Media Failings

in 2007, two years before the Chilcot inquiry began, no less a source than former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of Nato, General Wesley Clark – the same Nato chief who had led the war on Serbia in 1999 - told Democracy Now! about his conversation with a Pentagon general in 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks:

'About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in.

'He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September [2001]. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

'So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" — meaning the Secretary of Defense's office — "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran".'

This was an extraordinary claim, one that contradicts virtually the entire 'mainstream' discourse on the Iraq war, the Syrian war, the Libyan war, and every other modern war involving the US. But then Clark is an extraordinary source.

Although he was filmed making these comments in 2007, Clark's name does not appear anywhere among the 2.6 million words of the Chilcot report. Again, nobody in the corporate media noticed. Is this not also surreal?

Originally posted by finnegan
.. a corporate media bubble that excludes almost everything that matters without their even noticing.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I rather like LastWeekTonight because it often has topics that are quite important but largely ignored by the mainstream media.

To some extent we can blame the basic media model which is based on providing what the viewer wants to see not what is true or best for the viewer. Useful accurate news about the economy, crime stats etc is boring and nobody w ...[text shortened]... how many news organisations will publish anything however nonsensical if it has a catchy title.

Originally posted by Sleepyguy
I wish the C-SPAN folks would take their approach to journalism and expand it into other areas besides just covering Congress. It seems they are the last bastion at times.