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International News Title: Debate Moderator Distorted Syrian Reality Debate Moderator Distorted Syrian Reality The American people are receiving a highly distorted view of the Syrian war much propaganda, little truth including from one of the moderators at the second presidential debate. By Robert Parry October 14, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "Consortium News" - How ABC News Martha Raddatz framed her question about Syria in the second presidential debate shows why the mainstream U.S. news media, with its deep-seated biases and inability to deal with complexity, has become such a driving force for wider wars and even a threat to the future of the planet. Raddatz, the networks chief global affairs correspondent, presented the Syrian conflict as simply a case of barbaric aggression by the Syrian government and its Russian allies against the Syrian people, especially the innocents living in Aleppo. Just days ago, the State Department called for a war crimes investigation of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its ally, Russia, for their bombardment of Aleppo, Raddatz said. So this next question comes through social media through Facebook. Diane from Pennsylvania asks, if you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? Isnt it a lot like the Holocaust when the U.S. waited too long before we helped? The framing of the question assured a response from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her determination to expand the U.S. military intervention in Syria to include a no-fly zone, which U.S. military commanders say would require a massive operation that would kill many Syrians, both soldiers and civilians, to eliminate Syrias sophisticated air-defense systems and its air force. But Raddatzs loaded question was also a way of influencing or misleading U.S. public opinion. Consider for a moment how a more honest and balanced question could have elicited a very different response and a more thoughtful discussion: The situation in Aleppo presents a heartrending and nettlesome concern. Al Qaeda fighters and their rebel allies, including some who have been armed by the United States, are holed up in some neighborhoods of eastern Aleppo. Theyve been firing rockets into the center and western sections of Aleppo and they have shot civilians seeking to leave east Aleppo through humanitarian corridors. These terrorists and their moderate rebel allies seem to be using the tens of thousands of civilians still in east Aleppo as human shields in order to create sympathy from Western audiences when the Syrian government seeks to root the terrorists and other insurgents from these neighborhoods with airstrikes that have killed both armed fighters and civilians. In such a circumstance, what should the U.S. role be and was it a terrible mistake to supply these fighters with sophisticated rockets and other weapons, given that these weapons have helped Al Qaeda in seizing and holding territory? Siding with Al Qaeda Raddatz also could have noted that a key reason why the recent limited cease-fire failed was that the U.S.-backed moderate rebels in east Aleppo had rebuffed Secretary of State John Kerrys demand that they separate themselves from Al Qaedas Nusra Front, which now calls itself the Syria Conquest Front. Instead of breaking ties with Al Qaeda, some of these moderate rebel groups reaffirmed or expanded their alliances with Al Qaeda. In other words, Official Washingtons distinction between Al Qaedas terrorists and the moderate rebels was publicly revealed to be largely a myth. But the reality of U.S.-aided rebels collaborating with the terror group that carried out the 9/11 attacks complicates the preferred mainstream narrative of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin the bad guys versus the rebels the good guys. If Raddatz had posed her question with the more complex reality (rather than the simplistic, biased form that she chose) and if Clinton still responded with her recipe of a no-fly zone, the obvious follow-up would be: Wouldnt such a military intervention constitute aggressive war against Syria in violation of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg principles? And wouldnt such a strategy risk tipping the military balance inside Syria in favor of Al Qaeda and its jihadist allies, possibly even its spinoff terror group, the Islamic State? And what would the United States do then, if its destruction of the Syrian air force led to the black flag of jihadist terror flying over Damascus as well as all of Aleppo? Would a Clinton-45 administration send in U.S. troops to stop the likely massacre of Christians, Alawites, Shiites, secular Sunnis and other heretics? There would be other obvious and important questions that a more objective Martha Raddatz would ask: Would your no-fly zone include shooting down Russian aircraft that are flying inside Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government? Might such a clash provoke a superpower escalation, possibly even invite nuclear war? But no such discussion is allowed inside the mainstream U.S. medias frame. There is an unstated assumption that the United States has the unquestioned right to invade other countries at will, regardless of international law, and there is a studied silence about this hypocrisy even as the U.S. State Department touts the sanctity of international law. Whose War Crimes? Raddatzs favorable reference to the State Department accusing the Syrian and Russian governments of war crimes further suggests a stunning lack of self-awareness, a blindness to Americas own guilt in that regard. How can any American journalist put on such blinders regarding even recent U.S. war crimes, including the illegal invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? While Raddatz referenced the heart-breaking video of a 5-year-old Syrian boy named Omran sitting in an ambulance after being pulled from the rubble after an air strike in Aleppo, she seems to have no similar sympathy for the slaughtered and maimed children of Iraq who suffered under American bombs or the people of Yemen who have faced a prolonged aerial onslaught from Saudi Arabia using U.S. aircraft and U.S.-supplied ordnance. Regarding Iraq, there was the case at the start of the U.S.-led war when President George W. Bush mistakenly thought Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein might be eating at a Baghdad restaurant so U.S. warplanes leveled it, killing more than a dozen civilians, including children and a young woman whose headless body was recovered by her mother. When the broken body of the 20-year-old woman was brought out torso first, then her head, the Associated Press reported, her mother started crying uncontrollably, then collapsed. The London Independent cited this restaurant attack as one that represented a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions ban on bombing civilian targets. But such civilian deaths were of little interest to the mainstream U.S. media. American talking heads
