there and said for instance at CNN
here are the generals we're
thinking of retaining to advise us
on the air and off about the war and
we got a big thumbs up on all of them
and that was important.
Solomon: It wasn't even
something to hide ultimately.
It was something to say to the
American people on his own network,
see, we're team players.
We may be the news media
but we're on the...
same side and the same
page as the Pentagon.
And that really runs directly counter
to the idea of an independent press.
And that suggests that we have some
deep patterns of media avoidance
when the US is involved
in a war based on lies.
Narrator: In 1964, President Lyndon
Johnson falsely
claimed that an attack
on US gunships by North Vietnamese
forces in the Gulf of Tonkin
gave him no choice but to
escalate the war in Vietnam.
That renewed hostile actions against
United States ships on the high seas
in the Gulf of Tonkin have
today required me to order the
military forces of the United
States to take action in reply.
Solomon: Routinely the official
story is a lie, or a deception,
or a partial bit of information
that leaves out key facts.
In international waters
in the Gulf of Tonkin,
destroyers of the United
States Navy are...
assigned routine patrols
from time to time.
Sunday, August 2, 1964, the destroyer
Maddux was on such a patrol.
Shortly after noon
the calm of the day...
is broken as general quarters sound.
In a deliberate and unprovoked action
three North Vietnam PT boats unleash
a torpedo attack against the Maddux.
Solomon: The official story about
the Gulf of Tonkin was a lie.
The destroyer was carrying out a
mission, a patrol in those waters,
in international waters
when it was attacked.
Solomon: But it quickly became
accepted as the absolute truth
by the news media
and because of the...
press' refusal to
challenge that story,
it was much easier for
Congress to quickly...
pass the Gulf of Ton kin resolution,
which was pivotal because it opened
the floodgates to the Vietnam War.
I think it's a very
clear demonstration...
of the unity of the country,
behind the policies that are being...
followed by the President
in South Vietnam
and more specifically of
the action that was taken
in response to the attack
upon our destroyer.
Solomon: At that point
the facts were secondary.
In the case of the
Washington Post reporting,
I asked, more than three decades
later, whether there had ever been
a Post retraction of its reporting
on the Gulf of Tonkin events.
And I called the newspaper and...
eventually reached
the man who had been
the Chief Diplomatic correspondent at
the time, Murrey Marder, and I said,
Mr. Marder, has there ever been a
retraction by the Washington Post
of its fallacious reporting
on the Gulf of Tonkin?
And he said, I can
assure you it never...
happened. There was
never any retraction.
And I asked why.
And he said, if the news
media were going...
to retract its
reporting on the Gulf of
Tonkin it would have to
retract its reporting...
on virtually the entire Vietnam War.
Fast forward a few decades, you
have President George W. Bush
saying that to an
absolute certainty...
there were weapons
of mass destruction
in Iraq and that intelligence
sources told him...
that clearly which was
not at all the case.
Secretary of State Powell will
present information and intelligence
about Iraq's illegal
weapons programs,
its attempts to hide those
weapons from inspectors,
and its links to terrorist groups.
Narrator: The failure
of American news...
media to check government distortion
reached new heights on when the
eve of war the highly respected
Secretary of State Colin Powell
appeared before the United Nations
to make the case that there were
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's intentions
have never changed.
He is not developing the
missiles for self defense.
These are missiles that Iraq wants in
order to project power, to threaten,
and to deliver chemical, biological,
and if we let him, nuclear warheads.
Today Secretary of
State Powell brought...
the United Nations Security Council
the administration's
best evidence so far.
Solomon: After Colin Powell's
speech to the UN immediately
the US press applauded
with great enthusiasm.
Did Colin Powell close the
deal today in your mind
for anyone who has yet
objectively to make up their mind?
I think for anybody who analyzes the
situation, he has closed the deal.
This irrefutable, undeniable,
incontrovertible evidence today.
Colin Powell brilliantly
delivered that smoking gun today.
Colin Powell was outstanding
today. I mean it was lock-step.
It was so compelling.
I don't see how anybody at this
point cannot support this effort.
He made a wonderful presentation.
I thought he made a great case
for the purpose of disarmament.
It was devastating I
mean and overwhelming.
Overwhelming abundance
of the evidence.
Point after point after point. He
just flooded the terrain with data.
It's the end of the argument
phase. America has made its case.
The Powell speech has moved the ball.
I think case is closed.
Solomon: But at the time
it was quite possible...
to analyze and debunk
what he was saying.
