Paul Virilio Quotes

There is, then, a link between the logistics of perception, the wars in Lebanon and the Gulf as well as with CNN and the Pentagon.

Two subsequent incidents of import established CNN: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, which CNN was the only network to cover as it happened, and the 1991 Gulf War, which CNN chronicled round the clock from a proximity as irresistible as it was alarming, bomb blasts and gunfire lighting up TV screens from coast to coast.

It's the first war we've ever fought on the television screen and the first war that our country ever fought where the media had full reign.

Continuous coverage of the war in the Persian Gulf will resume in a moment.

Today, every skirmish in every part of the planet is broadcast straight into your living room live, in HD... over and over again.

I was born in '82 and there were these bizarre wars, explained through mass media in ways that made no sense. I remember watching the Gulf War through night vision. That was sold and propagated as a showbusiness moment for the news.

The impact of the Vietnam War on TV made everyone recognize the importance of visual media.

It really is my opinion that media in general are so bad that we have to question whether the world wouldn't be better off without them altogether. They are so distortive to how the world actually is that the result is.. we see wars, and we see corrupt governments continue on.

When Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in 1990, I felt America's post-Cold War commitment to national principles and international leadership was on the line. I was dismayed by the wide opposition among my fellow Democrats. To me, their position was wrong.

The media never covers all the evil wars that's promoted.

The Gulf War was a clear precedent as well, and it let us begin to understand how the US government would go to war to secure strategic oil reserves and potential markets.

Journalists go to press briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London or the Pentagon in Washington, and no critical questions are posed at all. It's just a news-gathering operation, and the fact that the news is being given by governments who are waging war doesn't seem to worry many journalists too much.

I cannot tell you how proud watching that [Iraqi] war coverage makes me. I know a lot of people are saying that they think that it's, that you know what we're doing is imperialistic. I watch the way we handle ourselves over there and I've never felt more patriotic in my life.

They did an article in a major magazine, shortly after the war started. I think in '04. But they did an article which had me totally against the war in Iraq.

Russia committed an act of aggression in Ukraine, and that's the first time since 1945 a European country has seized the territory of another European country. That's serious business. They started a war with their neighbor. Their troops as well as the separatists funded and controlled by Russia are killing people just about every day.

There are people on the left who say, Look, we can't let these atrocities go on, so let's enter the war and get rid of Bashar Assad. The problem with that is you get into a nuclear war with Russia. And Syria gets wiped out along with everything else. So, it's fine to say, OK, let's stop the crimes, but how exactly?

That, what we're really seeing in Iraq is not a terrible war, but in fact, just the media's portrayal of it.

The only time Republicans will shake fists and point fingers is over a war delayed, one that isn't led by the US, or a war waged without the necessary conviction (read collateral damage).

The media will spend weeks going through pay stubs for Bush's National Guard service in Alabama in the waning days of war, but if Kerry tells them exotic tales of covert missions into Cambodia directed by Richard Nixon, they don't even bother to fact-check who was president in December 1968.

Foreign fighters are travelling into Iraq to make it a front line in the war on terror. And I would rather defeat them there than face them in our own country.

As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police state.

Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.

We in politics are accustomed to seeing reality firsthand and then watching its distant cousin, events as portrayed by the media, unfold on our televisions. We know that what happened in Congress and what is reported to have taken place are two very different things. But that disjuncture, so familiar to politicians, is new to the viewing public. By seeing war and war coverage juxtaposed nightly on their screens, Americans have learned the crucial lesson: not to trust the news anchors.

I said that we needed to have people on the ground, troops on the ground in a coalition similar to what we had in the first Gulf War.

My position on that has been misrepresented again and again and again in the media. Let me make it clear. There are two wars in Iraq. The first one was absolutely necessary and entirely justifiable. Saddam Hussein had attacked and invaded Kuwait, a sovereign independent state, it was a blatant act of aggression, and action was justifiable and necessary. I have no problems with that at all.