How Much Was Fox Paid to Shill Bush's War Crime in Iraq?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The Fox network conspired with Bush's criminal regime to profit from the US plunder of Iraq. Fox was and will continue to be Bush's 'propaganda ministry' for as long as there is money to be made depicting dead Iraqis who had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. 911 was an inside job.

Who is most motivated to lie about a crime? Simply, the guilty! The biggest lies about any crime are told by those who perpetrate the crime. Fox was clearly motivated and, predictably, told the biggest whoppers about both Iraq wars. The biggest gains and the biggest whoppers are found among Bush, his co-conspirators and the Fox Network. Murdoch should be subpoenaed and compelled to testify before a federal grand jury. He shares Bush's guilt and that of the GOP, the NEOCONS, and willing, eager participants throughout the MIC.

Millions now support the prosecution of Bush for war crimes and mass murder. But what of his enablers and co-conspirators? What charges should be brought against the murderous liar --Rupert Murdoch --the modern incarnation of Hearst? How many members of the Fox board, how many executives, how many on-camera shills conspired with Bush to spread the bald-faced lies that made mass murder 'photogenic' and, therefore, palatable to an American society hooked on images of things and bodies blown up?

It boils down to a legal term: quid pro quo --the word given a 'transaction', an agreement that an item or a service is returned for something of value. Certainly, throughout Bush's war of aggression against Iraq, a war crime in which some 4000 US service personnel were sacrificed upon a bald faced lie, the relationship between Fox and Bush has been symbiotic and conspiratorial.

Fox is thus motivated to convince you that 'conspiracies' do not exist though hundreds, perhaps thousands of SCOTUS decisions have to do with conspiracies of one sort or another. There is a body of 'conspiracy law'. That such decisions exist does not prove the existence of 'conspiracies'; it is, rather, the law that defines conspiracy.

There is probable cause that Bush and Fox achieved agreement upon a quid pro quo! Members of the Fox board of directors and key executives should be considered war criminals just as was Goebbesl during the Third Reich. There is probable cause to indict many FOX executives.

To be fair, FOX has not confined its venal reporting style to a decade that will be recalled as the era of Bush atrocities and war crimes! Fox was under investigation by the ITC (independent television commission) back in the 90s, specifically nine complaints by viewers of Sky Digital satellite, controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Fox's jingoistic support of Bush's war, however, begs to be investigated by a federal panel with the power of the subpoena, an investigation with teeth. It is of little consolation to millions of victims of Bush's war of aggression in Iraq that if Fox is found to have breeched ITC 'impartiality rules', it could be forced out! Simply --Fox does not give a shit. 'Forced out' is insufficient. The Mikado said: 'let the punishment fit the crime!' I want federal indictments!

Fox does not merely slant the news; it makes it up! Keith Olbermann and Robert Greenwald exposed the truth about Fox lies.

If I were on a Federal Grand Jury investigating Bush's capital war crimes, I would demand that 'we' --the Grand Jury --issue subpoenas to Fox execs and Murdoch himself! We ask them --while they are under oath --just what is in it for Fox to make up news favorable to Bush! If Murdoch should fail to show up, we indict him for obstruction of justice. We turn Murdoch into a fugitive from justice and the rule of law. Prosecute his sorry ass. Subpoena him. Compel him to ask tough questions under oath.

What, for example, was Fox paid to orchestrate billions of dollars in 'free' publicity in support of Bush's war crimes in Iraq? To what 'quid pro quo' did Fox agree for its support of an oil war known to be extremely profitable for the Military/Industrial complex? Armaments manufacturers 'get paid' for supporting wars of aggression and other war crimes! I want to know how much the blood suckers in the media get paid for their share of the kill!

I want to ask Rupert Murdoch how he benefits personally by presiding over a news organization that when it is not making up the news lies about it. I want to know what's in it for Murdoch.

A timely subpoena might cough up thousands of emails revealing how Fox conspired with Bush to defraud Americans and the world. There is a bigger story here than a single memo. What is Murdoch's specific connection to the Bush crime syndicate? Who got paid? When? And how much?

Murdoch-owned Fox likes to think its cover 'patriotic'. Lies deliberately told to enable a traitor are themselves high treason! There is nothing patriotic about lying to the American people and the world in support of and on behalf of war criminals! There is nothing patriotic about conspiring to grease the wheels for Bushco's theft of Iraqi oil! There is nothing patriotic about sending US troops to die for Bush's vainglorious visions of conquest and oil theft. There is nothing patriotic about Fox's support of Bush's crimes, his disdain for the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, documents that Bush was sworn to uphold but, instead, subverted!

