OIL SLICKS

You can count on Republican lies getting us into Mideast wars, and the truth getting us out of them ...

Shortly after another ill-fated war in the Mideast had erupted in the spring of 2003, a TV network I had barely heard of reached out and asked whether I’d consider doing an on-air spot with them.

At that point, the War in Iraq was already going sideways, and our troops, and countless innocent Iraqis were being slaughtered in a theater of war, whose set was constructed on the basis of a diabolical lie.

Sort of rings a bell 23 springs later, doesn’t it?

U.S. Army Private First Class (PFC) Jessica Lynch, and just been rescued after her convoy had taken a wrong turn and a terrible beating in Iraq’s Al Nasiriyah province. In all, 11 U.S. troops were killed in that battle.

In the wake of this ambush, and now fully engaged on the homefront in the war of public opinion, the Pentagon quickly swung into action and hauled out its most lethal weapon: propaganda.

Lynch was actually a hero, they told us, who singlehandedly fought off the Iraqi forces until she was rescued. The Pentagon liars dubbed her, “Little Girl Rambo” and in just hours had spun her (and the battle) into everything she wasn’t. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld led the barrage on the truth. Rumsfeld had made a career inside the Beltway spinning bullshit into shiny gold nuggets, many of which found their way into his pockets.

He and our crooked Vice President at the time, Dick Cheney, were quickly becoming millionaire wartime profiteers, proving there is absolutely nothing some lowlifes won’t do for money.

We would learn many months later from Lynch herself that she never fired a single shot while captured, and had been badly wounded.

But the damage had been done. Truth was that war’s first casualty, and it took a terrible beating right up and through the time the smirky W. Bush was landing on an aircraft carrier with the words, Mission Accomplished.

You bet it was, because the war would go on for years after that steaming pile of priceless propaganda.

But before all that, I was dealing with a woman on the other end of a call who identified herself as working for something called “Fox News.”

With the war going badly, I guess Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing propagandists figured the managing editor at Stars and Stripes might be interested in doing some cheerleading for a military that never belonged within 1,000 miles of Iraq.

News and events were moving quickly at the paper, and we had our hands plenty full keeping our reporters safe downrange, and making sure the troops and their families got an honest accounting of what was really going down in that gruesome theater of war.

I declined the interview, but not before explaining to her that Stars and Stripes was an editorially independent newspaper that covered the troops and their families overseas. We were not a propaganda arm of Rumsfeld’s military.

I remember thinking that would be a pretty good story if they were brave enough to do it, but honestly as a proud, haughty, broke newspaper guy, I paid zero attention to Fox News or most any TV channel at the time.

Print was still king in my eyes, even if I was about to die on that hill, with the Internet on the verge of swamping everything.

So I just politely hung up the phone and got back to work.

Now, decades later, Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that honestly reports on the troops is in deep trouble, and Fox News, the station that regularly lies to the troops, is going gangbusters.

The Internet is a monster that is busy consuming all of us.

We lost the War in Iraq, and are in the midst of losing today’s War in Iran.

It is the Republican way.

We are still being lied to on a daily basis by a Republican Commander in Chief, who is the single most prodigious liar in world history, and a drunken loudmouth heading up our Defense Department, who made a name for himself by regularly lying on … Fox News.

You can’t make this up, which is why I am the most cynical guy I know.

Say, have you heard the one about Republicans being better on the economy …?

These days I no longer kick around newsrooms enjoying the company of other lifelong cynics, who know power can’t be trusted and needs to be held to account. I have gone off to my little world of independence, where I call ‘em as I see ‘em, and can take dead aim at the public figures and events that have an out-shaped influence on our lives.

I am still trying to make a living avoiding TV news, but am grudgingly using the unforgiving Internet to serve the printed word to readers.

I figure I am the luckiest guy alive, because I am being paid to do what I love, even if like you I pay a pretty healthy price for simply having the audacity to pay attention to the hell that envelops us.

I’ve built a sturdy readership since hanging my shingle on the Substack door, and Enough Already is up over 25,000 subscribers. I am thankful beyond words for the readership, but I won’t lie to you, things have started to plateau, and it’s making me nervous.

I looked it up, and this will be my 455th column since moving over here 44 months ago. That works out to about 10 columns a month, which is also about as much math as you’ll get from a journalist.

I am nothing if not dependable.

So now comes the pitch you knew was coming, because in addition to being a one-man editorial gang I also grudgingly double as the site’s promotions department.

Look, I know there are thousands of things competing for your time and your money. Make that millions …

It’s nuts. I know.

If you are a free subscriber, you know by now that I don’t do paywalls. You get my stuff the minute it’s published, and can read everything I’ve written for free the previous two weeks, where it then goes under lock and key for the paid subscribers.

I allow comments from everybody because I believe in community, despite being told I’m out of my mind for doing that. Go ahead, check out other Substacks with similar readership sizes and you’ll see only a paid subscription gets you into the comments forum.

I’ll wait here.

Now that you’re back, I wonder if you’d consider upgrading to a paid subscription simply out of the goodness of your heart? My prices are about as low as the Gods at Substack will allow, and if I didn’t think I was worth the money, I wouldn’t be going out hat in hand like this.

I hate going out hat in hand like this, I really do. Promotions aren’t my thing, and I have a 2006 Honda Accord I am still kicking around in to prove it.

I am as loyal to that car, as I am to you ….

If you are already paying for what I’m writing, I can’t thank you enough. Many of you have been with me for several years now, and we are family. Your support and loyalty have always overwhelmed me.

I don’t do anything fancy around here. Writing’s all I do, and want to do. If you want podcasts, and videos and all that other stuff there are loads of super-duper places you can find them.

I promise you this, though: Some of them might hit as hard, and produce the steady diet of truth I do, but none of them provide more.

I’ve been making a living on the printed word for 43 years. It’s all I know how to do.

So I’ll end with a question: What is the truth worth to you these days?

-Earl

(That’s me covering the launch of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign in Madison, Wisconsin two years ago. The top photo features three of America’s most notorious liars, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Who are you going to believe, them … or me?)