never seemed to give the issue any thought, wrote Eric Boehlert in a report on the U.S. war coverage for Salon.com. Certainly they did not linger on images of the hellacious human carnage left in the aftermath. Thousands of other civilian deaths were equally horrific. Saad Abbas, 34, was wounded in an American bombing raid, but his family sought to shield him from the greater horror. The bombing had killed his three daughters Marwa, 11; Tabarek, 8; and Safia, 5 who had been the center of his life. It wasnt just ordinary love, his wife said. He was crazy about them. It wasnt like other fathers. [NYT, April 14, 2003] The horror of the war was captured, too, in the fate of 12-year-old Ali Ismaeel Abbas, who lost his two arms when a U.S. missile struck his Baghdad home. Alis father, his pregnant mother and his siblings were all killed. As the armless Ali was evacuated to a Kuwaiti hospital, becoming a symbol of U.S. compassion for injured Iraqi civilians, the boy said he would rather die than live without his hands. Because of the horrors inflicted on Iraq and the resulting chaos that has now spread across the region and into Europe Raddatz could have asked Clinton, who as a U.S. senator voted for the illegal war, whether she felt any responsibility for this carnage. Of course, Raddatz would not ask that question because the U.S. mainstream media was almost universally onboard the Iraq War bandwagon, which helps explain why there has been virtually no accountability for those war crimes. Letting Clinton Off So, Clinton was not pressed on her war judgments regarding either Iraq or the Libyan regime change that she championed in 2011, another war of choice that transformed the once-prosperous North African nation into a failed state. Raddatzs biased framing also put Republican Donald Trump on the defensive for resisting yet another American regime change project in Syria. Trump was left muttering some right-wing talking points that sought to attack Clinton as soft on Syria, trying to link her to President Barack Obamas decision not to bomb the Syrian military in August 2013 after a mysterious sarin gas attack outside Damascus, which occurred six months after Clinton had resigned as Secretary of State. Trump: She was there as Secretary of State with the so-called line in the sand, which
Clinton: No, I wasnt. I was gone. I hate to interrupt you, but at some point
Trump: OK. But you were in contact excuse me. You were
Clinton: At some point, we need to do some fact-checking here. Trump: You were in total contact with the White House, and perhaps, sadly, Obama probably still listened to you. I dont think he would be listening to you very much anymore. Obama draws the line in the sand. It was laughed at all over the world what happened. In bashing Obama for not bombing Syria after U.S. intelligence expressed suspicion that the sarin attack was actually carried out by Al Qaeda or a related group trying to trick the U.S. military into attacking the Syrian government Trump may have pleased his right-wing base but he was deviating from his generally less war-like stance on the Middle East. He followed that up with another false right-wing claim that Clinton and Obama had allowed the Russians to surge ahead on nuclear weapons, saying: our nuclear program has fallen way behind, and theyve gone wild with their nuclear program. Not good. Only after attacking Clinton for not being more militaristic did Trump say a few things that made sense, albeit in his incoherent snide-aside style. Trump: Now, she talks tough, she talks really tough against Putin and against Assad. She talks in favor of the rebels. She doesnt even know who the rebels are. You know, every time we take rebels, whether its in Iraq or anywhere else, were arming people. And you know what happens? They end up being worse than the people [we overthrow]. Look at what she did in Libya with [Muammar] Gaddafi. Gaddafis out. Its a mess. And, by the way, ISIS has a good chunk of their oil. Im sure you probably have heard that. [Actually, whether one has heard it or not, that point is not true. During the ongoing political and military strife, Libya has been blocked from selling its oil, which is shipped by sea.] Trump continued: It was a disaster. Because the fact is, almost everything shes done in foreign policy has been a mistake and its been a disaster. But if you look at Russia, just take a look at Russia, and look at what they did this week, where I agree, she wasnt there, but possibly shes consulted. We sign a peace treaty. Everyones all excited. Well, what Russia did with Assad and, by the way, with Iran, who you made very powerful with the dumbest deal perhaps Ive ever seen in the history of deal-making, the Iran deal, with the $150 billion, with the $1.7 billion in cash, which is enough to fill up this room. But look at that deal. Iran now and Russia are now against us. So she wants to fight. She wants to fight for rebels. Theres only one problem. You dont even know who the rebels are. So whats the purpose? While one cant blame Raddatz for Trumps scattered thinking or for Clintons hawkishness the moderators failure to frame the Syrian issue in a factual and nuanced way contributed to this dangerously misleading debate on a grave issue of war and peace. It is surely not the first time that the mainstream U.S. media has failed the American people in this way, but given the stakes of a possible nuclear war with Russia this propagandistic style of journalism is fast becoming an existential threat. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest
#1. To: U don't know me (#0)
It wasn't a mistake. The disaster turned out exactly the way Hillary and Obama intended. And Raddatz is in league with them and trying to protect them.
these debates just demonstrate the foolishness of doing this
These debates show good cause why if there is ever a revolution in this country, we need less of a "Civil War" reconciliation, and more of a "French solution". Mao told us that political power comes from a gun, and sometimes the guillotine.... I added that......
Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.
You can lop off the heads of your first families and billionaires if you can find them but don't do it to uphold the flawed document you call the constitution because the constitution doesn't contemplate revolution or empire
Why pretend any longer? The US Constitution is toilet paper, used toilet paper. The only people that hold it up as useful and practical in 2016 are the Charlie Brown class, the Conservatives.
Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.
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