thehappycon
I love conspiracy people. I have a professor here at WashU who studies the economic causes of conspiracy. I think people are uncomfortable with the idea that no single person controls thing; they like to know that someone did it. Today, the Army did it:
Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon, and the Bush Administration manipulated the telling of facts about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the progress of the war in Iraq by using retired military personnel, many of whom were on the boards of military contractors, as puppets to spout their carefully scripted rhetoric in the name of objective journalism.
Great. So Rummy wasn’t actually managing the Department of Defense all that time, he was coordinating a vast conspiracy of elder warriors to storm the public and convince them that Saddam was a threat, when in real life he was more of a big fuzzy bear.
By early 2002, detailed planning for a possible Iraq invasion was under way, yet an obstacle loomed. Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance.
The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events.
The group was heavily represented by men involved in the business of helping companies win military contracts. Several held senior positions with contractors that gave them direct responsibility for winning new Pentagon business.
So the media was a puppetocracy of the evangelical conservative unilateralist oppressionist chauvinist movement in America. No problem, sounds like the evidence supports it. Here’s how it plays out:
Bush: “Rupy, friend, why don’t you just go ahead and boot that ol’ Colmes fella off and let Lt. Col ________ have a few extra minutes with our buddy S-diddy Hannity tonight? In fact, maybe Alan ought to just head on down to Git-mo and do a little “investigation” about the conditions there, ya reckon?”
Rupert Murdoch: “Whatever you ask old friend. We still on for beer pong in Abe’s bedroom tonight?”
Bush: ” ‘Fraid not. I’ve been a little behind on crushin’ civil liberties ever since I went down to blow up the quote-unquote “levy” there in N’Orleans. I’ve gotta go listen in on Franken’s phone calls again.”
And that, my friends, is how we got into this nasty little war in the first place. Collusion between Bush and CNN, MSNBC, all three networks, the blogosphere, and naturally, Fox News. And Slate. And The Atlantic. And WSJ. And the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and the rest of the world.
You say, “Ok, happycon, this is all fine and good, but it’s too easy to pick on a single conspiracy lunatic. There are right-wing lunatics too.”
You’re right. It is too easy, and not worth my time. But guess where this lunatic is getting his ideas?
Answer: The New York Times
Great work guys. These old fart generals and colonels are such a threat to the Union. Why don’t we pick on Wes Clark, if we’re going to go after media sweethearts?
In my own personal opinion, this is really a plot by the illuminati, Skull and Bones, the Masons, the Shriners, the Zionists, and the Baptists to misdirect our attention from the real criminals. Somebody ought to break that story in the Times.
Don’t take my word for it. Check out Atlas Shrugs.
Filed under: Army | Tagged: Army, conspiracy, liberal, media, new york times
For what it’s worth, some college professors were as loosely connected to the space-time continuum in my college days.
Thanks for this report: I quoted some of your wacko professor’s views, with a link to this post, as an after word on one of mine.
And: The New York Times. Yep. Par for the course. I see they’ve done a “correction” now. I suppose that’s part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, too.