It emerged last week that the U.S. Department of Defense has been selling the war to Iraqis by covertly planting fake news in their media; paying Iraqi newspapers to run favorable stories.

i would particularly recommend reading the transcript of the wicked propagandist BBC.
i read the transcript and thought yes that's pretty much the coverage i would expect of a bbc reporter embedded with a british unit. it gives a british grunt's eye view of the war on the ground and the mission. if i was a bbc embedded journalist i might have produced something similiar. if british journalists felt free and safe to explore the country and get a genuine iraqi perspective without the fear of being kidnapped and beheaded then there would be more balance but you can't blame the bbc for that. what exactly does aljazeera expect? the bbc will inevitably sometimes give the point of view of british soldiers when reporters are embedded, and share a common language nationality and culture with their companions but that does not make it pro war propaganda. i beleive in the ability of western journalists to, occasionally stand back and challenge their working assumptions. I don't think aljazeera is being malicious but it is being naive about the ability of individuals to detach themselves from their own culture. I also believe aljazeera in some of its reporting, of note particularly in its section on conspiracies, could learn quite a few lessons about impariality. It is the job of journalists to tell "stories". It is the duty of journalists to mediate their own reality as experienced by predominantly middle-class males and fight to subdue point of view and reach towards objective reality. i am sure a brief survey of some of the al-jazeera coverage of israel might reveal less than olympian impartiality. Al-jazeera is an important counter balance to the western media but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

UK too promotes Iraq war propaganda?

The U.S. media is ignoring the torture carried by U.S. military forces. Although the military reports provide a full description of the suffering the prisoners face, the U.S. media refuses to tackle the issue. Prisoners are tortured to death under the supervision of the U.S. forces.

U.S. media hides evidence of torture

When it comes to Iraq, if the United States is going to stay, then Rumsfeld has to go.

Let Rumsfeld Go

The price of gold passed $500 an ounce last week, its highest level since the late 1980s. This is an ominous development -- or it isn't.

Gold's Enduring Mystery

Iraq is not Korea, of course, and the Middle East is not Asia. But it is perfectly possible that the two conflicts might eventually resemble one another in the ambivalence of their conclusions. Although both the administration and its antiwar opponents speak as if there must be an either/or solution for Iraq -- either democracy or Islamic fascism -- it is perfectly possible that we end up with both. We may indeed create the first truly democratic Arab regime, with independent media, real elections and a relatively liberal political culture. But we may also, simultaneously, strengthen al Qaeda and its radical Islamic allies, in Iraq and the entire region. We may create a more entrepreneurial, globally integrated Iraq that can inspire economic reform throughout the Middle East. We may also create a deep well of international anti-American resentment that hampers our ability to conduct everything from trade negotiations to counterintelligence for decades to come.

It is even possible, in the end, that we really will help bring into existence a new generation of democratic Arab reformers across the Middle East -- and that we will need to keep troops in the region for five decades to defend them. Would such an outcome mean the war was a "defeat"? Not necessarily. Would it mean the war was a "victory"? Not exactly. Can we, the nation that invented the Hollywood happy ending, live with such a conclusion? Hard to imagine, but we might not have a choice.

It's Not Whether You 'Win' or 'Lose' . . .

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's tortuous defense of supposedly nonexistent CIA torture chambers in Eastern Europe was an acid flashback to Clintonian parsing.

Just as Bill Clinton pranced around questions about marijuana use at Oxford during the '92 campaign by saying he had never broken the laws of his country, so Rice pranced around questions about outsourcing torture by suggesting that President George W. Bush had never broken the laws of his country.

But in Bill's case, he was only talking about smoking a little joint, while Condi is talking about snatching people off the street and throwing them into lethal joints.

Maureen Dowd: Torturing the facts - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

It was a sad enough measure of how badly the Bush administration has damaged its moral standing that the secretary of state had to deny that the president condones torture before she could visit some of the most reliable American allies in Europe. It was even worse that she had a hard time sounding credible when she did it.

Secretary Rice's rendition - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

This week President George W. Bush will seek to focus attention on border security and immigration reform. But his proposals won't protect Americans from our gravest cross-border threat: the possibility that a ship, truck or train will one day import a 40-foot cargo container in which terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon.

Think inside the box - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Don't Bomb Us - I think the title says it all. I wish our media had the balls that Al-Jazeera has.

This is a story that's gained signifigant traction just about everywhere but here. I wonder why?

Don't Bomb Us - A blog by Al Jazeera Staffers

Seems the latest analysis from core samples of Antarctic ice dated 650,000 years old "not good" for those still convinced the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels to be a "natural" trend...

"Levels of carbon dioxide have climbed from 280 parts per million two centuries ago to 380 ppm today.

Skeptics sometimes dismiss the rise in greenhouse gases as part of a naturally fluctuating cycle. The new study provides ever-more definitive evidence countering that view, however.

A previous ice-core sample had traced greenhouse gases back about 440,000 years. This new sample, from East Antarctica, goes 210,000 years further back in time.

Today's still rising level of carbon dioxide already is 27% higher than its peak during all those millennia, said lead researcher Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern, Switzerland.

'We are out of that natural range today,' he said."

Not good, but also not possible to tell everyone "stop burning fossil fuel NOW!" and no one is suggesting that. But the big corporations resisting change are running out of excuses.

-LB

Ancient air bubbles shed light on greenhouse gases