Narrator: Whereas the British press
and other international news sources
immediately raised
legitimate questions...
about the accuracy of
Powell's presentation
the major US news
media were virtually...
silent about the factual basis
of his claims and near
unanimous in their praise.
Solomon: Even the
purportedly anti-war
New York Times
editorialized the next day
that Colin Powell had made a
sober case, a factual case.
One of the great myths then part
of the war propaganda cycle
is way after the fact
to claim that it...
couldn't have been known at the time
that US officials were lying us
into war and in point of fact
it was known at the time
and said by many people
who were not allowed on
the networks, by and large.
Narrator: One such critical voice
belonged to MSNBC's Phil Donahue,
one of the few mainstream media...
commentators who
consistently challenged
the official storyline
coming out of Washington.
You know we're all now everybody's...
righteous. What a
terrible Hitler this is.
We were mute when he was
doing that. He was our SOB.
And now we're sending our sons and
daughters to war to fix that mistake.
It doesn't seem fair to me.
Narrator: Despite being the
highest rated program on MSNBC,
Donahue's show was abruptly
cancelled by the network
just three weeks before
the start of the war.
Solomon: Phil Donahue was
an anti - war voice...
on MSNBC, one of the
cable news channels.
And a memo that was
leaked as the Donahue...
show was cancelled is very explicit.
It said, we don't want
this to be a face...
of NBC as the United
States goes into war.
This guy puts anti-war
voices on our network.
The American people need to know
there is no just cause for this war.
But there's no evidence
that there is even...
a weapon that exists
in that country yet.
Journalists, too many of them
and some quite explicitly,
have said that they see their
mission as helping the war effort
and if you define your mission that
way you'll end up suppressing news
that might be important,
accurate but...
maybe isn't helpful
to the war effort.
Solomon: We don't want to have
that kind of public persona
when then we'd be vulnerable to
charges that we're unpatriotic.
It'll make it more
difficult to keep pace with
the flag-wavers at Fox
or CNN or whatever.
And more broadly news media are very
worried not only government pressure
but advertiser pressure, criticism
from readers, listeners and viewers:
Our soldiers are in the field.
You've got to support them.
Don't raise these tough questions.
It seems to me that the right
thing to do for patriots
when American lives are at
risk and Americans are dying
is to unite behind the
troops until victory is won.
Now on this show, Buchanan and
Press, we've had a good debate for 8
months on this conflict
but now it seems when the
war comes, the debate ends.
I think unity, Bill, is
essential at this...
time or at least when
the guns begin to fire.
Solomon: It's a very effective
tactic at least in the short run
to a large extent to say "look
you got to support the troops."
You're killing the troops.
Solomon: And that's an effort to
conflate supporting the troops
with supporting the
President's policies.
Once the war against Saddam begins
we expect every American to
support our military and if
they can't do that, to shut up.
Narrator: In addition
to Phil Donahue,
many other journalists
have been silenced
for crossing the mythical
line known as objectivity.
Today, NBC News fired journalist
Peter Arnett this morning
for participating in an interview on
Iraqi state controlled television.
Arnett criticized American
war planning and...
said his reports about
civilian casualties
and the Iraqi resistance
were encouraging...
to anti-war protesters in America.
Solomon: If you're
pro-war you're objective,
but if you're anti-war you're biased.
And often a news
anchor will get no...
flak at all for making
statements that
are supportive of a war
and wouldn't dream...
of making a statement
that's against a war.
I was trying to think of something
that would be appropriate to say
on an occasion like
this and as is often...
the case the best
you can come up with
is something that Shakespeare
wrote for Henry V,
"wreak havoc and unleash
the dogs of war."
Solomon: And that is a tip off to
just how skewed the media terrain is.
We should keep in mind
that CNN, which...
many believe to be a liberal network,
had a memo from their
top news executive,
Walter Isaacson, in the fall of 2001,
as the missiles were
falling in Afghanistan...
telling the anchors and the reporters
you need to remind people anytime
you show images on the screen of
the people who are
dying in Afghanistan,
you've got to remind
the American viewers
that it's in the context
of what happened on 9/11.
As though people could forget 9/11.
We talked to several people who told
us that various friends and relatives
had died in the bombing there
in that collateral damage.
Nic Robertson, CNN,
Kandahar, Afghanistan.
And we would just remind
you as we always...
do now with these
reports from inside the
Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan, that...
you're seeing only
one side of the story,
that these US military
actions that Nic
Robertson was talking
about are in response
to a terrorist attack
that killed 5,000 and...
more innocent people
inside the United States.
