On The Huffington Post, Liberal democratic activist and blogger Bob Geiger wrote yesterday that “while some would say we need additional evidence that the Iraq war is prosecuted by a bunch of Republican liars as much as we need more proof that disgraced GOP Congressman Mark Foley is a pervert, it’s still important that everyone catch [last night’s] 60 Minutes to see “State of Denial” author Bob Woodward [explain] in agonizing detail how George W. Bush and the Republican party have lied to the American people on the level of violence in Iraq and, in particular, the intensity of attacks against U.S. troops.
“Woodward details that, no matter what nonsense Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld spew daily about how great things are going in Iraq, it has indeed gone to hell in a hand basket and will get worse, not better, in 2007.
“The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], ‘Oh, no, things are going to get better,'” Woodward told 60 Minutes interviewer Mike Wallace last night . “Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know.”
“The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn’t know? The American public,” said Woodward.
Aaaah, but does the public really want to know? And what would they do if they did, doped into submission and docile as zoo animals as most of them are? There has long been a determination among millions of red-state Americans to interpret all pessimistic-realistic reporting about Iraq as the ravings of lefty Bush haters, and so the hard truths get tuned out.
And let’s not forget the mainstream American news media and its longstanding reluctance to hit hard enough and uncover enough about the Iraq situation. Why does it seem that documentary filmmakers like Deborah Scranton (The War Tapes), Michael Tucker and Petra Eppelin (The Prisoner, , Gunner Palace), Patricia Foulkrod (The Ground Truth) and Michael Moore (Farenheit 9/11) seem to tell it more plainly and persuasively than news media types in their daily/weekly reportings?
There’s an answer to this question — a fundamental answer, I believe — and it’s right there in Robert Kane Pappas‘ documentary called Orwell Rolls In His Grave.