Into the 'Belly of the Beast' -AM Talk Radio

Sunny Miller went into the 'belly of the beast' this morning with an interview on AM drive time radio - WHMP, 1240. Amid tough questions and accusations that she was giving Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt, she drove home points that

*there is no reason for war with Iraq - there is no evidence that it poses a threat to the United States; we have been bombing Iraq weekly and are ready to go to war, in fact, because it is weak militarily;

*elections and policy making in this country are not clean - citing the impact of big money, such as big oil;

*when challenged on Iraq not having a democracy, she reminded the interviewer that this President was not popularly elected and that there were questions about the legitimacy of his election;

*we have contaminated Iraq with radioactive, nuclear waste - depleted uranium, which causes cancer and other lethal disease; we have also blown up chemical weapons on site;

*over 159,000 American soldiers have gone on disability and many (over 8000) have died after the Gulf War due to war connected illnesses and injuries. Where is the media attention on this story, she asked?

*the VA has refused to fully investigate the causes of Gulf War Syndrome by failing to broadly administer tests to detect depleted uranium exposure.

After the show, the co-host said to the host "I've never seen you so animated during an interview" as they tried get the last word by making 'points' they had not thought to make during the interview.

We welcome interviews with all media, and Sunny's interview on one of our local NPR station's - WFCR 99.5 FM - was played several times over the past few days. She was featured in a headline front page story in Monday's Greenfield Recorder (raising the same issues as above with her interviewer) and interviewed with other media yesterday for an upcoming story.

Yet, it is AM talk radio were we see a gap in the range of ideas.

We need to go there, into the land of Rush Limbaugh and "Savage Nation".

In August, we accompanied Scott Ritter to a drive-time AM interview, on a 'Rush Limbaugh station' in Indianapolis. Thousands of people heard information that they had not head, or listened to, before. The host was polite, but obviously not happy with the content. (See http://grassrootspeace.org/rittercampaign.html for more about the "Heartland Tour" campaign against the war.)

Good hearted & misinformed people listen to these shows. Would they be "Ditto-Heads" - as Limbaugh calls his fans, if they started to hear different points of view. Let's not cede the airwaves to hate and war mongering.

Page created January 13, 2003 by Charlie Jenks.