And we juxtapose what we're
hearing from the Taliban
with a live picture of the cleanup
that continues in lower Manhattan,
Ground Zero, again
a 24 hour operation.
5,000 killed that day back
on Tuesday September 11th,
their biggest crime as civilians?
Going to work that day.
Solomon: And yet we
know statistically...
the best estimates tell us
that more civilians were killed
by that bombing in Afghanistan
than those who died in the
twin towers in New York.
And the moral objections that could
be raised to slaughtering civilians
in the name of
retaliation against 9/11,
those objections were muted by the
phrase war on terror by the way
in which it was used
by the White House...
and in Congress and
also by the news media.
Narrator: Free flows of information
had been further blocked by
a more general atmosphere of
contempt for anti-war voices.
Among them are a
group called Code Pink
which is headed by Medea Benjamin
who is a terrorist sympathizer,
dictator worshipping propagandist.
The far left element
in America is a...
destructive force that
must be confronted.
Some Americans, sadly,
not interested in victory
and yet they want us to believe
that their behavior is patriotic.
Well, it's not.
To call the President stupid,
he doesn't know much about
anything. That's just great.
Go with Danny Glover and Susan
Sarandon. You fit in perfect.
To in any way be defending a
torturer, a killer, a dictator,
he used chemical weapons
against his own people,
is pretty remarkable
but it's a very...
long tradition in
the Democratic party.
Pay no heed to the peaceniks
and the left-wing rockstars.
They've had their 15 minutes of fame.
These people are essentially useless.
They are reflexively opposed to war.
It's a principled position,
but it's the wrong position.
And you can't take them
seriously as a strategic voice.
Millions and millions of
useless people out there.
Solomon: If you want
to have democracy,
you've got to have the free flow
of information through
the body politic.
You can't have these blockages.
You can't have the manipulation.
Narrator: While
mainstream journalists...
have rarely called
attention in real time
to the failure of news
media to provide...
necessary information
and real debate,
they have repeatedly
pointed to their own...
failures well after wars
have been launched.
During the course of
this war there...
was a lot of snap-to
in press coverage.
We're at war. The world's
changed. We have...
to root for the
country to some extent.
Something missing from
this debate was a...
critical analysis of
where it was taking us.
Those of us in journalism never even
looked at the issue of occupation.
Because it just didn't occur to
us. We weren't smart enough.
You'd had to have gone
against the grain.
You'd also come off as
kind of a pointy head...
trying to figure out
some obscure issue.
Exactly. Negative, negativism.
Solomon: News media
down the road will...
point out that there will lies about
the Gulf of Tonkin or about weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq.
I'm sorry to say that
certainly television,
and perhaps to an extent my station,
was intimidated by the administration
and its foot soldiers at FoxNews.
We should've been more skeptical.
Solomon: But that doesn't bring
back any of the people who've died,
who were killed in their
own country or sent over by
the President of the United
States to kill in that country.
After the fact, it's
all well and good to...
say the system worked
or the truth comes out.
But when it comes to life and
death the truth comes out too late.
My fellow citizens,
at this hour American
and coalition forces...
are in the early stages
of military operations
to disarm Iraq, to
free its people and...
to defend the world
from grave danger.
The idea, to blitz the
capital with bombs.
There is, quote, complete confusion.
This will be a campaign
unlike any other.
The senior Iraqi military leadership.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Narrator: Once public support is in
place and war is finally underway
the news media necessarily turn from
covering the rationales for war
to covering war itself.
Solomon: When the President decides
he wants the US to go to war
then the war becomes the product.
Particularly in the early stages,
news coverage of war is much
more like PR about war.
Narrator: Influencing
the nature of this...
war coverage has been
a priority of one
administration after
another since Vietnam
when conventional wisdom held that
it was negative media coverage
that turned the American
people against...
the war and forced US withdrawal.
Since that time, and beginning with
new urgency during the 1991 Gulf War,
the Pentagon has worked with
increasing sophistication to shape
media coverage of war.
As then Defense Secretary
Dick Cheney noted
about the importance of public...
perceptions during
the first Iraq War,
Solomon: So for the
invasion of Grenada...
and invasion of Panama
in '83 and '89,
then the Gulf War in early 1991,
it was like a produced TV show and...
the ma in producers
were the Pentagon.
They decided, in the
case of the Gulf War,
exactly what footage would be made
available to the TV stations.
