Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Crushing of Fallujah

The mass propaganda media has taught the US public to believe that the extermination of thousands of Iraqi citizens is in their best interests: they can sleep sound, as long as 'our boys' kill them 'over there'.

Almost the entire population of Iraq is opposed to the US military and its puppet regime--yet the media refer to the patriots defending their country from the imperial invaders as--'insurgents' minimizing the significance of a nation-wide patriotic liberation movement.

By James Petras

"I am reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary, a journalist's account of Nazi political propaganda during the 1930's, as I watch the US 'news' reports of the violent assault on Fallujah. The US mass media 'reports', the style, content and especially the language echo their Nazi predecessor of 70 years ago to an uncanny degree. Coincidence? Of course! In both instances we have imperialist armies conquering countries, leveling cities and slaughtering civilians--and the mass media, private in form, state appendages in practice, disseminate the most outrageous lies, in defense and praise of the conquering 'storm troopers'--call them SS or Marines. Both in Nazi Germany and contemporary US, we are told by the mass media that the invading armies are "freeing the country" of "foreign fighters", "armed terrorists", who are preventing "the people" from going about their everyday lives. Yet we know that of the 1,000 prisoners there are only 4 foreigners (3 Iranians and 1 Arab); Iraqi hospitals report less than 10% of foreign fighters. In other words over 90% of the fighters are Iraqis--most of who were born, educated, and raised families in the cities in which they are fighting......."

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