IT'S
ORGANIC
I
was going to speak today about the Kosovo war,
about how the truth concerning the origins and outcome
of that war has been systematically ignored and covered
up by the American media, but then I thought: hey, wait
a minute. What about something really shocking
– a censored story even more important than, say,
the alleged fact that "Cuba leads the world in organic
farming" – which I believe is number 12 on Project
Censored's hit parade of the great untold stories of the
year. I sat down and really thought about it: what,
I asked myself, is the number one story, the Big
Story, that the news media refuses to publicize –
from an antiwar perspective, that is?
NONCORPUS
DELECTI
Well,
let's see: there's the fact that there really was no "genocide"
committed in Kosovo to justify US military intervention,
and, now, an occupation without end. In the days prior
to the war, we were told
by secretary of defense William Cohen that "there
could be as many as 100,000" victims of a "holocaust"
that was going on in Kosovo. Shortly afterward, the number
went down to 50,000, then, after the war, it went down
again, to 10,000. But the big question is: where are
the bodies? Where is the evidence? The answer: there
is none. When the investigative teams of the International
Criminal Tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia
reached Kosovo, shortly after NATO marched in, they were
given reports of 11,334
people in mass graves. At last count – before
they stopped releasing numbers – the UN had uncovered
2,018
bodies from graves in Kosovo, including not only Kosovars
but also Serbs, Roma, and others. And so that was a fib,
and of course we haven't heard too much about that.
OH,
NEVER MIND
Then
there's the story of the infamous Racak massacre, another
alleged Serb atrocity, touted by none other than President
Clinton as symbolic of the rationale for US intervention
– a massacre, as it turned out, that never happened.
A Finnish forensic team, sent in by the EU, concluded
that there was no massacre – only a gun battle.
Their report was published in Forensic Science International
– but we didn't hear a word about it in the American
media.
STATE
DEPARTMENT SOCIALISTS
The
Kosovo war was popular with the American media: it was,
after all, supposed to have been a war against Serbian
"racism." It was such a politically correct war that several
well-known leftists, such as Todd
Gitlin, and even some
avowed Marxists, supported Bill Clinton's rape of
Yugoslavia. This was a war that liberals and the left
could love – just like the so-called "good war,"
otherwise known as World War II. With the death of Communism,
the big danger, some leftists announced, was the danger
of fascism on the rise in Europe, and Slobodan Milosevic
was deemed to be the New Hitler.
HITLER
REDUX
Isn't
it amazing the uses of the Hitler analogy, even after
all these years? The farther away we move from the actual
events of World War II, the larger, it seems, he looms
as the epitome of evil incarnate, the one word that is
supposed to end all discussion of whether or not the US
ought to intervene in hotspots around the world. The ghost
of Hitler has been spotted in the oddest places over the
years: Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian caudillo,
was linked
to Hitler when the US decided to overthrow his regime
– after supporting him for decades. Hitler also popped
up in Iraq, when President Bush the First opined that
Saddam Hussein was "worse
than Hitler"! Indeed, the images and rhetoric of World
War II were revived in a big way during the Kosovo war.
Old
Slobo, of course, was Hitler, and the civil war in
Kosovo
was naturally called a "Holocaust." World War II was
the "good
war" in the eyes of the Left, the one struggle in
which the Left – during the 1930s – played a
major role, not in the antiwar movement, but in the pro-war
movement.
REACHING
BACK INTO HISTORY
After
the Hitler-Stalin Pact broke apart, and the Germans invaded
the Soviet Union, the Communist Party, determined to save
the "worker's fatherland," attacked the peace movement
– led by conservative opponents of the New Deal –
as Hitler's quislings, and demanded that we get in the
war as soon as possible. So in building support for the
Kosovo war, the liberals and leftists who were agitating
for a massive US intervention in the Balkans reached back
into history and came up with the same old imagery and
arguments that energized their great "anti-fascist" crusade
– arguments and images, I might add, that were supposed
to end all discussion.
I'M
SHOCKED – SHOCKED!
As
the editorial director of Antiwar.com, I am often asked:
"But don't you think there were any good wars?
What about World War II? Surely you don't think
we should have stayed out of that one?" Well, uh,
YES, as a matter of fact, I do – and this
many people find truly shocking.
NUMBER
ONE
Now
here is not the place to make the case against US intervention
in the second world war: there's not nearly enough time.
But I want to talk, a bit, about just how we got into
that war – which leads me to what I believe is the
number one censored story not only of this year, but every
year since 1941, and that is the true story of Pearl Harbor.
DAY
OF DECEIT
A
year ago, the Free Press published Robert Stinnett's book,
Day
of Deceit, which, for the first time, documents
the Roosevelt administration's foreknowledge of the Japanese
attack. Material released under the provisions of the
Freedom of Information Act and obtained by Stinnett reveal
that the Americans had not only intercepted and decoded
the Japanese diplomatic code, but they had broken their
military code as well. For the first time, government
documents were uncovered revealing that the US had long
anticipated an attack on Pearl Harbor, and not only that,
but they had deliberately left the base vulnerable, hoping,
after a long series of diplomatic and military provocations,
to goad the Japanese into a fight. This, government officials
including the President believed, would galvanize the
solidly antiwar American public behind a declaration of
war. Day of Deceit shows that not only did the
US government have full knowledge of the Japanese plan
of attack, but that these same officials had devised an
eight-point plan, an actual document, outlining just how
to get the Japanese to take the bait. An important part
of the ongoing cover-up has been the supposed fact that
our government did not crack Japan's military codes before
December 7, 1941. Yet Stinnett has unearthed from the
bowels of the national security bureaucracy cable after
cable of decryptions. Coded Japanese cables were intercepted
and decoded by American cryptographers stationed in Hawaii
and Seattle, and Stinnett produces them. He also documents
the amazing story of a Japanese spy at Pearl Harbor transmitting
information – including a map of bombing targets
– on August 21, and shows that our government was
perfectly well-aware of it. Stinnett shows how Admiral
Kimmel was stopped from ordering a routine training exercise
that would have uncovered the location of the oncoming
Japanese fleet at the last possible moment.
THE
MYTH
Before
coming over here, I picked up a copy of National Geographic
that had just come in the mail, and it fell open to a
page containing an ad for the upcoming movie, Pearl
Harbor. The ad – and I'll hold it up for you
here – illustrates perfectly the great Myth of Pearl
Harbor, and, indeed, the Great Myth that energizes the
War Party in all eras, and that is the image of
the malevolent Enemy – capital 'E' – swooping
down from the sky like a flying phalanx of killer hawks.
They hover over a green lawn filled with children innocently
gamboling about below. The kids stop their game, and look
up – and we are frozen in the moment before their
inevitable demise. The millions who will see this movie
– will they ever realize that it was Roosevelt who
signed the death warrant of the 2,403 men, women, and
children who were killed that day? I can guarantee that
it will never happen.
CENSORED
AGAIN
So
here is, as far as I am concerned, the top, the number
one censored story of the century – and yet we find
that this has gone unnoticed even by those, such as the
sponsors of this conference, whose task it is to search
out and publicize important stories that have been spiked.
Yet, somehow, Cuba's fondness for organic farming beat
out the true story of how we got into World War II. So,
it seems, the millions who see the movie Pearl Harbor
– that pack of lies – will never be exposed
to the truth. And why not? Because World War II was the
"good" war, just as the Kosovo war was deemed a "humanitarian"
war: it was supposed to have been a war against "racism,"
against "fascism," against political incorrectness of
all kinds. Both Kosovo, and World War II, were wars waged
by liberals and their leftist collaborators – which
is why they both get a free pass, in spite of the facts.