They did non-stop
briefings utilizing the...
increasing importance
of cable television.
They named it Operation Desert Storm.
Breaking news of what's
now officially...
called Operation Desert Storm.
Good evening, Operation
Desert Storm rages on.
Solomon: All that sort of
stuff was very calculated
so you could look at that as an
era of media war manipulation
from the standpoint
of the US government.
Then you had a different era. You
had the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Scores of American reporters have now
joined US military units in Kuwait
as part of the Pentagon's effort
to make any war with Iraq
what the Pentagon calls a
"media friendly campaign."
Another part of that
effort is on display...
at the US Military
Command Center in Qatar.
A Hollywood set designer was brought
in to create a $200,000 backdrop
for official war briefings.
Solomon: And tied in with that is
the worship of Pentagon technology.
I've fallen almost in
love with the F-18 Super
Hornet because it is
quite a versatile plane.
I got to tell you my
favorite aircraft,
the A-10 warthog. I
love the warthogs.
This morning around 4 am local
time the first three took off
and when you're 300 feet away
from 'em when they do it
you hear it in your shoes
and feel it in your gut.
Narrator: The Pentagon's influence on
war coverage has also been evident
in the news media's tendency to
focus on the technical sophistication
of the latest weaponry.
Should they have used more?
Should they have used the MOAB?
The Mother Of All Bombs?
A few daisycutters and let's not just
stop at a couple of cruise missiles.
Newest, biggest, baddest US bomb.
We'll pound them with 2,000
pound bombs and then go in.
2,000 pound bombs in urban areas?
Oh, sure.
The plane I'm holding in my hand
here, the F117 Stealth Fighter,
was used in these attacks.
How do you steer this thing? I mean
you have a stick, is that right?
Sure, both of us have a matching
center stick with left throttles.
Solomon: Every war we have US news
media that have praised the latest in
state of the art killing
technology from...
the present moment to
the war in Vietnam.
B - 57's, the British
call them Canberra jets.
We're using them very effectively
in this war in Vietnam
to dive bomb the VietCong in
these jungles beyond Danang here.
Colonel, what's our mission
we're about to embark on?
Well our mission today sir is to
report down to the site of the ambush
70 miles south of here and
attempt to kill the VC.
The colonel has just
advised me that that...
is the target area right over there.
1- 2-3-4 we've dropped
the bombs and now a...
tremendous g-load as we
pull out of that dive.
I know something of what those
astronauts must go through.
Well, Colonel, that's a
great way to go to war.
Solomon: And there's a
kind of idolatry there.
Some might see it as the
worship of the gods of metal.
That's it.
It's a 2,000 pound bomb
that is deadly accurate
and that is the thing that
has allowed us in Afghanistan
and will allow us in this next
conflict to be terribly accurate,
terribly precise and
terribly destructive.
Narrator: In fact,
even as US military...
technology has become
increasingly sophisticated
with the development of
so-called smart bombs...
and other forms of
precision-guided weaponry,
civilian casualties now greatly
outnumber military deaths.
A grim toll that has steadily
increased since World War I.
This is the beginning
of the Shock and
Awe campaign, according
to one official.
This is going to be
the entire nine yards.
It was a breathtaking
display of firepower.
Solomon: There's kind of an
acculturated callousness
towards what happens at the
other end of US weapons.
Behind the flight deck the weapons...
officer who goes by
the call sign "Oasis"
will never see the ground or
the target for that matter.
The airfield is simply a
fuzzy image on his radar.
Solomon: And this is another very
insidious aspect of war propaganda.
There's a bias involved where because
the United States has access to
high tech military weaponry
that somehow to...
slaughter people from
or a thousand feet in the air from
high tech machinery is somehow moral
whereas strapping on a
suicide belt and blowing...
people up is seen as
the exact opposite.
The targeting capabilities and
the care that goes into targeting
to see that the precise
targets are struck...
and that other targets are not struck
is as impressive as
anything anyone could see.
The care that goes into it,
the humanity that goes into it.
To see that military targets
are destroyed to be sure
but that it's done in a
way and in a manner...
and in a direction and with a weapon
that is appropriate to that
very particularized target.
The weapons that are
being used today have a...
degree of precision that
no one ever dreamt of.
Narrator: Within this
war-friendly news frame
the Defense Department
has also been...
successful in shaping
actual war reporting.
Its influence reached
new levels with the...
embedding of journalists
during the war in Iraq.
The Pentagon tightly
controlled the...
media during the 1991
Persian Gulf War,
limiting where reporters could
go and often restricting access
to small groups of pool reporters.