At market rates for production and air time, Fox's support was worth $billions$. FOX's foray into NFL football, for example, came at a price --almost 2 billion dollars. The move made upstart Fox a major player, right up there with CBS, ABC and NBC. Are we to believe now that Murdoch had simply given away valuable network air time to the likes of war criminals? Murdoch is not suspected of having compunctions. Murdoch is in it for the big bucks. A war on Iraq was surely worth $billions$ to Murdoch.

The 'Fairness Doctrine' came under attack during the Reagan years. By 1990, the FCC had abandoned many rules and procedures that might have prevented broadcasters from using and abusing their publicly licensed stations in service to blatant propaganda or ideology. This Reagan-era mania for 'de-regulation' made it possible for Murdoch to build an entire network around outright lies!

The objective of the 'Fairness Doctrine' was, rather, the preservation of all points of view, a requirement enforced by an FCC mandate. De-regulation, however, eliminated guidelines for non-entertainment programming guidelines. The FCC justified it all with bureaucrat-speak. Fox was thus 'set free' to propagandize and brainwash! The era of the 'media whore' was ushered in. The biggest whore of them all? FOX! Without a 'Fairness Doctrine', media whores are free to prostitute themselves, subvert what had been the profession of 'journalism'. Advertising is, at least, honest in that it is possible to learn how much the big corporations pay for spots. Ads do no pretend to be what they are not. Not so the hidden sell-out, the lie behind 'fair and balanced'.

Bill O'Reilly --arguably the world's most obnoxious, repugnant liar and loud-mouthed blowhard --stated: 'Flat out lies should be confronted.' 'Confronted' is surely O'Reilly-speak for 'embraced'. 'O brave new world, that hath such people in it'!

Since the Iraq conflict began on March 20, Fox News has been on a mission to legitimize it. One problem for Fox's protracted apologia is that despite promises of evidence of current weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) by the Bush Administration, the evidence has been ambiguous at best. Unfortunately for the network, I’ve been keeping a scratch diary of their reports since the war began.

Keep in mind that in the first three weeks of March, before the bombs started officially dropping, Fox was spreading all sorts of Pentagon propaganda. Iraq had "drones" that it could quickly dispatch to major US metropolitan areas to spread biological agents. Saddam was handing out chemical weapons to the Republican guard to use against coalition troops in a last-ditch red-zone ring around Baghdad. Given what we now know about Iraq, these reports seem to be laughable fantasies, but they were effective in securing public backing for the war. The following is a short chronicle of lies, propagation of lies, exaggerations, distortions, spin, and conjecture presented as fact. My comments are in brackets

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"... stating that "marketplace solutions can be consistent with public interest concerns," [FN100] that "significant amounts of nonentertainment programming of a variety of types will continue on radio," [FN101] and that "stations will continue to present such programming as a response to market forces." [FN102] In the same proceeding, the Commission eliminated the requirement that stations conduct ascertainment studies to determine the problems and needs of their communities. [FN103] It dismissed concerns that free market competition would tend to limit broadcasters in their assessment of community problems to those of the economically significant segments of the community, [FN104] and left the methods of assessing community problems and needs to broadcasters' "good faith discretion." [FN105] In this proceeding, the Commission also eliminated its commercial guidelines, [FN106] stating that marketplace forces would more effectively curb excessive advertising [FN107] and that "[n]o government regulation should continue unless it achieves some public interest objective that cannot be achieved without the regulation." [FN108] [Pace University School of Law, Summer, 1990. Marc Sophos] Also [Deregulation] [Fairness Doctrine] [Fox Bias]

The independent television commission is investigating nine complaints by viewers of the channel, broadcast on Sky Digital satellite, also controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

Dale Steinreich, Fibbing It Up at Fox

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Carlin: "They Gotcha by the Balls!"

Politicians hide behind three things: The Flag. The Bible. And education!

"I'll tell you what they don't want. The owners of this country don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking - they’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

--George Carlin

And now they're coming for your Social Security. "It's a big club. And you ain't in it". That brings up America's number one export: bullshit!

Carlin poses the question: how long does it take you to spot someone who is full o'shit?

George Carlin is perhaps the last American to tell the unvarnished truth. And the unvarnished truth is that nothing you've been taught is true. It's all bullshit. "They've" gotcha by the balls. And the "owners of this country" like it like that. That's why they are called "conservatives". It is, after all, "their" country. They bought and paid for it with your money.

An update:

How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life. ...

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A plague on ALL your houses!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

I know how to put 99% percent of the world's religious charlatans and political demagogue war mongers out of business for good. Simply hold them to this standard: behave in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so. How many could be held to that standard? Maybe none!

Chuck Dupree, of Bad Attitudes, wrote recently:

...the right has come to dominate the discussion through clever, and not always honest, use of language and control of the definitions of terms.

