More News Not Fit To Print

Dear Mr. President,

It didn’t take long for an obedient press to parrot your “Everybody’s doing it!” line about NSA’s spying, bugging and wiretapping. The lead editorial in today’s NYT agrees—no big deal, they say, “European reaction is overblown.” Besides, it’s not illegal for us to do it in foreign countries, just our own country. No mention that American phone calls, emails and internet activity is also being sucked up illegally. Nor is there any mention that the government rested its case in the Bradley Manning trial yesterday—now in its 5^th week—or that the prosecution has presented conflicting testimony and a lack of concrete evidence showing harm done to the U.S. (beyond embarrassment and evidence of war crimes and cover-ups), and no mention of yesterday’s admission that the Army lost the ‘contract’ Manning signed stipulating his terms of access to classified information upon deployment to Iraq. But none of that matters; the outcome is already in the bag—guilty as charged—by this Kangaroo Court. No mention either of the latest study on drone strikes done for the military by Larry Lewis, a researcher at the Center for Naval Analysis, which found that civilian casualties in Afghanistan resulting from drone strikes between mid-2010 and mid-2011 were an order of magnitude higher—10 times higher—than civilian casualties resulting from manned air strikes (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/02/us-drone-strikes-afghan-civilians/print). Not fit to print by the NYT, I guess, since it directly contradicts Brennan, Feinstein and others, including you: “conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage.” You said that in a speech you gave in May. No mention either of the 4 Guantanamo hunger strikers who filed suit in federal court Sunday to stop force-feeding or that your Department of InJustice claimed today that it was a perfectly humane way to keep them alive and not a form of punishment or intended to inflict pain, and besides, all 4 are “in good health.” http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/world/responds+forcefeeding+challenge+filed+hungerstriking/8612007/story.html). The Propaganda Wars are in full swing, the winner, the one who controls the definitions and the press. It’s something you understand, Mr. President, the power of words and their ability to move people. But in your case, you’re using it to move them in the wrong direction and that will be your enduring legacy.