Toldjah So: Media continues march against confrontation with Iran
On Saturday, I wrote about how the media is already making its case against confrontation with Iran by setting up strawman arguments against the administration and framing the debate based on things the administration has not asserted. Here’s what I said in the last full paragraph of that post (emphasis added):
This is a classic example of how the media shapes an argument – and in this case, they’ve outright built up a strawman and are challenging the admin to Γ’β¬Λback it up’, when the admin isn’t the group who created the strawman in the first place. The media are making it clear that they don’t want a confrontation with Iran in any way shape or form, and they’re making their erroneous case against it. This is how most of the articles we’ll see on Iran in the coming days and month will be framed.
That is indeed what’s happening, and Don Surber provides more evidence of it with his post about a piece from the Associated Press on the US’s stance towards Iran. Surber outlined the piece’s talking points succinctly:
1. Bush made stuff up about Iraq having WMD. Wrote Raum: “As then, the Bush administration is making allegations about Iran without providing proof.”
2. It is personal. Wrote Raum: “Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is now Bush’s primary Mideast nemesis, replacing the late Saddam Hussein.”
3. Bush is provoking a war. Wrote Raum: “Bush insists he has no plans to invade Iran, only to protect U.S. troops in Iraq. But in recent days Γ’β¬Β¦” we moved an aircraft carrier into the region, allowed troops to shoot back at Iranian agents, and has armed Iran’s neighbors with Patriot missiles.
The article carries with it the dubious headline Analysis: Bush’s Iran Stance Echoes Iraq.
Did ANYONE on the left – including their mediot pals – pay any attention at all to their beloved UN’s announcement at the end of January that Iran is planning to start nuke development as early as next month? You know, the all-knowing UN the left insists we ‘must all’ listen to and ‘heed’ regarding global threats … the UN the left doesn’t want us to make a move without? If the UN says it, we must believe it, right?
Yet the media (and Democrats like Senator Jay Rockefeller) want to act like it’s the Bush administration who is trying to incite a war with Iran and not the other way around? Nah, couldn’t possibly be agenda-based journalism, could it?