By Michael Tivana 3/21/03

America At War, what a dud, say the reporters. So where's the beef? Where's the shock and awe? asks the announcers and pundits. It is their job to keep us entertained and to see the reporters donning gas masks to give a report is woefully gimmicky. Then we see the reporters getting up close and personal with the new technology. Eoooouh can I touch your Tomahawk missile? We see reporters inside an Abrahms tank or on a submarine and I find myself thinking more about how this clever reporter bribed the soldiers to get inside the tank instead of actually listening to the blathering of her report.

But the real story is what Cheney and the Pentagon are doing to cover up the news in this scripted war with their separation of friends (authorized) and foes (unauthorized) within the ranks of the reporters. The ones that are onboard with the script are called authorized journalists while everyone else is unauthorized. I want to see the loyalty test to get authorized. The lucky ones actually get to see fighting, while the truth tellers have their lives threatened. The blackout was imposed on the media at teh end of the first Gulf War by Dick Cheneey and continue today. the Penatagon censors the news reports before they get reported. Not Good. The first casualty in war is the truth!

The Pentagon has taken an attitude that is completely hostile to reporting information. They have done this by warning independent unauthorized journalists to not use their electronic phone uplinks to satellites or fighter jets will fire on them. The exact language was, "They would be 'targeted down", according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie in an interview with Irish radio. "I am enormously pessimistic of the chance of decent on-the-spot reporting, as the war occurs," she told Irish national broadcaster, Tom McGurk on the RTE1 Radio "Sunday Show."

SO who is going to report the flower throwing children greeting the US liberators parading down the avenue?, probably the same reporters that will be handing out the US flags. This is smelling like a Wag the Dog movie, where the news is choreographed and scripted special for American minds to gobble up along with the Anxiety Disorder meds advertised in thin slices between the excitement of bombs exploding and the pale day-glo green night vision on the evening news. WARNING: watching the evening news may cause brain malfunction and internal hemorrhaging of the truth.

The sad truth is that the US is not liberating the people of Iraq we are moving the indigenous (equivalent of our Indians) out of the way of progress. The people living on top of the oil - the Kurdish and the Shiite Muslims, their militias, will be fighting for their lives against the US led coalition to build the empire. And the survivors will get a job making our tennis shoes for 50 cents an hour in one of our new enterprise zones. The lucky Muslims that survive the onslaught upon their lives and their culture will make good willing Americans - that is the goal, the expansion of Globalization and the free market economy.

Cheney has imposed a news blackout for our historical/ I mean hysterical war by taking control of all the reporters electronic gear. Through warnings of death the Pentagon has also threatened that they: "may find it necessary to bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from the Iraqi side." The stories will have to be told later, after the event, after the attention is gone, if they are to go around the Pentagon's censoring of what's really going on over there. The chant, "The whole world is watching", will have to be changed to fit the new censorship, "The whole administration is watching".

This just in - Rumsfeld states that there has never been such open and free reporting of a war in history. Then I go on the Internet and see the headline -
Dow, S&P rally on 'shock and awe' bombing. How pathetic is this?
Three of four Americans support war. YIKES!

Read the transcript of Katie Adie being interviewed by Tom McGurk here.