[Carlhole]

Dick Cheney's Covert Action
Larry C. Johnson
October 19, 2005

Larry Johnson worked as a CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Face it, America. You’ve been punk'd.

It is now quite clear that the outing of Valerie Plame was part of a broader White House effort to mislead and manipulate U.S. public opinion as part of an orchestrated effort to take us to war. The unraveling of the Valerie Plame affair has exposed their scam—and it extends well beyond compromising the identity of a CIA officer. In short, the Bush administration organized and executed a classic “covert action” program against the citizens of the United States.

Covert action refers to behind-the-scenes efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies to plant stories, manipulate information and shape public opinion. In other words, you write stories that reporters will publish as their own, you create media events that tout a particular theme, and you demonize your opponent. Traditionally, this activity was directed against foreign governments. For example, the U.S. used covert action extensively in Greece in the 1960s to help fend off communists. Covert action also played a major role in rallying world support for the Afghanistan mujahideen following the Soviet invasion in 1979...

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/200510 ... action.php

[Cleisthenis]

I wonder if MTV would run a 21 minute behind the scenes expose` on this.

[Daculling]

The US citizens get punk'd all the time... no news here. You can fool most of the people some of the time......

[wsims]

Maybe it the company that I keep, but most people that I mention this to have no idea about the Plame investigation.
It seems the upcoming game this Sunday is of greater import.
Oh, bother.
Personally, I'm thinking (hoping) this will be the undoing of the Bush administration.
Either that, or it'll just get wierder.

BTW: Let's hope the Wilsons go after Cheney et al with civil charges.

[Carlhole]

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct05/Amr1019.htm

Judith Miller’s Bloody Stain on the Press
by Ahmed Amr
www.dissidentvoice.org
October 19, 2005

CBS recently released results from a survey of public opinion on the war in Iraq. Most of the results were fairly predictable. The poll verified that the majority of Americans believe that the invasion wasn’t such a bright idea to begin with and a significant minority thinks that now is a good time to head for the nearest exit.

The CBS poll is just the latest confirmation that the average citizen is not buying into the administration’s contention that this war of choice is worth the price in blood and treasure. Even so, one of the alarming findings of the poll indicates that the pre-war propaganda campaign still resounds with an unhealthy majority of Republicans. As incredible as it may seem, the poll found that “44% of Republicans think Hussein was involved in 9/11 and 61% think Hussein was working with Al Qaeda before the war.”

Why do so many Republicans continue to believe this kind of nonsense? The short answer is that they -- like many other mass media consumers -- were taken in by the incredible mind messing mass media machine...

... Almost 2,000 young Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have already paid the ultimate price in an illegal war that was launched after a systematic propaganda campaign that involved the collaboration of the neocons inside the administrations with the neocons who man the printing press. Fifteen thousand veterans will spend the rest of their lives coping with permanent paralysis, lost limbs, blindness and disfigurement. Thousands more will return with their psyches bent out of shape. Many will be haunted by the knowledge that -- in the fog of war -- they killed innocent civilians. These young soldiers and marines sacrificed their lives, their body parts, their sanity and their innocence in the honest belief that they were avenging the slaughter of 9/11. Among the things they carried into battle were postcards of the WTC in flames. They believed Sulzberger and they believed Judith Miller and her clones. It never occurred to them that neocon operators like Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were lurking behind the scenes with agendas that have yet to be made public. It never occurred to them that yellow journalists at the “paper of record” would team up with these ideological zealots to put them in harm’s way.