This seems to be the crux of the problem, a pandemic malaise that has poisoned our political discourse.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in both Being and Nothingness and Existentialism and Human Emotions wrote of mauvaise foi i.e. "bad faith". He attributed that characteristic to people who literally lie to themselves. It's a good description of the GOP. GOPPERS find various reasons for willingly believing lies and nefarious motivations for speading them —knowingly and willingly. In general, howver, GOPPERS choose to believe Republican propaganda —meaningless slogans and platitudes —because it is focus group designed to make them feel good about themselves. Republicans have forgotten, however, that one is responsible for what one believes. Bertolt Brecht put it this way:

A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!

—Bertolt Brecht

Nothing good comes of believing a falsehood. Even worse outcomes are to be expected when falsehoods are espoused and touted by those who know them to be false. Bush's very administration was begun and continues upon various frauds deliberately perpetrated upon the American public.

Republican Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian from Texas, denounced the NeoCon agenda on the floor of the House of Representatives. His speech has been summarized in bullit points and quoted in John Dean's book Worse than Watergate. Rep. Paul pointed out that the NeoCons are really latter day Machiavellians. They believe that the state is all powerful; lying is essential for the survival of the state; certain facts should be kept secret from the people; and, finally, NeoCons dismiss any argument based upon the U.S. Constitution. Put another way, NeoCons share Bush's attitude with regard to the Constitution.

The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!

—George W. Bush

The NeoCon belief that truth is whatever they can either force or trick you into believing may prove to be America's undoing. I am a realistic person. No one in government will ever live up to the standard mentioned earlier. Having grown cynical of popular religion and politics, I am inclined to trade all the world's ideologies for a single, verifiable truth.

Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet at a time when Catholics and Protestants were at war with one another. William, himself, was most certainly an "underground" Catholic. I will leave to a bona fide Shakespeare scholar the task of debunking my belief that Shakespeare had grown cynical about the faith of his father, the faith that he, himself, had grown up with. On the other hand, Shakespeare may very well have witnessed the gruesome executions of blood relatives for the perceived threat they posed to Elizabeth I. It was in Romeo and Juliet that we find a most memorable line by Shakespeare: A plague o' both your houses!

To Muslim and Christian alike, to Democrat and GOPPER alike, I say: A plague o' both your houses!

As bad as things are, I remain optimistic and many reasons for optimism can be found in much of Shakepeare who returned time and again to the theme that evil is self-defeating. We need only wait —and survive. It was Sir Thomas More, an early casualty of England's religious wars, who said that our natural business is that of "escape".

Why was I surprised when Enron came crashing down? After all, just a few years prior, I had written of Houston's glitzy, pretentious downtown: "...green towers of Oz, smoke and mirrors"! That's what it turned out to be.

Corporate crap, propaganda, and faux cowboy bullshit passes for culture in Houston. But it doesn't stop there. Recently, Houston became home to the largest "mega" church in the world. The Lakewood Church took over what had been the Summit, where the Houston Rockets played basketball. [See Forbes: Christian Capitalism Megachurches, Megabusinesses ] Three pointers are now given up for glitzy media versions of Jesus.

Zealots in Houston?

Members of the Lakewood Church — all 16,000 of them — worship at the grand opening of their new building in a Houston arena that was formerly home of the city’s NBA team.

An excerpt from the Forbes article:

Welcome to the megabusiness of megachurches, where pastors often act as chief executives and use business tactics to grow their congregations. This entrepreneurial approach has contributed to the explosive growth of megachurches--defined as non-Catholic churches with at least 2,000 members--in the U.S. Indeed, Lakewood, New Birth, The Potter's House and World Changers, four of the biggest, have all experienced membership gains of late. Of course, growth for them has a higher purpose: to spread their faith to as many people as they can. "In our society growth equals success," says Scott Thumma, faculty associate at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. "And religious growth not only equals success but also God's blessing on the ministry."

In a nation now ruled by corporations, the corporatization of religion is an unholy and theocratic merger of church and state. It's the very picture of fascism. Is that a Nazi salute that I see in that picture?

Also in Houston, the kooky Rev. Sun Myung Moon is wooing black ministers and rewriting history. One of his "representatives" in Houston is proselytizing the idea that the Jews invented the Holocaust. There are places in Europe where "Holocaust Denial" is a prosecutable crime. However you feel about that, I hasten to add that the Holocaust happened. It's a fact! Live with it!

Our sister paper SF Weekly recently did a story on the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's extravagant attempts to make inroads among black churches by offering preachers such things as free vacations to faraway countries. Dozens of ministers have heeded Moon's call to throw out their crosses and replace them with crowns, the symbol of Moon's church.

The Reverend Bennit Hayes of the Gloryland Missionary Baptist Church in Sunnyside was cited as a minister who had a drawer full of discarded crosses from his parishioners (although the article didn't directly accuse him of taking free trips).

A Moonie in Houston?

