PUNDIT WATCH
Douglas, Susan
PUNDIT WATCH Susan Douglas Peddlers of Amnesia In few recent news stories has the chasm between media coverage and real events been more gaping than in the commentary about the U.S. confrontation...
...government demonizes Saddam Hussein whenever doing so serves its interests, and the pundits and the rest of Washington officialdom go along with the Administration's press releases...
...Hussein, then a U.S...
...That commentary was unanimous: Blow the "Butcher of Baghdad" back to kingdom come...
...Morality and U.S...
...And Sam Nunn...
...law aside...
...As Sam Donaldson put it, "Saddam doesn't seem to understand any other means besides military means...
...The American "experts" brought in to discuss the confrontation were Senators Dick Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and Sam Nunn...
...If you offer a dissenting viewpoint, you are accused of defending a man allegedly worse than Adolph Hitler...
...Everyone, it seems, wants to be Slim Pickens on the missile headed for Baghdad...
...We need to break the back of Saddam Hussein...
...Why explain that when it's so much easier to plav pin-the-missile-on-Saddam...
...Madeleine Albright bragged on This Week With David Brinkley about the Administration's first missile strikes: "We really whacked him...
...confrontation with Iraq in September...
...We need to hit him and hit him hard...
...I forget...
...His regime needs to be overthrown...
...During the last five years, the CIA has funneled more than $100 million to the Kurds in what has proved to be a completely inept effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein...
...It has become impossible to criticize this Dr...
...Barlow, the project coordinator at the University of Michigan's Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, maintains that such coverage has ensured that most Americans have no idea how their own government has contributed to violence in Iraq...
...But then, warming to his subject, the colonel envisioned a bombing mission that would put the Blitz to shame...
...Democrat of Georgia, both allegedly knowledgeable about the region...
...This week we need to blast them all over the country...
...notes Barlow...
...The United States needs to go for "deeper, more lucrative targets...
...Donaldson then elaborated as if he were reading for the lead in Under Siege: "We should take him out...
...Is Nunn in politics or pro football...
...This is especially handy when Washington wants to promote what Betsy Barlow calls America's "amnesia" regarding its own sordid role in the region...
...foreign policy toward Iraq...
...Though conflict among Kurdish factions precipitated this latest "crisis...
...Yippie-ki-yo-ki-yea...
...Would they have supported U.S...
...Of course...
...Sodom," as pundits most frequently referred to him, is such a monster, so beyond the pale, so immune to arguments about self-interest and regional stability, that diplomacy is totally out of the question...
...Lugar's advice...
...Again, the United States has suggested it would, with Saddam Hussein gone, help found an independent Kurdish state—a promise the government has no intention of keeping...
...Two-thirds of Americans reportedly supported Clinton's decision to launch missiles against Iraq...
...Susan Douglas teaches at the University of Michigan...
...The U.S...
...Nor do they appreciate the role the U.S...
...Why not...
...government has periodically armed and funded the Kurds inside Iraq, and has hinted that the United States would support the establishment of an independent Kurdish state once the Kurds rebelled against Hussein's regime...
...policy if coverage focused on the half million children under the age of five who died as a result of the embargo our government imposed on the country'' During Desert Storm, the U.S...
...Said Kissinger at the time: "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work...
...it probably wouldn't work...
...It also keeps out insulin, painkillers for surgery, and most medicines...
...ally, had the Kurdish leaders killed...
...Such facts might discomfit the pundits if thev bothered to learn about them...
...The United States could hit "anti-aircraft facilities" and other targets from "armored vehicles to artillery positions to logistical depots" and in short order "the target-rich southern zone" of Iraq would be "pulverized...
...government played in making Hussein what he is today-Here are just a few of the relevant items that have dropped out of the coverage: Since the early 1970s, when Henry Kissinger was devising various ways to prop up the Shah of Iran, the U.S...
...In 1975, after Iran got the new border treaty it wanted with Iraq, it immediately closed its borders to the Kurds and the United States turned its back on the Kurds left inside Iraq...
...Hackworth acknowledged, "We can't just kill Saddam...
...Her column appears in this space every month...
...rarely did the coverage focus on the Kurds...
...This is a holocaust for Iraq...
...But they'd rather talk about the "Butcher of Baghdad"—and what "we" should do to get rid of him.M...
...Strangelove approach to U.S...
...Typical was a Newsweek editorial by Colonel David H. Hackworth entitled "It's Time to Get Rid of Saddam...
...These revenge fantasies can have lethal results...
...bombed and destroyed water-treatment facilities, and the post-war embargo keeps out technologies for purifying the water...
Vol. 60 • November 1996 • No. 11