This time the Pentagon
is doing an about face
after running more than 230
journalists through media boot camps,
the Pentagon is inviting more
than 500 media representatives
to accompany US combat units to war.
Narrator: Despite being
widely praised as...
a new form of realism
in war coverage,
the strategy of embedding
reporters has...
raised new questions
about the ability of
war reporters to convey balanced
information to the American people.
Solomon: Rather than being kept
far away they were embraced
and smothered and participated in
the process of being smothered.
They were brought a long,
hundreds and hundreds of them,
with the Marines, with
the Navy, with the Army.
They became, in a sense, part
of the invading apparatus.
You didn't have embedded reporters
with people who were being bombed.
You only had embedded
reporters with the bombers.
Last night a tremendous light show
here, just a tremendous light show.
Solomon: And it was
through the eyes of the...
invaders that so much of
the reporting was done.
It was a gradual process of getting
to know and trust each other
and for them trusting me was knowing
I would not blow their objective
and get us all shelled
with artillery.
Solomon: People who were
correspondents for...
the major US TV networks
would express in no
uncertain terms that they had been...
bonding very closely
with the US soldiers.
We have a number of correspondents...
embed with our troops
across the region.
Very deeply embedded in
a personal way with...
the marines that he
is traveling with.
Solomon: And you had correspondents
saying that you know,
I would do virtually anything for
them. They would do anything for me.
There's all this camaraderie.
We had guys around us with guns
and they were intent on keeping
us alive because they said,
you guys are making us stars back
home so we need to protect you.
Solomon: That's very
nice except it has...
nothing to do with
independent journalism
which we never need more
than in times of war.
It was a very shrewd effort
by the Pentagon to say,
you want access, here's
plenty of access.
I doubt that in a conflict of
this type there's ever been
the degree of free press coverage as
you are witnessing in this instance.
Solomon: And the embedding
process was actually a new wrinkle
in an old game which was
and is propaganda for war.
Narrator: Praise for
the embedding process...
as a step forward in
balanced war reporting
has often invoked comparisons to
media coverage of the Vietnam War.
Solomon: A myth has kind of
grown up after the Vietnam War
that their reporting was very tough,
that Americans saw on
their television sets...
the brutality of the
war as it unfolded.
And people often hark back
to that as a standard
that should now be
rediscovered or emulated.
This is what the war in
Vietnam is all about.
Solomon: Yes, there was exceptional
reporting, but it was the exception.
And so you had the
Zippo lighters being...
used by the GI's
burning down the huts
of a village that Morley
Safer on CBS reported.
Well people mentioned that
actually because it was unusual.
And in point of fact
very little about...
the tremendous violence in that war
was conveyed through
the television set,
especially when the US government is
responsible for the human suffering.
That is in a way the most
taboo to show in detail,
in graphic human detail what's
involved when bombs, missiles,
mortars paid for by US taxpayers
do what their designed to do
which is to kill and to maim.
I know that this is
a great concern. I...
think it's part of
the Vietnam syndrome.
The Vietnam Syndrome that
President Reagan mentioned
was a reference to America's attempt
to forget its most unpopular war.
This will not be another Vietnam.
Our troops will have the best
possible support in the entire world
and they will not be asked to fight
with one hand tied behind their back.
Narrator: Like President
Reagan before...
him, President George H.W. Bush
explicitly set out
during the first Gulf War
to rid the national psyche
of the so-called Vietnam Syndrome,
the common belief after the bloody
and protracted conflict in Vietnam
that the American public
no longer had the
stomach for war unless...
guaranteed swift, easy
and decisive victory.
Precision weapons and the
strategic use of air power
helped make the Gulf War an enormous
operational victory for the Pentagon,
helping it move past
the legacy of Vietnam.
It's a proud day for
America and by God we've...
kicked Vietnam Syndrome
once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
Solomon: The idea is that supposedly
the public is not willing to back
strong military action
because people have...
become too skittish
about US casualties.
In fact if you look at the
actual course of public opinion
there's been a real
willingness to support...
wars without exception
at the beginning.
Public support for the
Second World War never...
fell below 77% according
to opinion polls.
But during the Vietnam War,
public support fell to about 30%
and with in a couple of years
of the US occupation of Iraq
public support was down to almost
So what's the difference?
In one case, WWII, the US
public never felt that...
the war was fundamentally
based on deception.
But if it emerges that the
war can't be won quickly
and that the war was
based on deceptions
then people have turned
against the war.
