Monday, September 22, 2003
Back from the dead or . . . ?
Absent any way of verifying the administration's latest tale that has the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, singing like a canary, how quickly the corporate media have forgotten that Mohammed was reportedly killed on Sept. 11. 2002,in a shootout with police at his Karachi, Pakistan, apartment.
The corporate media also failed to remember that Mohammed was allegedly dead when the New York Times reported last March 2 that Mohammed had been detained by Pakistani authorities and turned over to American officials. Reuters on the same day claimed that Pakistan Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat denied Mohammed had been handed over to the Americans. But Rashid Qureshi, spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf, claimed he was being interrogated by both Pakistani and American agents.
So a man reportedly dead was now reportedly alive and in the hands of the Pakistanis or the Americans or being shared by interrogators for both countries, or . . .
After a brief flurry of "news" reports about the "grand capture" of a man supposedly dead, that was the last we heard of Mohammed until now.
Confused? Credit the Bush administration and its eager corporate media helpers. They can confuse, infer, obfuscate and lie without having to say they are sorry. Remember, these are the same people who led nearly 70 percent of your fellow Americans to believe that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda and, therefore, bore responsibility for 9/11. The more they muddy the waters, with the aid of progressives in denial about what their government would or would not do to its own people, the more difficult it becomes to get to the truth about who was behind the 9/11 attacks.
The corporate media also failed to remember that Mohammed was allegedly dead when the New York Times reported last March 2 that Mohammed had been detained by Pakistani authorities and turned over to American officials. Reuters on the same day claimed that Pakistan Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat denied Mohammed had been handed over to the Americans. But Rashid Qureshi, spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf, claimed he was being interrogated by both Pakistani and American agents.
So a man reportedly dead was now reportedly alive and in the hands of the Pakistanis or the Americans or being shared by interrogators for both countries, or . . .
After a brief flurry of "news" reports about the "grand capture" of a man supposedly dead, that was the last we heard of Mohammed until now.
Confused? Credit the Bush administration and its eager corporate media helpers. They can confuse, infer, obfuscate and lie without having to say they are sorry. Remember, these are the same people who led nearly 70 percent of your fellow Americans to believe that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda and, therefore, bore responsibility for 9/11. The more they muddy the waters, with the aid of progressives in denial about what their government would or would not do to its own people, the more difficult it becomes to get to the truth about who was behind the 9/11 attacks.
