In order to stoke the flames of patriotism back home and make an ugly and unnecessary war sound heroic and popular back home, the administration has regularly lied about goings-on overseas. One example I reported on almost two years ago in early June 2003: Jessica Lynch. She was injured when her vehicle overturned and was captured by the Iraqis. She was taken to a hospital where she received better care than most patients there, with doctors donating their own blood to keep her alive and healthy. Hospital workers even tried to return her but were fired upon when they tried to do so, and when American soldiers finally came to “rescue” her, hospital staff cooperated, only to have their cooperation refused as the soldiers tore through the complex unchallenged.

But that’s not the story the Bush administration told. According to the lies disseminated through the media, Lynch was not injured in a rollover, but instead valiantly fought back before being shot and/or stabbed; she was then taken to an Iraqi hospital where we were told she was slapped around and tortured before a daring American raid rescued her in a firefight against Iraqi soldiers imprisoning her in the hospital. Complete fiction. Yet it was bought into so thoroughly that most Americans still believe the lie, and the media does little to disillusion them. In fact, the media lapped it up, almost orgasmically excited by the footage that went with the story. And when the story was shown up as a lie, most of the media casually ignored that aspect of the story. In the case of Lynch, she herself conveniently suffered from “amnesia” about her entire ordeal, though her family seemed to know but were “not supposed to talk about it.”

Well, not every family is quite so cooperative when their child’s misfortune overseas is lied about. Pat Tillman, a patriotic young man who left his successful football career to fight for a fight he believed was right, was accidentally killed by his own men as he got into a position to defend them while in Afghanistan. The Bush administration, in pre-election mode and smarting from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, decided they needed a red, white and blue poster boy, so they lied. They told the people and the Tillman family that Pat died heroically, charging an enemy hill, barking orders to his fellow troopers before being cut down by the enemy. The administration awarded him the Silver Star, and Bush took full political advantage by giving a falsely heartfelt memorial message at his team’s football stadium shortly before the election.

When the family found out the truth, they were understandably furious:

Patrick Tillman Sr., a San Jose lawyer, said he is furious about what he found in the volumes of witness statements and investigative documents the Army has given to the family. He decried what he calls a “botched homicide investigation” and blames high-ranking Army officers for presenting “outright lies” to the family and to the public.

“After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this,” Patrick said. “They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy.” …

“Maybe lying’s not a big deal anymore,” he said. “Pat’s dead, and this isn’t going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has.”

Mary says the government used her son for weeks after his death, perpetuating an untrue story to capitalize on his altruism, just as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was erupting publicly. She said she was particularly offended when President Bush offered a taped memorial message to Tillman at a Cardinals football game shortly before the presidential election last fall.

Not that this is anything new. We know about Jessica Lynch, and we also know about the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein. Or did you not know of that?

Like the fake Jessica Lynch story, the press continues to perpetuate yet another exposed lie, the toppling of that statue. You can still see it in video montages, almost every time they do one for a story about Iraq. What they rarely mention is that is was a faked event, a staged media story, which the media knew all along and cooperated with.

I reported on this a little more than two years ago, soon after I started this blog; go and see the post, complete with photos. You’ll see in one shot what the media showed us: apparent throngs of jubilant Iraqis tearing down the statue. But the other photo shows a truer story: the square where the statue was torn down was almost deserted, with only a few people crowded at the center of events–and the low-angle media shots suddenly crystallize: they were shooting from angles that hid the vacant plaza and made the crowd seem much bigger than it was. Your “objective” news media at work.

Not only that, but we also later learned that it was US soldiers, not Iraqis, who tore down the statue. And of the few Iraqi who were there, several were identified as aides to Ahmed Chalabi, Bush administration bag man–in other words, the “crowd” was faked in more than one way. And as icing on the cake, the American flag that was draped over the head of the statue as it was torn down just happened to be the same flag that had flown over the Pentagon on 9/11. As if that particular flag could just “happen” to show up at such a time and such a place. The event was completely staged and fake, attempting to make Bush and Cheney’s pipe dream of “Iraqis welcoming us as liberators” seem true.

But the real shocker is that the press knew about the lie from the start and was actively complicit in telling that lie, and continues to perpetuate it to this day. Or maybe it’s not a shocker, seeing as how the media has become such a willing whore to the Bush administration.