Iraq: Covering Up US War Crimes

This from the Green Left Weekly. Click on the title to link to the full story - PolPop.

James Petras

I am reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary, a journalist's account of Nazi political propaganda during the 1930s, as I watch the US “news” reports of the violent assault on Fallujah.

The US mass media “reports”, the style, content and especially the language, echo their Nazi predecessors of 70 years ago to an uncanny degree. Coincidence? Of course! In both instances we have imperialist armies conquering countries, levelling cities and slaughtering civilians — and the mass media, private in form, state appendages in practice, disseminate the most outrageous lies, in defense and praise of the conquering “storm troopers” — call them SS or marines.

Both in Nazi Germany and contemporary US, we are told by the mass media that the invading armies are “freeing the country” of “foreign fighters” and “armed terrorists”, who are preventing “the people” from going about their everyday lives. Yet we know that of the 1000 prisoners there are only four foreigners (three Iranians and one Arab); Iraqi hospitals report less than 10% of casualties are foreign fighters. In other words, over 90% of the fighters are Iraqis — most of whom were born, educated and raised families in the cities in which they are fighting. . .