Norman Solomon

(Author’s note: Some things don’t seem to change. Five years after I wrote this column in the form of a news dispatch, it seems more relevant than ever.) WASHINGTON – There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the United States is not the center of the world. The White House had no immediate comment on the … Continue reading “Is the USA the Center
of the World?”

The lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has become notorious in the annals of American journalism. Even many reporters, editors, and commentators who fueled the drive to war in 2002 and early 2003 now acknowledge that major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war. But it’s happening again. The … Continue reading “It’s Happening Again”

The American media establishment has launched a major offensive against the option of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. In the latest media assault, right-wing outfits like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are secondary. The heaviest firepower is now coming from the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the … Continue reading “The New Media Offensive Against Withdrawal”

Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. Let’s reach back into history and extract these facts: On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld "visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the … Continue reading “Saddam’s Unindicted Co-Conspirator”

No one knows exactly how many Iraqi civilians have died from the war’s violence since the invasion of their country. The new study from public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University estimates that the number of those deaths is around 601,000, while saying the actual total could be somewhere between 426,369 and 793,663. Such wartime … Continue reading “The Pundit Path for Death in Iraq”

Moments after hearing about North Korea’s nuclear test, I thought of Albert Einstein’s statement that "there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world." During the six decades since Einstein spoke, experience has shown that such … Continue reading “Welcome to the Nuclear Club”

The uproar over Bob Woodward’s new book has intensified the media focus on a basic controversy that’s summed up this way: Is Iraq a quagmire? Like many other debates that flourish in American mass media, the standard answers on both sides are wrong – because the question bypasses human realities. Most obviously, Iraq is not … Continue reading “‘Quagmire’ Isn’t the Right Word”

The Sept. 25 edition of Time magazine illustrates how the U.S. news media are gearing up for a military attack on Iran. The headline over the cover-story interview with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is “A Date With a Dangerous Mind.” The big-type subhead calls him “the man whose swagger is stirring fears of war with … Continue reading “Media Tall Tales
for the Next War”

This month began with 140,000 American troops in Iraq – 13,000 more than in late July. Almost 30 months have passed since Time magazine’s mid-April 2004 cover story, "No Easy Options," reported that "foreign policy luminaries from both parties say a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would cripple American credibility, doom reform in the Arab world, and … Continue reading “Spinning the Troop Levels in Iraq”