Bush Administration Policies Erode Bill of Rights While Supporting Advocates of Theocracy

Interview with Mark Crispin Miller, author and media critic, conducted by Scott Harris

As the presidential election campaign goes into high gear with just several weeks remaining before the Nov. 2 vote, the U.S. corporate media continues to focus its coverage on marginal issues. CBS television's "60 Minutes 2" program cancelled its broadcast of an investigative piece on the Bush administration's use of forged documents to back its pre-war claim that Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear weapons program. Instead, the network aired what is now known to be a flawed story on President Bush's Vietnam war era National Guard service using suspect memos.

While U.S. soldiers and civilians continue to be killed and injured in an increasingly violent conflict in Iraq, much of the media is covering election horse-race issues, tracking the candidate's advertising campaigns and interpreting poll numbers. Meanwhile, an intelligence report given to the White House two months before President Bush launched the U.S. war against Iraq predicted that an American invasion would increase support for radical Islamic movements, result in a deeply divided Iraq prone to conflict and warned of a possible insurgency.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University and author of the book, "Cruel and Unusual, Bush/Cheney's New World Order." Miller discusses the threat to democracy he sees in the Bush administration's authoritarian policies at home and abroad, and support for religious groups working to establish a theocracy in America.

Mark Crispin Miller's "Cruel and Unusual, Bush/Cheney's New World Order" is published by W.W. Norton. Visit the website www.patriotnation.us to find out more about Miller's new film titled, "A Patriot Act."

Related links:


"CBS Nixes '60 Minutes' Story on Iraq War," by the Associated Press, Sept. 26, 2004

"The Story That Didn't Run: Here's the Piece that '60 Minutes' Killed for Its Report on the Bush Guard Documents," by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenba, MSNBC, Sept. 23, 2004

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