WTF Is It Now?!?

Critic Accuses Media of Aiding U.S. War Propaganda
'It is one of the most famous images of the war in Iraq: a U.S. soldier scaling a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and draping the Stars and Stripes over the black metal visage of the ousted despot.

'But for Harper's magazine publisher John MacArthur, that same image of U.S. military victory is also indicative of a propaganda campaign being waged by the Bush administration.

'"It was absolutely a photo-op created for Bush's re-election campaign commercials," MacArthur, a self-appointed authority on U.S. government propaganda, said in an interview. "CNN, MSNBC and Fox swallowed it whole."

'In 1992, MacArthur wrote Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, a withering critique of government and media actions that he says misled the public after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

'In MacArthur's opinion, little has changed during the latest Iraq war, prompting him to begin work on an updated edition of "Second Front." U.S. government public relations specialists are still concocting bogus stories to serve government interests, he says, and credulous journalists stand ready to scarf up the baloney.

'"The concept of a self-governing American republic has been crippled by this propaganda," MacArthur said. "The whole idea that we can govern ourselves and have an intelligent debate, free of cant, free of disinformation, I think it's dead."'