Norman Solomon

The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion is bound to attract a lot of media coverage, but scant recognition will go to the pundits who helped to make it all possible. Continuing with long service to the Bush administration’s agenda-setting for war, prominent media commentators were very busy in the weeks before the invasion. At … Continue reading “War-Loving Pundits”

Evidently the president’s trip to India created an option too perfect to pass up: The man who has led the world in violence during the first years of the 21st century could pay homage to the world’s leading practitioner of nonviolence during the first half of the 20th century. So the White House announced plans … Continue reading “Mahatma Bush”

The current flurry of Western diplomacy will probably turn out to be groundwork for launching missiles at Iran. Air attacks on targets in Iran are very likely. Yet many antiwar Americans seem eager to believe that won’t happen. Illusion #1: With the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq, the Pentagon is in no position to … Continue reading “The Iran Crisis: ‘Diplomacy’ as a Launch Pad for Missiles”

With great fanfare the other day, Oprah Winfrey asked James Frey a question that mainstream journalists refuse to ask George W. Bush: “Why would you lie?” Many pundits and news outlets have chortled at the televised unmasking of Frey as a liar. The reverberations have spanned from schlock media to highbrow outlets. On Friday, the … Continue reading “Domestic Lying: The Question Journalists Don’t Ask Bush”

With Ariel Sharon out of the picture, Benjamin Netanyahu has a better chance to become prime minister of Israel. He’s media savvy. He knows how to spin on American television. And he’s very dangerous. Netanyahu spent a lot of his early years in the United States. Later, during the 1980s, he worked at the Israeli … Continue reading “Axis of Fanatics – Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad”

Journalists should be in the business of providing timely information to the public. But some – notably at the top rungs of the profession – have become players in the power games of the nation’s capital. And more than a few seem glad to imitate the officeholders who want to decide what the public shouldn’t … Continue reading “The NY Times Fails Its Readers”

Despite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on UN diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq. … Continue reading “NSA Spied on Diplomats in Push for Iraq War”

Three days before Christmas, the Bush administration launched a new salvo of bright spinning lies about the Iraq war. “In an interview with reporters traveling with him on an Air Force cargo plane to Baghdad,” the Associated Press reported Thursday morning, Donald Rumsfeld “hinted that a preliminary decision had been made to go below the … Continue reading “A New Salvo of
Bright Spinning Lies”

With public support for the Iraq war at low ebb, the White House is more eager than ever to conflate Iraq’s insurgency with terrorism. But last week, just after President Bush gave yet another speech repeatedly depicting the U.S. war effort in Iraq as a battle against terrorists, Rep. John Murtha debunked the claim. His … Continue reading “Blurring Terrorism and Insurgency in Iraq”

Christmas came 11 days early for Donald Rumsfeld two years ago when the news broke that American forces had pulled Saddam Hussein from a spidery hole. During interviews about the capture, on CBS and ABC, the Pentagon’s top man was upbeat. And he didn’t have to deal with a question that Lesley Stahl or Peter … Continue reading “Rumsfeld’s Handshake Deal With Saddam”