Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

I was just on Democracy Now along with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange discussing the Iraq video they released yesterday, and there's one vital point I want to emphasize.  Shining light on what our government and military do is so critical precisely because it forces people to see what is really being done and prevents myth and propaganda from distorting those realities.  That's why the administration fights so hard to keep torture photos suppressed, why the military fought so hard here to keep this video concealed (and why they did the same with regard to the Afghan massacre), and why whistle-blowers, real journalists, and sites like WikiLeaks are the declared enemy of the government.  The discussions many people are having today -- about the brutal reality of what the U.S. does when it engages in war, invasions and occupation -- is exactly the discussion which they most want to avoid.

But there's a serious danger when incidents like this Iraq slaughter are exposed in a piecemeal and unusual fashion:  namely, the tendency to talk about it as though it is an aberration.  It isn't.  It's the opposite:  it's par for the course, standard operating procedure, what we do in wars, invasions, and occupation. 

[Salon.com, Iraq slaughter not an aberration, 4/6/2010]

Please read the entire article at the link above.

Glen Greenwald’s tweets are among the few that I follow on my cell phone. He tweets prolifically and always on the issues. A couple of the latest related to the above:

@JamilSmith It's the Pentagon - not me - which concluded that what happened was perfectly consistent with their procedures and practices.

Video update on the 2 Iraqi children wounded in Apache attack + the statement of the brother of the cameraman killed: http://is.gd/bhkgA

Here’s that video:

Permalink posted by Larry @ 4/06/2010 07:00:00 AM