So first the public has to be
sold on the need to attack.
Then, after the war is underway,
withdrawal needs to be put
forward as an unacceptable option.
Withdrawal of all American forces
from Vietnam would be a disaster.
Let no one think for a
moment that retreat...
from Vietnam would bring
an end to conflict.
We're not leaving so long
as I'm the President.
That would be a huge mistake.
Our allies would lose
confidence in America.
To yield to force in Vietnam
would weaken that confidence.
Any sign that says we're going
to leave before the job is done
simply emboldens terrorists.
A retreat of the United States from
Vietnam would be a communist victory,
a victory of massive proportions
and would lead to World War III.
If this little nation
goes down the drain...
and can't maintain their independence
ask yourself what's going to happen
to all the other little nations.
It would not bring peace.
It would bring more war.
Solomon: And many propaganda lines
become stock and trade of those
who started the war
in the first place.
The party of FDR and the
party of Harry Truman
has become the party of cut and run.
The American people will
not stand for surrender.
Cowards cut and run.
They're advocating a
policy called cut and run.
That party's old pattern
of cutting and running.
If we high-tailed it and cut and run.
We won't cut and run.
Cut and run.
Cut and run.
We will not cut and run.
Cut and run.
Cut and run, cut and
run, how do you respond?
We will stay the course.
We must stay the course.
We stay the course.
We will stay the course.
And we're not going to cut and run
if I'm in the oval office.
Solomon: All a president
has to do is...
start a war and these
arguments kick in.
You can't stop them so it's
a real incentive to lie,
to deceive, to manipulate
sufficiently to get the war started
and then they've got a long
way to go without any sort of
substantive challenge that says
"hey, this war has to end."
Then appealing for public
support for his peace policy
Mr. Nixon said the
enemy cannot defeat...
or humiliate the United States.
Only Americans, he said, can do that.
The peacemakers are
out there on the field.
The soldier and the statesman
need and welcome the sincere
and the responsible assistance
of concerned Americans.
But they need reason much
more than they need emotion.
They must have a practical solution
and not a concoction of wishful
thinking and false hopes
however well-intentioned and
well- meaning they may be.
It must be a solution
that does not call for...
surrender or for
cutting and running now.
Those fantasies hold
the nightmare of World
War llI and a much
larger war tomorrow.
Solomon: During the
Vietnam War public...
opinion polls were
showing after a few years
into the early 1970's that a majority
of Americans felt the war was wrong,
even immoral and yet
the war continued...
because the momentum was there.
Vice President Agnew's
target tonight, as...
he put it, was the
professional pessimist.
Most of those, the Vice
President explained...
at a rally for
California Republicans,
are Democrats, and it was
all the kind of rhetoric
Republican crowds have been
enjoying on this tour.
In the United States today
we have more than our share of the
nattering nabobs of negativism.
Solomon: The same has been the case
in terms of the occupation of Iraq.
The President and I
cannot prevent certain...
politicians from losing their memory
or their backbone but
we're not going...
to sit by and let
them rewrite history.
Solomon: And that's
an insidious process
because often those who oppose
a war are simply discounted.
Congressman John Murtha, the first
Vietnam Vet to serve in Congress,
a man awarded a bronze star
and two purple hearts,
choking back tears as he talked
about his change of heart.
It's time to bring them home.
They've done everything they can do.
The military has done
everything they can do.
This war has been so
mishandled, from the very start.
Not only was the intelligence bad,
the way they disbanded the troops,
there's all kinds of
mistakes that've been made.
They don't' deserve to
continue to suffer.
They're the targets.
Solomon: As an original supporter of
the war and somebody known as a hawk,
pro-military inside the Congress,
John Murtha, despite his credentials,
he was not taken terribly seriously.
This guy has long passed
the day when he...
had anything but the
foggiest awareness
of what the heck is
going on in the world...
and that sound byte is
naivete writ-large.
And the man is an absolute
fountain of such talk.
Solomon: His recommendations to pull
out US troops, discounted by pundits.
Pennsylvania Congressman
John Murtha...
once again sounding
like the grim reaper
when it comes to the war on terror.
Murtha's running a
psyop against his...
own people and against
his own military.
As a veteran, I consider it my duty
to defend those who defend America
against repeated
public attacks by a...
politician who cares
nothing more than
political and personal gain
than the welfare of our
fellow Americans on the battlefield.
Solomon: And yet you looked at the...
polls and you found
that a large amount
of Americans totally were
in his corner on this.