Q. Has Reverend Moon paid for your travel expenses?

A. Naw, naw, naw, naw. See, that's one of the most misconceived things that most folks think. That just 'cause you're black you got to have folks pay for your travels.

Q. That's not what I meant.

A. Naw, naw, naw. I want you to just get what I'm saying. I came in paying my own way, up until the time I became a member of the executive committee. And once I got on the executive committee, my travels [are] paid for by the committee...I'm a giver. A lot of the black pastors do come on board for the free ride. That's a fact. But most of us come in here giving.

Q. Reverend Moon has said that the Holocaust is a consequence for the Jews' killing of Jesus. Do you believe that?

A. I was at the Holocaust museum in Israel. And let me say that the Jews themselves, the ones I met, repented for that.

Q. For the Holocaust?

A. No, no. That they actually did set up the murder of Jesus. They repented for that. Because they're the ones that led to the death of Jesus.

Q. But do you believe the Holocaust is a consequence of that?

A. I have my own views on that. But see, Reverend Moon doesn't control your mind. He gives you the liberty, you know, to think for yourself...Reverend Moon has done much more today than what Jesus did in his day. Jesus didn't travel all over the world. Reverend Moon has traveled all over the world. The Reverend Moon's been in prison. Jesus was never in prison. You see what I'm saying?

Q. Reverend Moon has called gays "dung-eating dogs." What do you think of that?

A. That's a little extreme for me. I wouldn't call them that. They're all children of God.

Q. But that kind of statement doesn't turn you off Reverend Moon?

A. Naw, naw. That's the human in him. That's what makes him not totally divine.

"Not totally divine" sounds like something Carson Kressley on Queer Eye would say, but we're sure Hayes wasn't implying anything.

--One Houston preacher gave up the cross for the cult

Moon is not divine. Not even a little bit. He's an idiot —and so are 99% of the Protestant ministers I've ever met. I have met more than my share.

Idiocy is not limited to preachers. It contaminates those in government who may be influenced by them. Voltaire said that if God did not exist, it would necessary to invent him. Is that what happened? Americans are fond of invoking "God" —most often: "God Bless America". I worry that someone, somewhere, some time, said "God Damn America" and God took them up on it.

Elsewhere, people are having to deal with what is, rather than what they would like to think it is:

IN 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia and, after success at the battle of Borodino, marched on and occupied Moscow. Napoleon and his generals took over the palaces of the court princes and great houses of the mighty boyars.

Sadly for Napoleon, the Russians had different plans for their nation. Within days after abandoning their city to the French army, they torched their own palaces, homes, enterprises, and cathedrals. They burned Moscow down around Napoleon. Denied his last great triumph, the disappointed emperor abandoned Moscow and started home. Along the way, he lost the world's most powerful army.

Recently one of Islamic Shi'ites' most revered sites, the golden mosque in Baghdad, was destroyed by sectarian enemies. By this act and the reprisals that followed, Iraq moved a substantial step closer to civil war. Though a remote, but real, possibility, an Iraqi civil war could cost the United States its army. ...

--US Army in jeopardy in Iraq, Gary Hart | March 11, 2006

False prophets are celebrated daily on FOX and similar ilk; Cindy Sheehan, who speaks for millions who have declared the megalomaniacal emperor to be naked, are gagged and threatened.

If "dissent is Democracy. [Then] Democracy is in Trouble. Never before, Lewis Lapham argues, have voices of protest been so locked out of the mainstream conversation, so marginalized and muted by a government that recklessly disregards civil liberties, and by an ever more concentrated and profit-driven media in which the safe and the salable sweep all uncomfortable truths from view.

"In the midst of the 'war on terror' - which makes the hunt for Communists in the 1950s look, in its clarity of aim and purpose, like the Normandy landings on D-Day - we face a crisis of democracy as serious as any in our history. The Bush administration makes no secret of its contempt for a cowed and largely silenced electorate, and without bothering to conceal its purpose the government coordinates 'not the defense of the American citizenry against a foreign enemy but the protection of the American plutocracy from the American democracy.'

"Gag Rule is a rousing and necessary call to action in defense of one of our most important liberties, the right to raise our voices in dissent and have those voices heard."

—Lewis Lapham, Cindy Sheehan Brutalized... more than 'Gag Ruled!'

And from the Washington Post, a harbinger of things to come:

Claude A. Allen, who resigned last month as President Bush's top domestic policy adviser, was arrested this week in Montgomery County for allegedly swindling Target and Hecht's stores out of more than $5,000 in a refund scheme, police said.

Allen, 45, of Gaithersburg, has been released on his own recognizance and is awaiting trial on two charges, felony theft scheme and theft over $500, said Lt. Eric Burnett, a police spokesman. Each charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. ...

--Bush says he's shocked and saddened by the arrest of his ex-aide.

As Buzzflash says: he had best get used to it.

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