UPDATED - ColdType

can we do here? 1) Rumsfeld has already told
Congress that the U.S. will use ‘pharmaceutical
calmatives‚’ (i.e. gas) on Iraqi civilians
(www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/02/21/
120.html), yet I am not aware of any mainstream
media picking up on this story. This gas will be
deployed using both an unmanned ‘loitering
vehicle’ – which hovers in the air and sprays –
and by mortar shell loaded with chemicals. But
the use of any chemical weapon against people
in wartime – no matter how supposedly nonlethal
it might be – is expressly forbidden by a
number of international treaties, all signed by
the United States.
“Not only that, the very production of such
combat weapons is prohibited – which is supposedly
why Bush/Rumsfeld quietly shifted funding
authority for ‘calmative’ research from Pentagon
coffers to Ashcroft’s Justice Department – to
give ‘domestic’ cover to the military program. At
the same time that we risk killing countless Iraqi
civilians with OUR chemical weapons, the White
House keeps saying, and our mainstream press
is reinforcing, the notion that Saddam will gas
his own people and blame it on us. We are being
set up MASSIVELY, I think, to hear: ‘SEE? Just
like we said. Will that madman stop at NOTH-
ING?’ Will these embedded journalists be able to
report what really happens – which side is lobbing
artillery shells to gas civilians?”
Sterling continues: “I am, incidentally, a professional
journalist, and it’s very hard to be sidelined
and sitting on my hands. I am very frightened that
with the notable exception of Newsweek (whose
investigative digging appeared in sidebars), the
only place I can go for the truth is the internet. It
doesn’t help much to know that there’ll be some
interesting books written about the takeover role
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of the internet – not when it (make that We, The
People) rushed in to fill the vacuum left by a mainstream
Fourth Estate with a lamentable yellow
streak down its back.”
CSPAN interrupts
BRENT BUICE writes: “Hi, Danny, my wife and I
were watching the debate on CSPAN Saturday
night, and we were very disturbed to see Robert
Scheer’s comments cut off by a frankly ‘fake’
looking technical difficulty.
“It was a snow effect, the audio gradually dimming
– and when the pleasantly throated
announcer said that C-SPAN was experiencing
‘technical difficulties,’ we were immediately
switched to a ‘press conference’ with a young
crewcut explaining the chills and thrills of urban
combat in the 21st century. His presentation had
plenty of splash and the very best multi-media
gimmicks a pentagon budget can buy, but it
looked like there were 3 folks in the audience
(besides the C-SPAN crew).
“We watched this surreal switcharoo for 10
minutes and never found out if Mr. Scheer’s comments
were re-broadcast or just lost in a digital
blizzard. Did anyone else notice this, and are we
the only ones who found it suspicious? . . . This
administration and its media lapdogs make me
fear that my suspicions are not entirely
unfounded? That CSPAN debate was repeated
last night. I didn’t see if it aired in full this time.”
Overall CSPAN deserves to be commended for
the diversity of its coverage which included antiwar
protest and foreign news coverage.
It turns out that Nature intervened on this one
– I later heard that there had been a storm that
knocked the program off the air. ●