I go by Arlington cemetery everyday
and the Vice President, he criticizes
Democrats. Let me tell you.
Those gravestones don't say Democrat
or Republican. They say Americans.
Solomon: And almost any analysis of
public opinion data laid side-by-side
with what news media are or are not
advocating in terms of editorials
will show that the
media establishment...
is way behind the grassroots.
In February of 1968, the
Boston Globe did a...
survey of 39 different
major US daily newspapers.
The Globe could not find a single
paper that had editorialized
for withdrawal of US
troops from Vietnam.
Narrator: And even when
calls for withdrawal...
have eventually become
too loud to ignore,
officials have strategies
for ending war...
that have the effect
of prolonging it.
In some cases, as with the Nixon...
administration's strategy
of Vietnamization,
actually escalating war
in the name of ending it.
In the previous administration, we
Americanized the war in Vietnam.
In this administration we are
Vietnamizing the search for peace.
Solomon: It's the idea that
the war has become
unpopular in the United
States so let's pull
out some US troops
and have the military burden fall
on the allies inside that country.
White House officials say it is
obvious that the South Vietnamese
are going to have to
hack it on their own.
Solomon: The model is to use air
power while pulling out US troops
and training Vietnamese to
kill other Vietnamese people.
And several decades later,
in effect that is a goal
of George W. Bush's administration.
Our strategy can be
summed up this way.
As the Iraqi's stand
up, we will stand down.
Solomon: The rhetoric about shifting
the burden of fighting the insurgency
onto the shoulders of Iraqi people
themselves is very enticing
for a president because
it's a way of...
saying to people in
the United States,
hey, we're going to be out of
there, it's just a matter of time.
There isn't a person at this
table who agrees with you
that we're in a quagmire and
that there's no end in sight.
Solomon: The media and political
focus on the word quagmire
is a good example of how an issue
can be framed very narrowly.
The criticism would be that
you're in a situation from which
there's no good way to
extricate yourself.
Then the word clearly
would not be a good one.
Solomon: Talking about
a quagmire seems...
to be a positive way
of fomenting debate
because then we can
argue about whether...
the war is actually working out well.
We are now in a seemingly
intractable quagmire.
That terrible word quagmire.
This could be or seems to
be a kind of quagmire.
Solomon: Quagmire is
really a false sort...
of a critique because
it says really the
problem here is what
the war is doing to...
the United States.
Are we able to win?
Are we winning in Iraq?
Do you want the United
States to win in Iraq?
I can't tell who's
winning and who's losing.
Do you believe that we are
currently winning in Iraq?
We are not winning
but we are not losing.
We are losing.
We're winning it.
You're winning this war?
I couldn't tell you.
Solomon: And a big problem with the
media focus is that it sees the war
through the eyes of the Americans,
through the eyes of the occupiers
rather than those who are bearing
the brunt of the war in human terms.
We have been too often
disappointed by...
the optimism of the American leaders
both in Vietnam and Washington
to have faith any
longer in the silver...
linings they find in
the darkest clouds.
Solomon: In early 1968,
Walter Cronkite told
CBS viewers that the
war couldn't be won.
It seems now more certain than ever
that the bloody experience of
Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.
Solomon: And that was instantly,
and through time even more so,
heralded as "the tide has turned,"
as Lyndon Johnson is
reputed to have said...
when he saw Cronkite
give that report,
"I've lost middle America,"
and it was presented as not only
a turning point quite often
but also as sort of a moral statement
by the journalistic establishment.
Well I would say yes and no.
It was an acknowledgement
that the United States,
contrary to official
Washington claims,
was not winning the war in
Vietnam and could not win.
But it was not a statement
that the war was wrong.
A problem there is that if the
critique says this war is bad
because it's not winnable
then the response is,
oh yeah, we'll show you it can be...
winnable, or the next
war will be winnable.
So that critique doesn't
challenge the prerogatives of
military expansion or aggression,
if you will, or empire.
And a deeper critique says, whether
you can win or not, either way,
empire enforced at the point not of
a bayonet but of the cruise missile
that's not acceptable.
Narrator: Over the last
five decades we have...
witnessed a wave of US
military interventions,
a series of bombings, invasions,
and long-term occupations.
Undertaken we have been told, with
the most noble of intentions.
And paid for with the
lives of young Americans...
and countless others
around the world.
Solomon: What has occurred with one
war after another is still with us.
