The Israel-Gaza Fog Of War-- Replete With The Kind Of Atrocity Propaganda That We Never Outgrow

Classic Trump gaslighting in Florida yesterday: “For four years we did not have an incident. There’s been no terror, we put the terror ban, we put everything, we did things that nobody’s ever done before. We had no terror for four years. We had no problems for four years.” Why even bother paying attention to that lout, you ask? A true word never comes of of his mouth. Before dawn this morning, Shane Goldmacher reported that Biden is trailing Trump in 5 of the most critical battleground states— Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania— by margins of 3 to 10 percentage points among registered voters. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, and by just two points. “Across the six battlegrounds— all of which Biden carried in 2020— the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent. Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Biden’s policies have personally hurt them. The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Biden is fraying. Demographic groups that backed Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction. Voters under 30 favor Biden by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Trump’s edge in rural regions. And while women still favored Biden, men preferred Trump by twice as large a margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled so many Democratic gains in recent years. Black voters— long a bulwark for Democrats and for Biden— are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.”

We can tell ourselves that

1- Siena is not a good polling firm outside of New York

2- This is a bad time for Biden with the Democratic base because of the Israel-Gaza war but the base will return home by next year.

3- In the end it will be a lesser-of-two-evils election and no matter how shitty Biden is, voters will realize Trump is much worse.

But this flawed polling is still a reason to pay attention to what Trump— and his allies— are saying… even ito the transparent gaslighting.

Yesterday, during an interview on Right Side Broadcasting, a neo-Nazi YouTube channel, Cory Mills, a MAGAt congressman from a swing district northeast of Orlando (Seminole and Volusia counties), claimed that “paid actors” are pretending to be killed in the Israel-Hamas war. “What the mainstream media is saying about the indiscriminate fire and the actors— I mean you literally have paid actors who are pretending to be killed, pretending to be treated,” said Mills. “Crisis actors” are part of is a popular conspiracy theory in the alternative world of QAnon. Unfortunately, people in that parallel world vote in our elections— and people like Cory Mills actually wind up in Congress. Mills himself is the founder of a weapons company that sells arms to foreign governments— foreign governments Mills refuses to identify, although the company has offices in Kabul, Islamabad and Baghdad. At the start of this term— his freshman term— Mills handed out (inert) 40 mm grenades stamped with a GOP elephant to his congressional colleagues.

Do you know the term, “the fog of war?” It’s normally used to describe the uncertainty, confusion, and chaos that invariably occurs during wars and signifies the difficulty of obtaining accurate information in the midst of a military conflagration. The term is usually attributed to the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote about the concept in his book On War, a 2-decades-long project published in 1832, two years after his death. He never actually used the term but wrote that “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.” The exact use of the phrase was in the title of Sir Lonsdale Augustus Hale’s book, The Fog of War (1896), where he describes it as a “the state of ignorance in which commanders frequently find themselves as regards the real strength and position, not only of their foes, but also of their friends.”

The fog of war can result from various factors:

• incomplete intelligence

• the fast-paced and unpredictable nature of combat

• the emotional and psychological stress experienced by soldiers

• the deliberate use of deception— propaganda— by the combatants

It’s the last factor that I want to talk about, one in which information is incomplete, confusing or unclear but not because of battlefield conditions but due to purposeful manipulation, something we can’t escape in the current war between Israel and Gaza. First though… even I’m not old enough to remember, first-hand, the Spanish-American War. But I do recall high school history where we learned about the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. Elements of he US government, hellbent on war, immediately blamed Spain for the sinking, even though there was no evidence to support the claim. The government claimed that a Spanish mine had sunk the ship, although an investigation by the US Navy later concluded that the explosion had originated inside the ship. Meanwhile, the government was also exaggerating a threat to the U.S. posed by Spain, a declining, weak, third-rate power, and claiming, with no evidence, that Spain was committing atrocities against the Cuban people.

The U.S. government’s and the Cuban independence movement’s propaganda campaign, bolstered by the “yellow journalism” of the Hearst and Pulitzer newspaper chains— the Fox News of the day— was successful in creating a public outcry for war. The American people were outraged by the sinking of the Maine and by the atrocities in Cuba. This public support for war helped to push the US government into war with Spain, as it was meant to. When McKinley asked for $50 million for the military 100% of Congress voted yes. Unmentioned was that government was eager to seize Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.

But I am old enough to remember, in realtime, the Gulf of Tonkin incident (1964, when I was a senior in high school and when the Defense Department deliberately doctored intelligence to create the impression that 3 North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. It was an imaginary attack and, in fact, in the 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, reformed warmonger Robert McNamara admitted that the assault— which was used to start the War Against Vietnam— never happened. (Johnson himself knew it never happened and an Oval Office tape recorder caught him saying “Hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.”

