And by God we're gonna help them build that case!

There are those in the media who passively acquiesce in the reactionaries' rewrite of both past and present and their practice of turning possibilities into certainties and "could be" into "is" whenever it suits their purposes. But some seem rather eager to do the warmongers' work for them.

This was the question and choices for the poll on the homepage of Netscape News for today:

Does Iran's growing nuclear arsenal worry you?
- Iran will attack while we're distracted by the Iraq war.
- No, everyone has nukes.
- Not yet.

Wow. And I do mean wow. After much searching, I found a general feedback page for Netscape. This is the message I have been trying to send; it appears Netscape actually doesn't like feedback.

Who does the news polls appearing on the Netscape News home page?

Whoever it is should get either a clue or a new position. For December 3:

"Does Iran's growing nuclear arsenal worry you?"

WHAT nuclear arsenal? Even the US doesn't say that Iran has nuclear weapons, only that it wants to get them - and that claim is something which Iran denies and about which Europe is unsure. Not only is the question flatly factually wrong, it's very nature, declaring the existence of a real, "growing" Iranian nuclear arsenal, adds to the atmosphere of threat and fear that can easily be used to generate the sort of war hysteria that was used to drive us into Iraq on the basis of non-existent WMDs.

An apology should follow in short order.

If I ever get it to go through, we'll see if I get a response. Doubtful, I'd say. But I invite everyone else to let Netscape know how you feel about such inanity.