These dynamics are in play in
terms of the US occupation of Iraq,
looking at other
countries such as Iran,
and the future will be
replicated to the extent that
we fail to understand what has been
done with these wars in the past.
The news media have generally
bought into and promoted the notion
that it's up to the President to
make foreign policy decisions.
This smart guy in the oval office
has access to all the information,
he knows more than we do,
he's the commander in chief
and the American people
have no major role to...
play and nor should
they because after all
they don't have the
knowledge or capability...
to be responsive to
the real situation.
That was certainly true
during the Vietnam
War as it was to be
later time after time.
There were people in Congress
who raised these issues and they
simply were marginalized by the news
media even though in retrospect,
maybe especially
because in retrospect,
they had it right and
the conventional...
wisdom and the President were wrong.
However difficult this
vote may be, some...
of us must urge the use of restraint.
Our country is in a state of
mourning. Some of us must say,
let's step back for a moment,
let's just pause just for a minute.
And think through the
implications of our actions today
so that this does not
spiral out of control.
As we act let us not become
the evil that we deplore.
Thank you and I yield
the balance of my time.
The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Solomon: And this is
a very common motif...
of history in the
last several decades
where people who at the time were
portrayed as loners, as mavericks,
as outside of the mainstream
of wisdom turned...
out to understand the
historical moment.
We've gotta back our President,
since when do we have
to back our President
or should we when the President is
proposing an unconstitutional act?
Solomon: The best
example is Wayne Morse,
the senior senator from Oregon who,
beginning in 1964, was a voice
in the Congressional wilderness.
Senator Morse was unusual in that
he challenged the very prerogative
of the US government to go
to war against Vietnam.
He said it's up to the American
people to formulate foreign policy.
Senator, the Constitution gives to
the President of the United States
the sole responsibility for
the conduct of foreign policy.
Couldn't be more wrong.
You couldn't make a
more unsound legal...
statement than the one
you have just made.
This is the promulgation
of an old fallacy
that foreign policy belongs to the
President of the United States.
Then whom does it
belong then Senator?
It belongs to the
American people and the
Constitutional fathers
made it very clear.
Where does the President fit into
this in the responsibility scale?
What I'm saying is under our
constitution all the President is
is the administrator of the
people's foreign policy.
Those are his prerogatives
and I'm pleading that
the American people be given
the facts about foreign policy.
You know Senator that
the American people...
cannot formulate and
institute foreign policy.
Why you're a man of
little faith in...
democracy if you make
that kind of comment.
I have complete faith in the
ability of the American people
to follow the facts if you
give them, and my charge
against my government is we're not
giving the American people the facts.
Solomon: And that's the kind of faith
in democracy that's not in fashion
among the Washington
press corps or...
the power elite in
the nation's capital
but it's a good reading
of the Constitution...
and it's a good
definition of democracy.
The independent journalist
I. F. Stone said that
all governments lie and nothing
they say should be believed.
Now Stone wasn't conflating
all governments...
and he wasn't saying that governments
lie all the time, but
he was saying that...
we should never trust
that something said
by a government is automatically true
especially our own
because we have a
responsibility to go beneath...
the surface because
the human costs of war,
the consequences of
militaristic policies,
what Dr. King called "the
madness of militarism,"
they can't stand the light of
day if most people understand
the deceptions that lead
to the slaughter...
and the human consequences
of the carnage.
If we get that into clear focus
we can change the course
of events of this country.
But it's not going to
be easy and it will...
require dedication to
searching for truth.
Dr. Martin Luther King: A time
comes when silence is betrayal
and that time has come for us.
Even when pressed by the
demands of inner truth
men do not easily assume the task of
opposing their government's policy
especially in time of war.
And I knew that I could
never again raise my voice
against the violence of the
oppressed in the ghettos
without having first spoken clearly
to the greatest purveyor of violence
in the world today,
my own government.
What do they think as we test
out our latest weapons on them?
Just as the Germans tested out
new medicine and new tortures
in the concentration camps of Europe.
Now there is little left to
build on, save bitterness.
We are met by deep but
understandable mistrust.
To speak for them is to explain this
lack of confidence in Western words
and especially their mistrust
of American intentions now.
The world now demands a maturity of
America that we may
not be able to achieve.
This way of settling
differences is not just.
A nation that continues
year after year...
to spend more money
on military defense
than on programs of social uplift
is approaching spiritual death.
Somehow this madness must cease.
We must stop now.
I speak as one who loves America
to the leaders of our own nation.
The great initiative
in this war is ours.
The initiative to
stop it must be ours.