The Washington Post, though, went with this headline today: "Housing Plan for Jerusalem Neighborhood Spurs Criticism."

The article by Howard Schneider refers to a "disputed neighborhood of Jerusalem," the "Jewish neighborhood of Gilo," a place "annexed to the city in a step not recognized by the international community."

There is also a reference to White House policy, noting that the Obama administration "has vacillated in its stance on Israeli construction in areas claimed by the Palestinians."  This is downright bizarre; the entire discussion about "Israeli construction" concerns illegal Israeli settlements--or, perhaps more accurately, colonies--in the West Bank. Why, then, refuse to label Gilo accurately? It's an old story, actually; as Extra! pointed out in 2002, Gilo was a cause for pro-Israeli media activists, who pressured outlets like CNN to stop referring to Gilo as a settlement and use terms more innocuous like "neighborhood." It's still working, it would seem.

Again, "occupation" would certainly be your word. A lot of people would take great issue with you calling the U.S. presence in Afghanistan in your country an" occupation."

It's not clear to whom Collins is referring when she speaks of people who would take "great issue" with Joya's characterization. As Juan Cole put it, "that the U.S. and NATO are militarily occupying Afghanistan is recognized by the U.N. Security Council and is a simple fact of international law."

Or ask the International Committee of the Red Cross:

Once a situation exists which factually amounts to an occupation the law of occupation applies--whether or not the occupation is considered lawful.

Therefore, for the applicability of the law of occupation, it makes no difference whether an occupation has received Security Council approval, what its aim is, or indeed whether it is called an "invasion", "liberation", "administration" or "occupation." As the law of occupation is primarily motivated by humanitarian considerations, it is solely the facts on the ground that determine its application.

Listen, terrorist gangs like Al-Qaeda are like HIV virus. They swim in your bloodstream. They don't make you sick. When they latch on to a cell, a nation state, and they use the DNA of that cell, they then become a threat. When they use the accoutrements of nationhood--secure boundaries, a diplomatic corps, an export and import trade, and air force and navy, a tax
system, a conscript population--then they can knockdown the World Trade Center. We have got to stop Al-Qaeda from taking over Afghanistan. And that means stopping the Taliban.

It's hard to say what exactly Afghanistan's diplomatic corps, let alone the landlocked nation's navy, had to do with the September 11 attacks, which were largely planned and executed by Saudi Arabian students based in Germany and the United States. But you have to give Morris credit for being loopy enough to make the case that occupying Afghanistan is necessary to prevent terrorism in the United States; generally corporate media pundits consider that assumption to be self-evident, and don't bother to explain it.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former Army general and drug czar (under President Clinton) turned defense industry lobbyist. In a news article on McCaffrey entitled "One Man's Military-Industrial-Media Complex," the New York Times reported that McCaffrey had "earned at least $500,000 from his work for Veritas Capital, a private equity firm in New York that has grown into a defense industry powerhouse by buying contractors whose profits soared from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." McCaffrey has appeared on NBC more than 1,000 times since 9/11/2001.

Retired Gen. Richard Meyers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bush (2002-05). He is currently on the Board of Directors of Northrop Grumman Corporation, one of the largest military contractors in the world, and also of United Technologies Corporation, another large military contractor.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, Republican from South Carolina, a pro-war spokesperson who is one of the most regular guests on the Sunday talkshows.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat, was apparently intended to represent the "other side" of the debate. Here is what he said: "Clearly we should keep the number of forces that we have.  No one's talking about removing forces."

"No one," in the above sentence refers to the American people, whom Levin understandably sees as nobody in the eyes of the U.S. media and political leaders. According to the latest (September 24) NYT/CBS News poll, 32 percent of those polled wanted U.S. troops out of Afghanistan within one year or right now. That was the largest group. Another 24 percent wants the troops "removed within one to two years." For comparison, the leadership of the Taliban is willing to grant foreign troops 18 months to get out of their country.

In other words, a majority of 56 percent of Americans wants U.S. troops out of Afghanistan about as soon as is practically feasible or even sooner. Yet Meet the Press--a mainstream network news talkshow since 1947--does not see fit to find one person to represent that point of view. The other major TV and radio talkshows that the right also labels "liberal" in the United States make similar choices almost every day.

When asked whether the U.S. should set a timeline for withdrawal, Levin answered "no."

This phenomenon of the non-debate is not confined to broadcast journalism; see recent FAIR Blog posts on fake Afghanistan debates in Time magazine (10/2/09), USA Today (9/17/09) and the Washington Post (9/01/09, 8/17/09).

There are hints at the real problem, as when reporter Neil MacFarquhar notes that "the conundrum is whether the food can be grown in the developing world where the hungry can actually get it, at prices they can afford." He also notes legitimate concerns like the effect of climate change, which is worsening droughts in some areas, and the growth of biofuels, which gobble up available farmland. But he quickly returns to the main angle, explaining, "The track record of failing to feed the hungry haunts the effort." He quotes one official who explains the current problem in terms of a lack of aid money from the West: "Nobody has 20 billion and spare change in their sock drawer."

As Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé pointed out in Extra! (11-12/08), the problem is extreme inequality and lack of power for poor farmers; the hungry don't need experts and the G-8 to "feed" them, they need the opportunity to feed themselves, whether that be in the form of more equitable land reform, the ability to adopt their own sustainable agricultural methods, or freedom from the market distortions created by those very G-8 countries and experts. Even the climate change and biofuel concerns are primarily the result of damaging first-world energy policies that remain unaddressed--by those countries as well as by MacFarquhar. But it's no surprise those root causes go missing in a hunger story whose hook is a meeting of "development experts" and every source but one is either a government or aid official.

If you've followed polling on this question, these results are striking--most recent surveys show the public is deeply troubled by the war and opposed to sending more troops. The most recent CNN survey (10/16-18/09), to take one example, found 39 percent support for sending more troops, and 59 opposed to that idea.

So who did the Post get those results? They've been asking questions about troop buildup in their other polls, but for this one they changed the wording of the question to this:

U.S. military commanders have requested approximately 40,000 more U.S. troops for Afghanistan. Do you think Obama should or should not order these additional forces to Afghanistan?

It's very likely that including references to "military commanders" and Obama skew the responses to the question--as has been noted, Obama tends to poll better than his policies do. One of the Post's recent polls (8/13-17/09) on Afghanistan was more neutrally worded:

Do you think the number of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan should be increased, decreased or kept about the same?

The result then: 24 percent favored an increase, 45 percent favored a decrease, 27 percent supported keeping troop levels the same. This led the Post to report the results of that poll under the headline, "Public Opinion in U.S. Turns Against Afghan War."

So did the Post change the wording of the poll to get a different outcome? Or did public opinion just dramatically reverse course in two months? The latter seems implausible.