Nexus - 1101 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

Project CENSORED THE MOST UNDERCOVERED NEWS IN THE USA CENSORED PROJECT THE MOST UNDERCOVERED NEWS IN THE USA Largely sidelined by the mainstream media, the most important news stories of the year, as judged by the Project Censored team, have a strong emphasis on US government and corporate authoritarianism at home and abroad. ach year, the Project Censored team from Sonoma State University, California, selects and evaluates thousands of published news stories by jour- nalists working in the national and international mainstream as well as alter- native press. Students, faculty staff and community experts participate in this process, which ultimately decides on the top 25 stories that were the most under- reported by the mainstream US media. Following is an edited summary of Project Censored's selection for 2002-2003. To see the full report plus references and updates, visit http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/. See the Book Reviews section this issue for our review of Censored 2004. — Editor 1. The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance Over the last year, the US corporate media have made much of Saddam Hussein and his stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Rarely did the media, especially television, address the possibility that larger strategies might also have driven the decision to invade Iraq. Broad political strategies regarding foreign policy do indeed exist and are part of the public record. In the 1970s, the United States and the Middle East were embroiled in a tug-of-war over oil. At the time, American military presence in the Gulf was fairly insignificant and the prospect of seizing control of Arab oilfields by force was pretty unattainable. Still, the idea of this level of dominance was very attractive to a group of hardline, pro-military Washington insiders that included both Democrats and Republicans. Eventually labelled "neoconservatives", this circle of influential strategists played important roles in the Defense departments of Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr, and at conservative think- tanks throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Today, members of this circle occupy several key posts in the White House, Pentagon and State Department. Most principal among them are: * Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the current Vice-President and Defense Secretary respectively, who have been closely aligned since they served with the Ford Administration in the 1970s; * Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the key architect of the post-war recon- struction of Iraq; * Richard Perle, past Chairman and still member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board which has great influence over foreign military policies; * William Kristol, Editor of the Weekly Standard and founder of the powerful neo- conservative think-tank, Project for a New American Century. Since the first Gulf War the US has built a network of military bases, now almost completely encircling the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. In 1989, following the end of the Cold War and just prior to the Gulf War, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz produced the "Defense Planning Guidance" report, advocating US military dominance around the globe. The plan called for the United States to maintain and grow in military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. Using words like "pre-emptive" and "military forward presence", the plan called for the US to be dominant over friends and foes alike. It concluded with the assertion that the US can best attain this position by making itself "absolutely powerful". For months leading up to the war against Iraq, it was widely assumed among critics of the impending war that a hidden motive for military action was Iraq's oil, not terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. In fact, "No Blood for Oil" became perhaps the leading Compiled by Project Censored © 2002-2003 Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Avenue Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609, USA Telephone: +1 (707) 664 2500 Email: censored@sonoma.edu Website: http:/Awww.projectcensored.org NEXUS = 11 DECEMBER 2003 — JANUARY 2004 www.nexusmagazine.com