Just as Bill Clinton’s bombardment of Serbia was launched on the back of a humanitarian hoax about fake concentration camps, establishment media outlets are already busy contriving phony stories about Gaddafi using “human shields” to convince the American people that the $100 million dollar a day attack on Libya is virtuous and noble.
The latest example comes from Fox News, who completely manufactured the claim that Gaddafi was using western journalists as human shields to prevent fighter jets from bombing his compound.
When the U.S. government prepares to throw another $1 billion-plus at a new war even as Americans see their living standards eviscerated and record numbers are forced on food stamps, the propaganda necessary to sell the conquest has to be slicker than ever before.
With many starting to question the credibility of evidence that Gaddafi is abusing his own people, as so-called “protesters,” backed by US arms from Egypt, commandeer fighter jets and tanks in their bid to overthrow the government, the demonization of Gaddafi as a monster who needs to be toppled for the security of the region is imperative.
That’s why Fox News completely manufactured a claim about Gaddafi using journalists as human shields to prevent his compound from being bombed and ran it as an exclusive story yesterday.
In a piece entitled, EXCLUSIVE: Libyans Use Journalists as Human Shields, Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin & Justin Fishel wrote, “An attack on the compound of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi on Sunday had to be curtailed because of journalists nearby, Fox News has learned.”
“British sources confirmed that seven Storm Shadow missiles were ready to be fired from a British aircraft, but the strikes had to be curtailed due to crews from CNN, Reuters and other organizations nearby. Officials from Libya’s Ministry of Information brought those journalists to the area to show them damage from the initial attack and to effectively use them as human shields.”
But there’s a problem, one of the CNN journalists supposedly used by Gaddafi as a human shield subsequently appeared on CNN and labeled the claim, “Outrageous and absolutely hypocritical.”
“The idea that we were some kind of human shields is nuts,” CNN international correspondent Nic Robertson told Wolf Blitzer, adding that the 40 journalists on the tour of Libyan government buildings were free to get on and off the bus whenever they wanted.
Robertson pointed out that Fox News didn’t even send a journalist on the trip, instead dispatching a security guard, adding that the Fox News journalists in the country rarely ever leave the hotel.
“To say they didn’t go and for them to say this was government propaganda to hold us there as human shields when they didn’t even leave the hotel is ridiculous,” stated Robertson, adding that the journalists were even physically pushed back on the bus because Gaddafi’s officials wanted to get them out of harm’s way as quickly as possible.
“When you come to somewhere like Libya, you expect lies and deceit from the dictatorship here. You don’t expect it from the other journalists,” said Robertson, adding, “If I sound angry it’s because I am.”
Had it not been exposed by the commendable Robertson, the benefits of this hoax would have been twofold – on one hand, Gaddafi is made to look like a careless savage who has no concern for human life, and particularly western journalists, using them as sacrificial lambs for his own propaganda purposes. Secondly, it gives the “humanitarian” hoax behind the attack some legitimacy, suggesting that British and American bombers really do care about protecting civilians lives.
Fox News has proven itself to be a complete tool of the US military-industrial complex. Nothing it now reports about the attack on Libya can ever be trusted
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The establishment media is no stranger to inventing phony human rights atrocities in order to promote and legitimize wars.
President Bill Clinton’s depleted uranium holocaust in Serbia, the consequences of which led to thousands of cancer deaths, was manufactured for mass consumption by the helpful establishment media in a glossy package of deception based on a similar “humanitarian” hoax.
Clinton’s war was launched on the back of a fabricated controversy involving a Serbian relief camp that housed Bosnian refugees, which the media spun into being a Nazi-style “concentration camp” in which emaciated Bosnians were being imprisoned against their will.
The footage broadcast by the global media was contrived so as to make it look as if the Bosnians were inside a barbed-wire enclosure, when in fact it was the British TV news crew who were inside the enclosure and who were filming through the barbed-wire to the outside, where Bosnians had gathered. The “emaciated concentration camp victim” was in fact a man with a natural birth defect.
Publications like Time Magazine ran the hoax alongside headlines like Must It Go On?, and the public was told that air strikes were imperative to protect the civilian population. The subsequent NATO-led attacks on the country, aided by Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, with depleted uranium weapons caused civilian deaths and crippling long term health effects that dwarfed anything Slobodan Miloševic was accused of.
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