100 to 200 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars gathered over this past weekend in Maryland to testify about their experiences, and to make Americans aware of the heinous war crimes and atrocities committed by some of them and the president.
Only media was allowed, but it was streamed on the internet. Of the major media outlets, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Associated Press and USA Today covered it or acknowledged it, but for some reason The New York Times didn’t. The New York Times is one of the largest papers in the country.
Purposely misinforming people by hiding the truth is what has led to the problems America faces right now.
I had planned to do a write-up of the Winter Soldier testimonies after I finished another post I’m working on when I came across the article below from The Daily Banter.
I’ve added a few links to more references after the article between the lines below:
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March 17, 2008
The willful ignorance and maliciouos obfuscation of the main stream media article from The Daily Banter – ‘Real News For Serious People’
by Ari Rutenberg
The American media, already not much more than a shill for the corporate and political elites with little spine or stomach for genuine confrontation with power, has now abandoned its obligation as the representatives of the fourth estate. They have, in their search for ‘ratings’ and ‘content’, or perhaps in complicity with those who seek to prolong the Iraq war, completely overlooked one of the most significant veteran’s protests since the Vietnam war.
It is the Winter Soldier II conference sponsored by the IVAW (Iraq Vets Against the War) which is a gather of over 200 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts who have come not simply to speak about the war but also to tell their personal stories and to share their pain and internal conflict about the nature of these wars. It has not been covered by the MSM. When one does a Google news search for “Winter Soldier II” there are no hits from the MSM on the first page, though the first hit is about an article from Human Events, the conservative standard bearer. In fact the first even close to mainstream outlet to cover it is the Des Moines Register, and they’re only important during the Iowa caucuses. When I searched directly on the MSM websites, both CNN and the “liberal” NY Times had no coverage. The closest they came was a few articles on John Kerry and the original Winter Soldier conference after Vietnam from the 2004 election. The only large media outlets to have coverage were Yahoo! news and MSNBC, though even that was an article sourced from the Washington Post.
They have now become a completely owned and operated wing of the asshole party. They will cover Kerry’s involvment in the first Winter Soldier as a huge controversy 30 years later even though it turned out those boys were all telling the absolute truth, but not a similar conference going on right now about a war thats going on right now because I guess it conflicts with the interests of their advertisers (though why Dove soap cares about the Iraq war I’ll never know). And since the media is granted its freedoms to protect the interests of the third estate (the people), and they have now become a subsidiary of the second estate (in old Europe that was the landed gentry and aristocracy) they no longer need to be protected from the law since they represent it. We need new media. Not just blogs and little outlets, but major media sources which millions of people who don’t know how to use the internet can access. There is no other way to combat this assault on our freedom by the press. But who among us with the resources will be strong enough to find such an outlet? So far the closest is PBS’ Bill Moyers, but even he barely makes a dent in the viewers of CNN or MSNBC or Limbaugh or Savage or Malkin. Without a truly free and cynical fourth estate, I don’t know if our democracy can survive.
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President Bush Is A Liar And A Coward article from The Liberty Papers
And the news the media say is most important these days is… article from Scholars and Rogues
US/Iraq Rules of Engagement ‘Thrown out the Window’ article from Common Dreams
The War and the Working Class article from The Nation:
“The government treats its soldiers the way most corporations treat their workforce–as an invisible, disrespected, disposable means to an end that is contrary to workers’ interests. Members of the armed forces come mainly and disproportionately from the working class and from small-town and rural America, where opportunities are hard to come by. The “economic draft” operates, in effect, to recruit young people from these communities as they sign up to gain job skills, experience and educational opportunities absent from their civilian lives.”
Winter Soldier: US Vets, Active-Duty Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan Testify About the Horrors of War article and video from Democracy Now
Will American war crimes be revealed? article from Salon News
Winter Soldier Makes Washington Post Cover War Crimes article from AfterDowningStreet.org
Winter Soldier: Adam Kokesh video of testimony from AfterDowningStreet.org
Winter Soldiers: Clifton Hicks and Steven Casey video of testimony from AfterDowningStreet.org
Winter Soldier: Steve Mortillo video of testimony from AfterDowningStreet.org
US veterans urge soldiers to speak out against Iraq war article from AFP
US/IRAQ: Rules of Engagement “Thrown Out the Window” article from The International Press Service
Soldier talks about raping underage girls in Iraq video from YouTube:
“After they raped her 10 times (and made 500$ with her) she hung herself.”
Winter Soldiers offer look at reality in Iraq article from People’s Weekly World
NEW REPORT: ABU GHRAIB PRISONERS PACKED IN ICE WATER-FILLED GARGABE CANS AND SENT INTO SHOCK article from AfterDowningStreet.org
U.S. Soldiers Bring Home Stories, Videos of Atrocities article from Wired.com Underwire
Winter Soldier: Military Command Failures at War, Deserting Vets at Home article from PoliticalAffairs.net
Audio slideshow: One woman’s war article from The BBC News:
“Canadian photojournalist Rita Leistner travelled to Baghdad in 2003 as a freelance reporter determined to get behind the front lines of the war in Iraq. Over the next 18 months she returned to the country several times capturing images of life with the troops – as well as behind the scenes in a psychiatric hospital.”
The War That Never Ends article from In These Times
Coincidentally and conveniently, Cheney and McCain visited Iraq in attempts to blow more smoke up the public’s collective butts:
Cheney on Unannounced Visit to Iraq article from The New York Times:
Eliciting further propaganda designed to rewrite history and cover the truth, Cheney says Iraq Invasion is a success.
“BAGHDAD – Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip Monday to Baghdad, where he plans to push Iraqi political leaders toward opening the country’s vast oil fields to international companies, a senior Bush administration official said.
Mr. Cheney, who arrived in the Iraqi capital with his wife and daughter in the morning, is to meet with top officials including the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, and the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.”
Baghdad Rocked As McCain, Cheney Visit article from The Associated Press:
“BAGHDAD (AP) – Sen. John McCain stressed the importance of a U.S. commitment to Iraq during talks with Iraq’s prime minister Monday, and explosions struck Baghdad during twin visits by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and Vice President Dick Cheney.”
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