How the U.S. Concocted a Terror Threat to Justify Syria Strikes, and the Corporate Media Went Along

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOUU-c1Kjp4#t=15

How the U.S. Concocted a Terror Threat to Justify Syria Strikes, and the Corporate Media Went Along

Democracy Now

Published on Sep 29, 2014

http://democracynow.org - As the U.S. expands military operations in Syria, we look at the Khorasan group, the shadowy militant organization the Obama administration has invoked to help justify the strikes. One month ago, no one had heard of Khorasan, but now U.S. officials say it poses an imminent threat to the United States. As the strikes on Syria began, U.S. officials said Khorasan was "nearing the execution phase" of an attack on the United States or Europe, most likely an attempt to blow up a commercial plane in flight. We are joined by Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept, whose new article with Glenn Greenwald is "The Khorasan Group: Anatomy of a Fake Terror Threat to Justify Bombing Syria."

Just a question I have been thinking about.....

How did the Army decide that going back to their Indian killing uniforms was somehow politic?

Lefties???

This is odd, Amy Goodman and Democracy Now are presumptively left wing and Mother Jones , also ostensibly left wing, seem to be at cross purposes over made up terrorism with Mother Jones blaming the crazy conspiracy theory on the right wingers. It is as if the Left doesn't know what its own right hand is doing or they didn't get the script in time.

MOJO (sic): http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/09/right-wing-conspiracy-obama-made-up-khorasan

Khorasan Doesn’t Exist, They Never Did, You’ve Been Lied To The

Published on Sep 29, 2014

"As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval.

The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore."* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

*Read more here from Glenn Greenwald & Murtaza Hussain / First Look:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/20...

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Khorasan, Hong Kong, Afghanistan, War Authorization & Oklahoma Beheading - The Young Turks 9/29/2014 News & Politics
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...

Beyond Orwell

We've always been at war with [redacted]

Still not getting it

Phil still recites the official line on 9/11 and Boston as if it's gospel. And Paul wonders why the ruling elites don't see that they're 'leading us all over a cliff.' Later, it's true, he does acknowledge that there isn't any segment of the ruling elite that really has the interests of society-at-large at heart. But overall, such an awareness seems to be missing.

I was encouraged early on in the interview when Phil said that it isn't just that corporate media doesn't want to rock the boat, 'it is the boat.' But it turned out to be more like another exercise in liberal hand-wringing that hardly differs from those one might have encountered many times over these past dozen or so (for one thing, it continues to mistake a symptom of the destruction of democracy--the state of corporate news media--for the cause). And while 'alternative' media's understanding of what's happening has hardly changed, the reality that they're supposedly trying to help us understand has just kept getting worse.

That is what I wanted to say and couldn't have said it better.

What Donahue should have said is that Fox is criticizing Obama all the time for all the wrong reasons and then say what a disappointment he is. Donahue started with an advantage that many don't have, he went to Notre Dame which is supposed to be a pretty good school; then he worked at a long, successful, career. He has seen and done a lot of things. He lives in New York City one of the cross roads of the world. When you live a life like that you should pick something up, some street smarts, some savviness some savoir faire. The Three-card Monte street games are for the hicks, the rubes, the bridge and tunnel crowd; New Yorkers know better. They call New York City "Iowa on the Hudson," because supposedly the unwashed masses of farmers and Midwestern insurance salesman, and Betty Crocker types who don't have the patience to read Cervantes, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Bronte, and Eliot can have these books encapsulated and spoon fed to them in a festive musical reviews. Native New Yorkers are supposed to be heads above all that; and yet they are played by the system and repeat, it is Radio City after all, all the propaganda that is fit to propagate.

Donahue mentioned Vietnam and I get a sense that Phil, a Catholic, was more in line with the thinking of the Berrigan brothers than the perverse politics of the hawk Cardinal Spellman. I kinda think he knows what side his ethics are buttered on. His naivete seems to spring from that kind of Thom Hartmanesque faith that the progressives, the Wobblies, and the unionists are all waiting in the wings to save us. Have you read Mother Jones lately? Their Mockingbird slip is showing and Pacifica, started by a commie, is trying their damndest to go retail. Everything left of the Golden Hoard is fire walled. In Donahue's defense, Phil Donahue is retired but he hasn't quit. He is affiliated, along with his wife, with St.Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee with a "daily operating budget of $1.6 million, 72% of which is from donations.*" I guess you don't want to burn a lot of bridges when you have a lot of schmoozing to do and I am sure that Donahue and his wife do a lot of that.

*Advertising Age