More War Funding Goes with Media Flow

By the time The Associated Press relayed the word late Wednesday — just a couple of days short of the summer solstice — the news was already a foregone political conclusion. "Democratic and GOP leaders in the House announced agreement Wednesday on a long-overdue war funding bill they said President Bush would be willing to sign," AP reported.

The wire service explained that the bill would "provide about $165 billion to the Pentagon to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for about a year."

What a difference 19 months can make.

Back in early November 2006, during the immediate aftermath of the mid-term elections that swept a Democratic majority into the House and Senate, plenty of media analysis ascribed the huge Republican setback to antiwar sentiment among voters. But by the middle of the month, a different kind of media spin was taking hold — what you might call a propaganda surge of we-can't-withdraw messaging that has been sustained and effective.

Effective, anyway, among the political elites. Most opinion polls show a substantial majority of Americans are in favor of initiating a fairly swift withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. But the orchestral media themes about the necessity of continuing the Pentagon's war effort in Iraq have facilitated the refusal of power brokers on Capitol Hill to match the public's views with congressional action. The Democratic leadership caved.

So, as the Associated Press put it in the June 18 dispatch, "the agreement drops restrictions on Bush's ability to conduct the war and gives him almost all of the funding he sought well over a year ago for Iraq and Afghanistan." That's the kind of so-called bipartisanship that gives the Republican side the gist of what it has demanded.

No wonder John Boehner, the House minority leader, sounded so pleased. ''This is an agreement that has been worked out in a bipartisan way that I think is acceptable to both most Democrats and most Republicans and to the White House,'' he said.

The GOP, with hefty assistance from the news media overall, has dug in its heels and hung onto perpetuation of a war that has been thoroughly discredited with reference to about every rationale for it — from initial agenda-setting to claims of certain military "victory" to assertions that an invasion would lead to stability elsewhere in the Middle East.

If there was a turning point in the media spin at the prospect of continuing the Iraq War indefinitely — with a pivot from themes of voter revulsion to themes of erudite acceptance — it came on Nov.

15, 2006. That's the day that The New York Times ran this prominent front-page headline: "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say."

Touted as a "Military Analysis," the piece reported that — while some congressional Democrats were saying withdrawal of U.S. troops "should begin within four to six months" — "this argument is being challenged by a number of military officers, experts and former generals, including some who have been among the most vehement critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policies."

The article was under the byline of Michael Gordon, who appeared hours later on Anderson Cooper's CNN show. Under the studio lights, reporter Gordon instantly became pundit Gordon, declaring that withdrawal was "simply not realistic." And he went further — flatly stating that he opposed a pullout.

Such selective choices of "experts" to highlight in the media have done wonders for the stay-the-course line as the Iraq War continues. By escalating the war under its "surge" rubric, the White House has promoted the concept that the solution to war is more war.

The latest appropriation of more taxpayer billions for the Iraq War will displease much of the public — but the new funding is very much in line with the media trends that have dominated the political terrain for well over a year. The manipulative qualities of news coverage are serving Washington's war makers very well.

Norman Solomon's books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." A documentary film of the same name, based on the book, has just been released on DVD nationwide. To find out more about Norman Solomon and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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