"As long as you ignore US imperialism, we will refrain from destroying you."

YES.

If you follow war and peace issues for any length of time, you realize to what great lengths the media go to silence antiwar voices.

1. In 2008, when Dennis Kucinich was running, NBC was willing to have a debate with four candidates. But when one of the top four dropped out and Kucinich became the fourth-place candidate, NBC changed the rules to exclude him.

NBC was fine having four candidates in the debate, as long as none of the four was a strong critic of empire. When a strong antiwar candidate got into fourth place, then that was NOT okay.

2. Bernie Sanders in 2016. If you watched CNN coverage of him, you will see that the network ignored him until they could no longer do so because he won lots of primaries. Instead, they published photos of him with his mouth open--how else could he talk--while other candidates got photos showing them smiling and composed.

Debbie Sanders, chairman of the DNC at the time, was open in opposing him because he was not hawkish enough.

3. Tulsi Gabbard in 2020. One network--I think CNN had two debates--one for top-tier candidates and the other for second-tier candidates. Gabbard was in the second-tier group. The telling point was the post-debate analysis. CNN analysts gave NO time to discuss her issues at all--even though they did so for other *second-tier* candidates.

One network had a rule that a candidate must have won at least one delegate to participate in a debate. When Gabbard won two, the rules were changed and Gabbard could not be in the debate.

She also had a fundraising account canceled for a few hours. Maybe it was a bug in the computer algorithms but what other candidates did this happen to?

4. Donald Trump. As much as we might disagree with him on multiple issues, he was the ONLY Republican in 2016 who had an antiwar message. When he gave his victory speech on election night, he commented that he wanted peace and cooperation, not war, with other countries. CNN did broadcast his full speech, live. BUT, when they later broadcast the *highlights* of the speech, CNN edited out this comment in spite of the fact that a president-elect's foreign policy views are of enormous importance.

2020: Although the last debate is traditionally about foreign policy, this debate contained 3 minutes about war and peace issues and dealt only with Korea, not the Middle East. Of course, Biden, who voted for the Iraq war and was VP during the Libya debacle, was vulnerable on these issues while Trump, the first president since Jimmy Carter not to get the US involved in a new war, had that issue as a strong point.

Of course, several Trump foreign policies should be subject to severe criticism but what I am referring to is the message that voters heard.

The pattern is obvious here. Antiwar, anti-empire candidates are routinely silenced. The pattern has existed for decades.

Incidentally, think back to 2003 and the media's Iraq war coverage. Remember all the WMD scare stories before the war? Do you also remember how quickly the Iraq war fell out of the news once Americans started coming back in body bags?