The Turning of the Media

By: Brian Balta

In my last column, I described how there are two ways to view the goals of the weapons inspectors. You can either look at them as a method of ensuring peace, or as a method of finding a reason for war.

For those who want a war, the inspectors are seen as trying to find something, anything that would justify a war, and only one single find would be totally sufficient to precipitate a conflict. And, if the inspectors don't find anything, then they are viewed as ineffective, and this is then taken as another reason for war.

For those who don't want a war, the inspectors can be a method of keeping Iraq contained. If you've got a couple hundred inspectors going around Iraq for months at a time, they're going to be able to find and dismantle a lot of stuff, just like they did the last time they were there. However, if they don't find anything, it is taken as evidence that Saddam really doesn't have anything left around.

What is remarkable to consider is the fact that the news media, the people who play as much of a role in shaping public opinion as anyone else, have been turned entirely over to following the first point of view, that the inspectors are there to find a reason for war. The second idea, that inspections could bring about peace and save lives, is not even given consideration.

Every time you hear a person on any news channel, whether it be Fox News or CNN or ABC News or any other news source, they all discuss the inspections while taking the perspective of "Have they found us a reason to invade yet?" or "Will Hans Blix's latest trip to Iraq bring us closer to war?"

During the 1990's, we had Iraq right where we wanted them. We had our people inside their borders. We were bombing them regularly. The only material they could buy on the world market was stuff we let in. They couldn't even fly planes. This is exactly the situation we have today. Iraq was totally contained during the 1990's. It is contained today, but no one in the news media says that at all.

Take for example the finding of the empty shells which could have been loaded with chemical weapons. If one were to flip on CNN that day, the debate would not have been over whether or not we should destroy these items; it would have been whether or not this was a big enough reason to go to war.

The news media has managed to craft the idea into the public's mind that the inspectors can't do anything to keep Iraq under control, that they serve no purpose other than to find something. But finding these items is exactly what we want to do; not because finding them gives us a reason for war but because finding them lets us destroy them. And to top it off, having people there helps prevent them from rebuilding.

Everyone out there has bought into this war-causing idea. Even the stock market follows this line of thinking; the day those shells were found there was a pretty major drop in the markets under fear that it would be taken as a reason for war.

We even managed to convince the U.N. that their own inspections don't work. The Security Council resolution passed last fall assumes this fact. It says that if anything is found, it's a material breach and a reason for war. Therefore, the U.N. has declared that the inspectors will never be able to find enough to disarm Iraq, or even to keep it under control; it's assumed the inspectors won't be that effective. But no one challenged this opinion.

It's simply the wrong perspective to take. Think about our other great adversary of the last century; the Soviet Union. Imagine if we'd managed to cripple the Soviet army, declare everything West of the Urals and East of Mongolia to be a no fly zone, and put hundreds of people inside the country to make sure they weren't building weapons. What kind of state would that leave them in? Would they have stood a chance against us? Even if they were building new weapons, we would be there all over them waiting to find it.

Would anyone in the U.S. have objected to that relationship? Would anyone have thought that, if we put the Soviets in that state, that we should invade them just to make sure? Of course not. They'd be beaten. Even if we found they weren't complying, they would be so utterly crippled that they couldn't resist us if we dismantled whatever they built. And the Soviets had a much much bigger country than Iraq.

We have the exact same situation today in Iraq. We've got them beaten, broken, banned from flight, and we've got hundreds of people on the ground. We've got satellite over-flights, and can monitor just about everything going on in that country. If we think we don't have enough people there, then let's put more in. But no, we're going to invade them just to make sure.

If you give them the chance, the inspections will work. They worked last time, with even less. It just took a lot longer. But this is not a perspective you will hear on the news media. No one out there at all will argue that finding something in Iraq would be a sign the inspections are working. No one will argue that Saddam is exactly where we'd want him right now. No one will argue that continuous inspections should be the final goal, until we can put his own people in a situation to overthrow the fool.

It honestly is hard to believe that Iraq won't have something left. We left the inspectors out for years. Putting them back in was an enormous success. We should let them do their jobs, instead of poisoning the well and saying that their only job is to find a reason for war.

The media in this country is often accused of being liberal. But in this case, the perspective they have taken is the perspective of the administration; that anything found is a reason for war. The analysis that would lead to peace is absent. The media has not spoken it. No one in the U.S. is even considering that intense inspections should be the final goal. And that omission is going to lead to the deaths of thousands.