Reporters Behind Russia Hysteria Pushed Iraq WMD Fake News

For more just Google “bush government planted news stories”

As an example, in the first result, The Independent reports:

Bush ‘planted fake news stories on American TV’

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

“We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them,” said Diana Farsetta, one of the group’s researchers. “I would say it’s pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air.”

Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. “They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like,” she said.

The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission’s enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group’s report.

[…]

Source: The independent

Of course, the Fake News around Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction are no exception. Here’s Bush talking about the need to repeat things over and over to catapult the propaganda the day before his U.N. speech in which he catapulted the propaganda to justify invading Iraq.

Bush ‘Catapult The Propaganda’ – ‘Terror, Iraq, Nuclear Weapons’

Read Full Article…

Fast forward to today and many of the same reporters who drove the fake news narrative to justifying the invasion of Iraq are the ones stirring up Hysteria against Russia. At the same time, these same reporters are asking the public to trust the same intelligence agencies behind the Iraq fake news who this time around are presenting no evidence at all.

The upmost skepticism and caution is needed this time around because, unlike with Iraq which had no WMDs or nuclear weapons, war this time would be with Russia, a nuclear superpower, and with Russia’s allies which included powerhouses such as China.

As Washington’s Blog reports:

The propaganda about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was one of the most blatant examples of “fake news” in American history.

Now, many of the same idiots who pushed the Iraq war lies are stirring up hysteria about Russia.

For example, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt cheerleaded for the Iraq war.  Now, the Washington Post under Hiatt’s leadership has been the main source of the most breathless anti-Russian hysteria.

ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd – chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney ’04 presidential campaign – was a big booster for the Iraq war. Now, Dowd Tweets that you’re only a patriot if you blindly accept what President Obama and the intelligence services claim without any proof.

George W. Bush’s speechwriter David Frum – who pushed many of the biggest lies about the Iraq war – is now trying to ridicule anyone who doesn’t accept the evidence-less claims that Russia hacked the Democratic party as a Kremlin stooge.

Similarly, Jonathan Chait championed the Iraq war. And now he’s ridiculing those asking for evidence before jumping headlong into anti-Russia hysteria.

These guys all have a track record of pushing false stories which get us into disastrous wars … why should we listen to them now?

Particularly noteworthy is the investigative reporters from both sides of the aisle are pointing out the lack of credibility over Russian hacking claims.

Case in Point is Conservative Fox News Anchor Tucker Carlson and Liberal journalists Glenn Greenwald:

Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson Unite to Dismiss Russian Hacking Allegations

Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald on Fox News, December 19

One of the great meetings of journalistic minds took place last week, when left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson. The segment was devoted to their purportedly strange agreement over the Russian hacking story (which is not actually strange at all, given their mutual antipathy for the center-left). Greenwald has long dismissed the charge that Russia manipulated WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic party emails as a “smear,” mocking suspicions of misbehavior by what he referred to in sarcastic capitalized words as “The Russians”; he called it typical of the Democrats’ alleged tendency to use false attacks against Russia to discredit its adversaries (“So WikiLeaks has become an enemy of the Democratic Party, and they seem to have one tactic with their adversaries and enemies, which is to accuse them of being Russian agents”). On Carlson’s program, Greenwald attacked the Washington Post for reporting that the CIA and the FBI believed Russia’s hacking was intended to help Trump win. It is a remarkable segment that merits close reading.

“Should we believe that assessment?” asked Carlson. “We should be extremely skeptical of it for multiple reasons,” replied Greenwald. “These are assertions that are being made unaccompanied by any evidence whatsoever.”

[…]

Yet, Greenwald and Carlson, having established to their mutual satisfaction that reports of Russian interference in the election should be viewed with extreme suspicion, moved on to the question of just why it was that the Post would publish such a scurrilous report. “It is so weird that Russia is the focus … ” mused Carlson, “and yet, all of a sudden, Russia seems to be villain number one. Why is that? It seems strange.” The obvious response — Russia is the focus because it interfered with an American presidential election — had already been dismissed, so Greenwald supplied a different explanation for why Russia was suddenly the object of tough coverage in the media. Greenwald explained that Democrats ginned up hostility to Russia entirely for political reasons:

“One of the really interesting things is, in 2012, when Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama, the Democrats mocked Romney mercilessly for depicting Russia as the number one geopolitical threat […] And throughout the Obama presidency, he tried accommodating Putin, he didn’t arm anti-Russian factions in Ukraine, he tried cooperating with him in Syria, it was really an election-year political theme that the Democrats manufactured out of whole cloth, that the Russian, that Putin posed some existential threat to the United States, that they’re our enemy […]”

[…]

It is true that, in 2012, the Republican Party had staked out a more hawkish stance on Russia than the Democrats. But the Democrats were hardly praising Putin’s regime. The dispute between Obama and Romney was a relatively narrow one centering on whether Russia was literally America’s number-one enemy, or whether that distinction belonged to Al Qaeda. In his 2012 convention speech, Obama said, “You don’t call Russia our number-one enemy — not Al Qaeda, Russia [Laughter.] — unless you’re still stuck in a Cold War mind warp.”

Greenwald presents Obama’s chilly relationship with Russia as nothing but an election-year ploy. He omits any mention of the event that changed the tenor of U.S.-Russia relations: the Russian attack on Ukraine. Obama responded to the invasion by imposing sanctions on Russia in 2014. That event, not some election-year need to gin up a foreign bogeyman, is what generated tension between Obama and Putin. For Greenwald to depict the administration’s chilly stance toward Russia as “an election-year political theme that the Democrats manufactured out of whole cloth” is a complete fantasy.

