For US leaders, truth is best protected by a body-guard of lies!

VHeadline.com's Washington D.C. based commentarist Chris Herz writes: James K. Glassman has been nominated by US President George Bush to be Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Accordingly he was given a pro forma hearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 30.

This exercise in fatuous self-aggrandizement on both sides is available for all to read in the Congressional Record and online in the proceedings of the committee. And it makes for very interesting reading indeed for all of us who study the tea leaves here in the imperial capital.

This character has been part of the oversight board which has charge of such entities as Radio Marti or the Voice of America. Before that his company, known as Tech Central Station was active on behalf of some of our most progressive corporations in spreading propaganda attempting to show global warming as junk science, how healthy for one's diet greasy McDonalds burgers actually are, etc.

Lots to say here.

Somehow, the USA fought two world wars against formidable and well-armed foes without having to resort to what is in effect a propaganda ministry attached to the most senior of its cabinet ministries. Somehow we managed to hold our own against the Comintern and the rest of the Communist conspiracy with a free and unrestricted press.

What was different was the perception in conservative circles that President Nixon was laid low not because his war policy in Indochina was fundamentally flawed and certainly not that he had engaged in outright criminality in using official resources to spy on his opposition. No indeed, Tricky Dick Nixon had been brought down by an hostile and liberal press.

With the resurgence of the conservatives in 1980 with the Reagan administration, matters were set in motion to bring private broadcasting and other media into line with a program of corporate consolidation into hands friendly to the Republicans and simultaneously to create within the Pentagon, the CIA and State offices for public outreach. That is to say, official agencies which would have the dual responsibility of countering immediately "bad" press, and inserting through friendly reporters and publishers "good" stories into the public media. There would never be another Watergate scandal. And it has worked very well.

Even with the then-new system practically untried it was successful in limiting the scale of the damage when the Reagan administration was caught basically stealing money from the treasury for use in the secret Contra War in Nicaragua, and illegally selling arms to Iran. Its then leader, Otto Reich, even succeeded in the professional destruction of reporter Gary Webb for his authorship of news reports truthfully detailing the use of drug money to fund this war.

Since then this apparatus has been greatly perfected and it has gotten pretty much of a complete handle on the official US media. And after 9-11 it has moved into the open along with much other of our hitherto secret state apparatus.

But just as the vanished breed of Kremlinologists were able to figure some of what might happen in Soviet policy from who was invited to stand next to the Party Secretary on Lenin's Tomb during the May Day Parade, so can we tell what is on cards from the friendly questions asked such persons during their hearings.

It was significant that most of this related to how the US story was being explained in Latin America. The Senators revealed serious concerns about the erosion of US prospects in the continent and particularly interesting was the comment by the nominee that Venezuela is a very difficult environment in which to operate.

But it seems to me that the time and the opportunity given to the people of Latin America by the stout resistance of occupied Iraq is coming to an end, one way or another, and the baleful glare of Empire is to once again be turned southwards.

For US leaders as for Joseph Stalin, truth is best protected by a body-guard of lies.

And this propaganda, crude and unbelievable as it may be for those of us who keep ourselves well informed can still accomplish its real purpose: To keep quiet and loyal those who still desperately want to believe in their government. And that will be all that is necessary to make yet another war, another atrocity.

Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com
Washington D.C.