Embedded with power – Part 2

by Pepe Escobar
Znet

"In Part 1 of this interview Pepe Escobar discussed the way in which Hugo Chavez is portrayed in the mainstream media. In this second part of the interview he discusses the context of the corporate media more generally and some of the factors which lead to its fatal inability to reflect either reality or truth in the cases of Iraq and Iran......

[PE – Pepe Escobar, MB – MediaBite, David Manning and Miriam Cotton]
....

MB - How is it that the context of current US pressure on Iran is kept almost completely separate from that of Iraq? It is as if the US has been given a clean slate, a fresh historical starting point. Up until the release of the NIE summary few journalists chose to frame the 'concerns' and 'beliefs' of the US towards Iran in the context of the illegal invasion of it's neighbour. Since the release of the document the mainstream media, which for the most part sold the fabrications of WMDs in Iraq, is now questioning this new intelligence on the basis of Iraq's intelligence 'mistakes'. In your opinion is this coincidental conversion with powerful rhetoric borne out of faithful concern?

PE – Iran and Iraq cannot be covered as separate stories. The disaster perpetrated by the Bush administration in Iraq worked to the benefit of Iran. There's no possibility of an Iraqi government – even a puppet government – not enjoying very close relations with Iran. Backtracking a bit, the same reasons invoked for invading Iraq – and the same techniques of manufacturing consent - have been branded by the neocons for bombing Iran. Before the NIE estimate the U.S. mainstream/corporate media was all out bent on war, uncritically accepting even torpid variations of the demonization campaign, such as "Iranian weapons" killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq. I could bet a case of sublime Bordeaux that post-NIE, the U.S. corporate media will accept any other excuse the neocons may come up with to once again demonize Iran. Because the ultimate goal has nothing to do with the nuclear issue: it's about regime change. The neocons are so desperate that they would go for a false flag operation, or a Gulf of Tonkin gambit, to get their war. Corporate media also loves wars. The 1991 Gulf War made CNN. The Bush administration still has enough time to wreak havoc – and provoke a new war, or at least a new civil war. That's what they do best. They did it in Iraq, in Gaza, in Somalia, and the next is Lebanon. They are trying in Iran – by financing the PJAK, the sister arm of the Kurdish PKK. And they won't stop trying. As for mainstream/corporate media, forget it. It simply cannot speak truth to power because it's embedded with power."