[rad-green] Corporate Media Turns to Warhawks, Including Former Bush Officials, to Beat Drums of War on Iran

*https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/03/corporate-media-turns-warhawks-including-former-bush-officials-beat-drums-war-iran
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/03/corporate-media-turns-warhawks-including-former-bush-officials-beat-drums-war-iran>Common
Dreams          January 03, 2020Corporate Media Turns to Warhawks,
Including Former Bush Officials, to Beat Drums of War on Iran"Nothing's
been learned from 2003. Nothing."by Julia Conley, staff writer*

*Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer, senior adviser and White House press
secretary under the George W. Bush administration, appeared on Fox News
Thursday night in the hours after the Trump administration assassinated top
Iranian military official Qasem Soleimani. (Photo: Fox News/screenshot)*

Trump critics and peace advocates watched in horror Thursday night and
Friday morning as some of the top architects of the Iraq War took to the
corporate media to spin a narrative aimed at retroactively convincing
Americans that the killing of Iranian military official Qasem Soleimani was
essential to the safety of the U.S.—a replica of the run-up to the Iraq War
nearly two decades ago.

Following reports that President Donald Trump ordered
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/02/explicit-act-war-us-kills-senior-iranian-military-official-qasem-soleimani-baghdad>
the
airstrike that killed Soleimani, the major general of the Iranian Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, former George W. Bush administration officials
were among those who media outlets called on to make a case for the act.

"*CNN* is allowing a parade of Republican lawmakers to go on air and
cheerlead for war with Iran, and barely bothering to ask any of them how
the U.S. keeps the region safe or what the plan is. We've learned much less
since 2003 than we should have."
—Matthew Chapman, *Raw Story*Former White House Press Secretary Ari
Fleischer suggested, as conservatives did in 2003 regarding Iraqi
civilians, that Iranians would likely celebrate the killing of
Soleimani—presuming to speak for demonstrators who have decried economic
hardships
<https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2019/11/16/niac-statement-protests-across-iran-over-gas-price-hike>in
the face of U.S. sanctions and government mismanagement in recent weeks.

"The Iranian people have been leading a revolution, a rebellion against
their government, knowing what a dictatorship it is," Fleischer told
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-figures-hail-trumps-peace-through-strength-after-iran-commander-killed>*
Fox
News.* "So I think it is entirely possible this is going to be a catalyst
inside Iran where the people celebrate the killing of Soleimani."

Journalist Judd Legum wrote
<https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1212945796783587328> that *Fox* is
"getting the band back together" as right-wingers rework their 2003 claims
to apply to Iran, joined by Trump administration officials like Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo.

Pompeo appeared on *CNN*
<https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1213119541817028608>Friday to claim
that Iranian civilians "will view the American action last night as giving
them freedom"—even as thousands of people took to the streets
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/03/hundreds-thousands-iranians-flood-streets-condemn-us-assassination-qassem-soleimani>
in
Tehran and other cities in Iran to protest the Trump administration's
actions.

A number of observers denounced cable news networks for offering a platform
to pro-war extremists while ignoring the voices of peace advocates and
critics.

"Former Bush appointees who thought the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a good
idea?" tweeted journalism professor and *Guardian* columnist Christian
Christensen. "Maybe not be the most objective commentators on US interests
in the region."

"It's War Inc. all over again," wrote Dave Zirin, sports editor for *The
Nation*. "No voices calling for peace. No voices critical of empire. Just
establishment media and current and former Pentagon officials who feed off
the trillion-dollar war machine."

News networks demonstrated their eagerness to present an uncritical view of
the Trump administration's reasoning for the airstrike, which came days
after the president, without evidence, accused
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/31/without-evidence-trump-accuses-iran-orchestrating-attack-us-embassy-iraq-fears-war>
Iran
of orchestrating an attack at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

*CNBC*'s declaration that the U.S. had "just [taken] out the world's number
one bad guy" was condemned as "journalistic malpractice" by writer Kelsey
Atherton.

*Philadelphia Inquirer* columnist Will Bunch wrote about the contrast
between the Trump administration's sudden escalation in Iran and the run-up
to George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of iraq—prior to which the president, his
top advisers, and other conservative commentators spent more than a year
<https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/transcript1.html>insisting the U.S.
military should defeat Saddam Hussein.

Trump ordered the airstrike that killed Soleimani before "99 percent" of
Americans had even heard of the official, wrote Bunch.

"Within minutes, the same people who brought us the endless wars in Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere suddenly showed up on TV to declare [Soleimani]
was the worst person in the world," he tweeted.
<https://twitter.com/Will_Bunch/status/1213076087112110081>

"Where is the speech to the American people that lays out to the everyday
citizen 1) who was Soleimani 2) what are his crimes against the U.S. 3) how
does killing him make us safer 4) what is our plan for the messy
aftermath?" Bunch asked, calling the administration's unilateral move
without lawmakers' knowledge—much less congressional
approval—"imperialistic and authoritarian."

Filmmaker and activist Michael Moore added that with a steady stream of
commentary from Fleischer, Rove, Pompeo, and other conservatives clamoring
to move ahead with war in Iran, Americans will be "trained to hate"
Soleimani by the end of the week—even if they had never heard of him before
Thursday night.

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