WTF Is It Now?!?

SAME SHITE, DIFFERENT DAY
When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.

"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story. ('Fib'?? It was a pathological, out-and-out crock of bullshit lie, for crying out loud. Snap out of it!)

That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn't exist," Ms. Heller says. Three times Heller contacted the office of then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis – offering to hold the story if proven wrong.

The official response: "Trust us." To this day, the Pentagon's photographs of the Iraqi troop buildup remain classified.

John MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine and author of 'Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War,' says that considering the number of senior officials shared by both Bush administrations, the American public should bear in mind the lessons of Gulf War propaganda.

'These are all the same people who were running it more than 10 years ago,' Mr. MacArthur says. 'They'll make up just about anything...to get their way.'

- From Scott Peterson's column at The Christian Science Monitor.