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed Lyndon Johnson’s administration to ignite a war, passed unanimously in the House, while only two senators, Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Greening (D-AK), had the guts to vote against it. Hen Speaker John McCormack called Johnson to congratulate him on the resolution’s passage, a recording shows LBJ spending his time denouncing Morse as mentally unstable and untrustworthy while he called Gruening an ingrate, saying “He's just no good. I've spent millions on him up in Alaska.” The chant of my early college years: “Hey, hey. LBJ, Hoe many boys have you killed today.” I went from being president of my campus’ Young Democrats to quitting the Democratic Party. Soon after I hired these guys for the freshman class dance at Stony Brook (I was the class president; it was the first concert I ever booked and the following year I was arrested in anti-war demonstration and wound up in a jail cell with them):

The year after the legendary Fugs show (1967 I think) I was chairman of the Student Activities Board and just as fast as I could, I hired these guys for a dance concert in the gym:

Despite the best efforts of The Fugs and Country Joe and The Fish-- and the whole American counter-culture-- the fog of war continued to dominate American efforts to create war hysteria among the American people, most noticeably during the two Gulf Wars— remember the non-existent weapons of mass destruction?—and the War on Terror. I want to remind anyone who forgot or is too young to have been around for it, the 1991 story of Iraqi invaders throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and leaving them to die. The story helped get U.S. public opinion behind a war against Iraq that George H.W. Bush had already decided to pursue.

A Kuwaiti-financed effort, Citizens for A Free Kuwait, a project of the p.r. firm Hill & Knowlton helped invent the story and publicize it with the help of Tom Lantos (D-CA), one of the most deceitful Zionist stooges in Congress before current characters Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), MAGA-Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY). The Kuwaiti royal family paid Hill & Knowlton $12 million for their successful efforts, which included the notorious Nayirah testimony, which Bush and several war monger members of Congress kept referring to as part of their rationale for attacking Iraq. Hill & Knowlton (with Bush's connivance) secretly arranged for Nayirah to testify before Lantos’ Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, where she falsely claimed— in a classic example of atrocity propaganda (spreading false information about the fabricated crimes committed by an enemy)— to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers stealing the incubators in a hospital and leaving the babies to dies. Two years later it was revealed that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. and that Hill & Knowlton had scripted her testimony. By the way, it’s important to know that the manufactured story was collaborated by Amnesty International, which later claimed they were misled by the Bush administration. This was Nayirah's false testimony:

Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, my name is Nayirah and I just came out of Kuwait. My mother and I were in Kuwait on August 2nd for a peaceful summer holiday. My older sister had a baby on July 29th and we wanted to spend some time in Kuwait with her.

I only pray that none of my 10th grade classmates had a summer vacation like I did. I may have wished sometimes that I can be an adult, that I could grow up quickly. What I saw happening to the children of Kuwait and to my country has changed my life forever, has changed the life of all Kuwaitis, young and old, mere children or more.

My sister with my five-day-old nephew traveled across the desert to safety. There is no milk available for the baby in Kuwait. They barely escaped when their car was stuck in the desert sand and help came from Saudi Arabia.

I stayed behind and wanted to do something for my country. The second week after invasion, I volunteered at the AlIdar Hospital with 12 other women who wanted to help as well. I was the youngest volunteer. The other women were from 20 to 30 years old.

While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying. I could not help but think of my nephew who was born premature and might have died that day as well. After I left the hospital, some of my friends and I distributed flyers condemning the Iraqi invasion until we were warned we might be killed if the Iraqis saw us.

The Iraqis have destroyed everything in Kuwait. They stripped the supermarkets of food, the pharmacies of medicine, the factories of medical supplies, ransacked their houses and tortured neighbors and friends.

I saw and talked to a friend of mine after his torture and release by the Iraqis. He is 22 but he looked as though he could have been an old man. The Iraqis dunked his head into a swimming pool until he almost drowned. They pulled out his fingernails and then played electric shocks to sensitive, private parts of his body. He was lucky to survive.

If an Iraqi soldier is found dead in the neighborhood, they burn to the ground all the houses in the general vicinity and would not let firefighters come until the only ash and rubble was left.

The Iraqis were making fun of President Bush and verbally and physically abusing my family and me on our way out of Kuwait. We only did so because life in Kuwait became unbearable. They have forced us to hide, burn or destroy everything identifying our country and our government.

I want to emphasize that Kuwait is our mother and the Emir our father. We repeated this on the roofs of our houses in Kuwait until the Iraqis began shooting at us, and we shall repeat it again. I am glad I am 15, old enough to remember Kuwait before Saddam Hussein destroyed it and young enough to rebuild it.

Thank you.

Hundreds of U.S. television stations broadcast it or part of it and on Nightline (ABC News) and the NBC Nightly News alone it was viewed by as many as 50 million Americans.

Today, if you want to know which members of Congress whose words you should take with a grain of salt... it is the ones— like Cory Mills— who are reporting stories manufactured by Israel or Hamas. Both sides are doing it, including members, unliked Cory Mills, who I like and respect.

Sociologist David Bromley invented the term “atrocity story” in 1979 as an event, verifiably or not, that is perceived as a flagrant violation of a fundamental value and that contains the following three elements:

• moral outrage or indignation

• authorization of punitive measures

• mobilization of control efforts against the apparent perpetrators

It was used to incite the European public's support for the Crusades. And today we’re being bombarded with it on an hourly basis by both the Israelis and the Palestinians, which is why I'm literally not watching TV. Beheaded babies, bombed hospitals, shot up ambulances… no way to know in the midst of the fog of war. what's true and what's false. Here’s what we do know: killing civilians is always wrong no matter who does it. The people who lead Hamas and the Likud are war criminals and should be wiped off the face of the earth, sooner the better. Biden is a fool to get too close to Netanyahu and the Likud.