Rage against the dying of the light

I wasn't concentrating when I read this, so I was forced to pass over this line a few times before its meaning smacked me across the face. These are incredibly sharp words whose meaning cuts through all the bullshit of the Bush administration lies, and how the press has failed to treat them as lies:

Unreality is a hallmark of media coverage for war.

The line was written by Norman Solomon in an article for Common Dreams:

Unreality is a hallmark of media coverage for war. Yet -- most of all -- war is about death and suffering. War makers thrive on abstractions. Their media successes depend on evasion. ...

Cindy Sheehan has disrupted the media-scripted shadow play of falsity.

And then came this powerful testimony by Gold Star Families for Peace co-founder Celeste Zapata, whose son Sherwood Bakers was killed in Baghdad 16 months ago:

"George Bush talks about caring about the troops who get killed in Iraq. Sherwood was killed protecting the people looking for weapons of mass destruction on April 26, 2004. This was one month after Bush was joking [at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, on March 24] about looking for weapons of mass destruction. And then my Sherwood is dead trying to protect people looking for them because Bush said it was so important to the safety of our country."

Finally, another line that knocked me out of my stupor:

When a mass killer is at the helm of the ship of state, taking a bow now and again while "Hail to the Chief" booms from big brass bands, a significant portion of the country's population feels revulsion. And often a sense of powerlessness -- a triumph for media manipulation. Passivity is the health of the manipulative media state.