On January 12, the New York Times ran a story entitled, “Turkish Official Says a Russian Ship, Perhaps With Munitions, Has Reached Syria“. A Turkish official “thought” the ship might have arms aboard, the Times reported, but the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it “cannot confirm” whether it carried arms, and officials in Cyprus, where the ship had stopped to refuel, “seemed unable to say for certain what was in the ship’s hold.”
On January 19, the Times ran an editorial entitled “Syria’s Rising Toll”, the second paragraph of which reads:
For months, Russia has been blocking the United Nations Security Council from imposing any serious punishments. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is far more interested in selling arms to Syria and thwarting democratic forces and their Western backers.
Emphasis added. Notice the assertion that Russia is “selling arms to Syria”, stated here as an established fact, is linked to the January 12 article. But that the original story was based on unproven speculation may now be forgotten, because the Times has now in an editorial stated as fact that Russia is “selling arms to Syria”.
Was the ship carrying arms? It’s certainly possible. But that hasn’t been established as a matter of fact. This propagandistic method of dropping any and all caveats from this or that claim is precisely how the New York Times led the media pack in deceiving the American people into the war in Iraq, a war based on lies and deceptions perpetrated on the American people precisely by this kind of reporting from the Times and other mainstream corporate media outlets.
“led the media pack in deceiving the American people into the war in Iraq, a war based on lies and deceptions perpetrated on the American people precisely by this kind of reporting from the Times and other mainstream corporate media outlets.”
We retaliated against Iraq only as a last resort after Bush told the truth about the situation. You have concluded your article with an entirely false premise.
You are kidding, right?
As a last resort… You are either deceiving yourself to believe this nonsense or you are trying to cloud the issue in more blatant lies. There is now absolutely no question that the whole sham of pretending there was a concern about Iraq’s non existent WMD was a fabrication designed to garner support for starting a war in Iraq, a war that would have been started on the false premise that 911 was somehow linked to Saddam but unfortunately for Bush even your average Joe soon realised this was bullshit. Wake up you ignorant fool.