Carlson agreed that there was “only a political motivation” to explain Obama’s criticisms of Russia.

After this point was agreed upon, Greenwald went beyond merely questioning the certainty of the Post’s reporting and denounced “wild, elaborate conspiracy theories.” “To sit here and sort of suggest that Vladimir Putin lurks behind every American problem, to concoct these wild, elaborate conspiracy theories, to try and convince Americans that Russia is this grave threat to the United States … ” he explained, “I think it’s incredibly dangerous.”

[…]

Source: NY Mag

Michael Shedlock adds more via MishTalk.com,

“Something Stinks” – Like Iraq WMD Fiasco, Russia Story Doesn’t Add Up

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Yesterday, President Obama expelled 35 Russian “Operatives” from the Russian Embassy.

Is there any evidence those expelled are “intelligence operatives”? Any hard evidence Russia was behind the Hillary hacks? Any credible evidence that Putin himself is to blame?

The answers are No, No, and No. Yet, once again the American press is again asked to co-sign a dubious intelligence assessment.

Rush to Judgment

Something Stinks

The Rolling Stone comments Something About This Russia Story Stinks

In an extraordinary development Thursday, the Obama administration announced a series of sanctions against Russia. Thirty-five Russian nationals will be expelled from the country. President Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee emails.

“These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government,” he wrote.

The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect. Nothing quite adds up.

If the American security agencies had smoking-gun evidence that the Russians had an organized campaign to derail the U.S. presidential election and deliver the White House to Trump, then expelling a few dozen diplomats after the election seems like an oddly weak and ill-timed response. Voices in both parties are saying this now.

Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham noted the “small price” Russia paid for its “brazen attack.” The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, said Thursday that taken alone, the Obama response is “insufficient” as a response to “attacks on the United States by a foreign power.”

The “small price” is an eyebrow-raiser.

Adding to the problem is that in the last months of the campaign, and also in the time since the election, we’ve seen an epidemic of factually loose, clearly politically motivated reporting about Russia. Democrat-leaning pundits have been unnervingly quick to use phrases like “Russia hacked the election.”

This has led to widespread confusion among news audiences over whether the Russians hacked the DNC emails (a story that has at least been backed by some evidence, even if it hasn’t always been great evidence), or whether Russians hacked vote tallies in critical states (a far more outlandish tale backed by no credible evidence).

As noted in The Intercept and other outlets, an Economist/YouGov poll conducted this month shows that 50 percent of all Clinton voters believe the Russians hacked vote tallies.

And reports by some Democrat-friendly reporters – like Kurt Eichenwald, who has birthed some real head-scratchers this year, including what he admitted was a baseless claim that Trump spent time in an institution in 1990 – have attempted to argue that Trump surrogates may have been liaising with the Russians because they either visited Russia or appeared on the RT network. Similar reporting about Russian scheming has been based entirely on unnamed security sources.

Now we have this sanctions story, which presents a new conundrum. It appears that a large segment of the press is biting hard on the core allegations of electoral interference emanating from the Obama administration.

Did the Russians do it? Very possibly, in which case it should be reported to the max. But the press right now is flying blind.

Maybe the Russians did hack the DNC, but the WikiLeaks material actually came from someone else? There is even a published report to that effect, with a former British ambassador as a source, not that it’s any more believable than anything else here.

We just don’t know, which is the problem.

We ought to have learned from the Judith Miller episode. Not only do governments lie, they won’t hesitate to burn news agencies. In a desperate moment, they’ll use any sucker they can find to get a point across.

Where the Hell is the Evidence?

it’s worse than that. If you question adequacy of the evidence or want to see more, they’ll accuse you of disloyalty & being a Russian agent https://t.co/UybU2QcIAz

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 30, 2016

‘I Can Guarantee You, It Was Not the Russians’

John McAfee, founder of the security firm McAfee Associates, says ‘I Can Guarantee You, It Was Not the Russians’.

The Joint Analysis Report from the FBI contains an appendix that lists hundreds of IP addresses that were supposedly “used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services.” While some of those IP addresses are from Russia, the majority are from all over the world, which means that the hackers constantly faked their location.

McAfee argues that the report is a “fallacy,” explaining that hackers can fake their location, their language, and any markers that could lead back to them. Any hacker who had the skills to hack into the DNC would also be able to hide their tracks, he said

“If I was the Chinese and I wanted to make it look like the Russians did it, I would use Russian language within the code, I would use Russian techniques of breaking into the organization,” McAfee said, adding that, in the end, “there simply is no way to assign a source for any attack.”

“It was not the Russians”. My interview with Larry King:https://t.co/iaKTLSriu1

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) December 30, 2016

Question of Patriotism

@ggreenwald@JustinRaimondopic.twitter.com/KUP1nvzH5O

— P McCabe (@PeterMcC66) December 30, 2016

It’s not patriotic to accept accusations as facts, given US history of lies, deceit, meddling, and wars.

@ggreenwald@AnneTolpegin Accusations aren’t facts.True patriots question their country. Recall WMDs, Gulf of Tonkin.https://t.co/7QgvUdBfpb

— Mike Mish Shedlock (@MishGEA) December 30, 2016

Source: http://alexanderhiggins.com/reporters-pushed-iraq-wmd-fake-news-ones-stirring-russia-hysteria/