Is there self-censorship in U.S. media?

Oh yes, there is. And after the roasting of Newsweek, watch the media play their traditional role even more submissively as the Suckups to Power they are.

Latest case in point. Some days ago, British M.P. George Galloway was called up in front of a U.S. Senate Committee. They accused him of having been part of Saddam's Oil-for-Food rip-off. The MP was much offended, and went on to offend the U.S. Senators as much as he could, showing no deference to the august body whatsoever. I'm going to tell you what he said because you won't find it in the MSM.

"Far from having worked with Saddam," he said, "I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas.

"On the very first page of your document about me, you assert that I have had many meetings with Saddam Hussein. This is false. I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein. In fact I've met him exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns."

Before the hearing started, Galloway dismissed the panel as a ''neo-con, pro-war, Republican lynch mob.''

Addressing the Committee chairman, Major Cheney Dickhead Norm Coleman, Galloway continued: "Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty.

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

"If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today.

"Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth. Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer. Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where?"

Strong stuff. But you won't find it reported in the NY Times or the Washington Post. Or find anyone trying to find answers to the questions he raises about a massive Iraq boondoggle. People are stealing money left and right from the American taxpayer in Iraq while our soldiers remain under-equipped. Are our newspapers of record on record about this? No, they've got their noses too far up the sphincters of their official government sources. They don't want to risk losing such valuable sources of crap.