Northern Valley Beacon

On Veterans' Day, the Los Angeles Times fired one of its prominent columnists, Robert Scheer, who had pointed out intelligence reports that the WMDs alleged to exist in Iraq and the Iraq links to Al Qaida were questioned by intelligence experts.

Scheer was made a target of the Two Minutes of Hate ritual by hate cheerleaders Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. The Los Angeles Times, owned by the Tribune Company, part of the Chicago Tribune chain, caved in and gave Scheer the boot.

This from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting:

In a pre-war column (8/6/02) that undercuts the current notion that everyone got the WMD story wrong, Scheer wrote that “a consensus of experts” told the Senate that Iraq’s chemical and biological arsenals were “almost totally destroyed during eight years of inspections.” Shortly after George W.
Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, and well ahead of the pack, Scheer (6/3/03) called White House pretexts for war a “big lie.” Scheer was also one of the first columnists to call for withdrawal from Iraq, in a November 4, 2003 column that presaged shifting public opinion on the issue--though his position is still hard to find among his fellow pundits. More than 1,700 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died since Scheer’s call for withdrawal was published.

The brain-washing efforts by the Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld propaganda machine may not be believed by 65 percent of the citizens at this point, but they have the media minds quaking in fear of being exterminated as happened to Valerie Plame (for her husband's big mouth), Richard Clark, Paul, O'Neill, and Hans Blix.

For some reason, the brain-washing seems particularly effective on the corporate-based media.