DC Press co-opted by war lies/Jay Bookman

These days, Washington is looking a little too much like Las Vegas of the early '80s. Neither place should be flattered by the comparison.

Working as a kid journalist in Vegas back then was like finding yourself at the opera — not in the audience but onstage, surrounded by prima donnas playing out a high-stake drama of power, greed, sex and murder.

Headless bodies were appearing in the desert. Cars were getting blown up. A local federal judge publicly attacked federal law enforcement as "a bunch of crooks." Mobsters were not just part of the community, they were public figures, and they would call favorite reporters to plant stories about their rivals or discredit cops they couldn't buy off.

And everyone who thought of themselves as players — mobsters, politicians, businessmen and not a few journalists — traded information, access and anything that might bring them that most treasured of Vegas commodities, "juice."

"Juice" was power. "Juice" not only meant you got your phone calls returned, it meant you got free seats for Frank's show at Caesars. Juice meant you knew people who knew people; losing juice was the worst thing that could happen to you.

Well, other than ending up out in the desert without a head. And the crazy thing is, everybody in town acted as if all this was perfectly nice and normal.




http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1017-27.htm

Constitution. Bookman was among the very first to blow the whistle on the WMD lies and stiffling of contrary opinions about the war in Iraq.

For him to have done so in the deep South was all the more remarkable.

Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer both referred to Bookman's piece back at the start of all this crap.

"The Presiden't Real Goal in Iraq"
http://tinyurl.com/7u44

He was the first to say in a major newspaper, "There's no exit strategy, cuz we're not leaving."

:patriot:

:hi: