How Oprah Helped Sell The 2003 US Invasion Of Iraq

How Oprah Helped Sell The 2003 US Invasion Of Iraq

Sept. 3, 2019

Oprah Winfrey is clearly qualified to be president given her willingness be a shill for the military industrial complex and help the US government sell one of the most catastrophic invasions and murderers to date.

A dazzling self-help guru, feminist and billionaire is the general view held of Oprah Winfrey worldwide.

While the corridors of the internet buzz with enthusiasm over the prospect, others throw up previously well masked secrets from Oprah’s past – namely the talk show diva’s active participation in packaging and selling America’s great war in Iraq.

Five months before Operation Iraqi Freedom mercilessly tore up the country, Oprah cosied up confidently to liberal hawks on her flagship programme televised across more than 100 countries. All the more shocking was Oprah’s rhetorical support of the Bush administration.

Almost 10 years ago, when Obama was seeking to assume the mantle of presidential leadership, The New York Times reminded viewers how the Bush White House deemed Oprah’s television slot, “insufficiently serious for the incumbent president to visit. But in intervening years, Ms. Winfrey’s couch … became so attractive to candidates” within the political world.

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and reporter Judith Miller; Ahmad Chalabi’s right-hand man Intifada Qanbar, Iraqi defector Khidir Hamza and Kenneth Pollack have all been given a platform on Oprah’s show to pedal myths that parrot America’s rationale for invading Iraq.

When an African American member of the audience sought to interrogate the wisdom of her guests and media at large, Oprah’s response was:

“Oh, we’re not trying to propagandise, we’re just showing you what is”, upholding a vitriolic myth fed to the American public which reveals the co-option of celebrity household names as the cheapest of marketing tools at the American government’s disposal.

The subject may have given her a patriotic ratings boost but it exposed Oprah as an unsuspected beneficiary of a war that has aborted an uncountable number of lives. What few picked up at the time has engendered a media sandstorm. Criticism has largely boiled over Winfrey’s endorsement of the Bush administration’s regime change policy in Iraq.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180115-oprah-built-her-talk-shows-around-the-hell-iraqis-suffer-today/