Image by Phạm Nhật.

Recall those feverish days leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq when Colin Powell presented his dubious evidence to the United Nations Security Council, claiming Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs. The result of those bogus lies was The Iraq Resolution, which authorized the use of force against the sovereign state, and passed the Senate by a decisive 77-23 margin, with only 23 dissenting votes. Support crossed party lines as Hillary Clinton and many other prominent Democrats consistently reached into George W. Bush’s basket of lies, repeating the neocons’ WMD propaganda. The New York Times, fulfilling its usual perfunctory role, ran Judith Miller’s series of bogus articles parroting the same falsehoods. Outrage grew, and we took to the streets as the U.S. invasion loomed.

Today, I have the same sense of helplessness each time Israel is engulfed in yet another murderous deception, which warmakers spread through a compliant mainstream press. Much like their selling of the Iraq war, The New York Times relentlessly publishes pieces reiterating Israel’s rationale for bombing hospitals and promoting the (now thoroughly debunked) allegations of mass sexual assault, which have been used to depict all Palestinians as savages deserving of execution. The New York Times often qualifies its errors with caveats but rarely admits fault. Democrats still vote against halting arms shipments to war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, knowing it will likely harm innocent children in Gaza. History repeats, and mothers weep.

In March 2003, during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we were still adapting to the emerging digital media landscape. There were no smartphones, TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram. While information was accessible, distribution was limited to email lists and message boards. Independent outlets like CounterPunch, TomDispatch, and Antiwar.com were trailblazing radical journalism, countering the tide of pro-war disinformation from mainstream sources.

Consider YellowTimes.org, a prominent alternative to The New York Times before the Iraq War. Shortly after the U.S. military arrived in Iraq, their server was suspended for posting screenshots from Al Jazeera of dead U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. The outrage stemmed not from dead Iraqis but from the sight of lifeless troops, victims of the Bush administration’s deceit.

“No TV station in the US is allowing dead US soldiers of POWs to be displayed and we will not either. We understand free press and all that but we don’t want someone’s family member to see them on some site. It is disrespectful, tacky and disgusting,” read an email to Yellow Times editor Erich Marquardt from the site’s Florida-based server provider, VortechHosting.

YellowTimes was finished, never to return. While their decision to publish graphic war photos might have smacked of poor taste, there was nothing illegal about publishing gruesome war photos. The blatant suppression of the YellowTimes, along with the mainstream media’s unwillingness to question the government’s WMD narrative, would have disastrous consequences. Over the next eight years, nearly 500,000 excess deaths would be attributed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, including 4,419 U.S. service members, and mainstream media outlets would be disseminating the majority of the reporting.

First They Came for the Students

In March, nearly 22 years to the day since YellowTimes was taken down, a video captured six plainclothes ICE agents apprehending Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk on the streets near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts. As widely reported, Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar, was in the country on a student visa, concluding a PhD program in Child Study and Human Development. The disturbing video footage provides a bird’s eye view of the authoritarian overreach we are experiencing, highlighting the intensification of Trump’s efforts to suppress pro-Palestine activism and a broader assault on press freedom.

Like Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia University, and others who’ve been arrested in recent weeks, Öztürk had not been accused of........

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