Thread by @caitoz

Where Was All The Investigative Journalism On US Airstrikes The Last 20 Years?

"They've shown that they can do these investigations into the validity of US airstrikes, and they've shown that they've spent two decades choosing not to."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/where-was-al…

The Pentagon has finally admitted to the long-obvious fact that it killed ten Afghan civilians, including seven children, in an airstrike in Kabul last month.
archive.is/o1tSi

In an article with the obscenely propagandistic title "Pentagon acknowledges Aug. 29 drone strike in Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians," @nytimes pats itself on the back for its investigative journalism showing the strike actually targeted an aid worker:

Indeed, the Pentagon only admitted to inexcusable civilian deaths in this instance because the mass media did actual investigative journalism on this one particular airstrike. This is an indictment of Pentagon airstrike protocol, but it's also an indictment of the mass media.

This after all comes out following a new @BylineTimes report which found that "at least 5.8 to 6 million people are likely to have died overall due to the War on Terror– a staggering number which is still probably very conservative."

https://twitter.com/NafeezAhmed/status/1438175494801920000?s=20

It also comes out two months after whistleblower Daniel Hale was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for leaking secret government information about America's psychopathic civilian-slaughtering drone assassination program.
theintercept.com/2021/07/27/dan…

It also comes a few months after a @codepink report found that the US and its allies have been dropping an average of 46 bombs *PER DAY* in its so-called War on Terror for the last twenty years.
mintpressnews.com/us-drops-46-bo…

Do you remember seeing an average of 46 news reports a day on bombings conducted by the US and its allies? Do you remember even reading about one single US bombing every day in the mainstream news for the last twenty years? I don't.

The difference between the August 29 airstrike and the thousands which preceded it in America's post-9/11 wars was that this one was politicized:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1438957860684189704?s=20

The Biden administration ordered it to look tough on terrorism after the Kabul airport attack amidst a withdrawal for which Biden was being aggressively slammed by plutocratic media eager to paint ending US wars as a bad thing that everyone should oppose.
nymag.com/intelligencer/…

The Pentagon doesn't care that it snuffed out innocent lives; it does that all the time and its officials would do it a lot more if that's what it took to secure their lucrative futures in defense industry corporations after they retire from the military.
pogo.org/report/2018/11…

And the mass media don't care either; they only cared about this one particular highly politicized airstrike during a withdrawal from a military engagement the mass media vehemently opposed.

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1439007725279539200?s=20

Think of all the murder victims we'd have known about if the media had done their job and used their immense resources to investigate them over the last 20 years. Think about how much harder it would've been for the war machine to inflict these evils upon the world if they had.

It's been left to obscure bloggers and indie journos to question these actions using scant resources and shoestring budgets.

They've shown that they can do these investigations into the validity of US airstrikes, and they've shown that they've spent two decades choosing not to.

The mass media manipulators who provide cover for mass military murder by journalistic malpractice and negligence are just complicit in these depraved acts of human butchery as the people firing the weapons and the officials giving the orders.

Where Was All The Investigative Journalism On US Airstrikes The Last 20 Years? (Audio)

soundcloud.com/going_rogue/wh…