From the Who Knew?! files...

I just read about an upcoming event in Boston at which a retired colonel will be speaking about the recent attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla. What struck me about the retired colonel was the biography of this speaker. Ready?

"Ann Wright, a retired US Army colonel, spent twenty-nine years in the military and later served as a high-ranking diplomat in the US State Department. In 2001, she helped oversee the opening of the US mission in Afghanistan. In 2003, she resigned her post at the State Department to protest the war in Iraq."

Really. A senior diplomat protesting Dubya's war? In 2003? Someone with decades of military and diplomatic experience sure that what Bush was doing was wrong? And it didn't get much press coverage? Why, I don't believe it.

Wait - you mean she wasn't the only one? There were other people in the U.S. government who strongly protested Dubya Bush, and they didn't get press coverage, either? No!

My point -- in case you are too dense to get it -- is that it was pretty easy to see in 2003 how pathetic the U.S. media were. At some point that year I gave up for a while on all U.S. news sources -- yes, including the New York Times, with all its WMDs talk, and NPR with its self-righteous nonsense about "fighting terrorism." But when it's not 2003, it's sometimes a little harder for us to see just how pathetically the U.S. media supports the government's propaganda and deception, whether about war, Gaza, or oil drilling. But we sure do like to criticize other countries and label them as "not free" and call their news reports propaganda.