Gary Kamiya – Salon – April 10, 2007:
It’s no secret that the period of time between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq represents one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media. Every branch of the media failed, from daily newspapers, magazines and Web sites to television networks, cable channels and radio. I’m not going to go into chapter and verse about the media’s specific failures, its credulousness about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds and failure to make clear that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 — they’re too well known to repeat. In any case, the real failing was not in any one area; it was across the board. Bush administration lies and distortions went unchallenged, or were actively promoted.
But perhaps the press’s most notable failure was its inability to determine just why this disastrous war was ever launched.
Of course, the media was not alone in its collapse. Congress rolled over and gave Bush authorization to go to war. And the majority of the American people, traumatized by 9/11, followed their delusional president down the primrose path. Had the media done its job, Bush’s war of choice might still have taken place. But we’ll never know.
Fox was the worst, but the rest of the mainstream media was clearly influenced by the perceived need to be “Americans first and journalists second.” This was manifested less in obviously biased or flawed stories than in subtler ways: the simple failure to investigate Bush administration claims, go outside the magic circle of approved wise men, or in general aggressively question the whole surreal adventure. This failure was even more glaring because the run-up to war took place in slow motion. For nine months or more, everyone knew Bush was determined to attack Iraq, and no one really knew why. Yet the mainstream media was unable to break out of its stupor. At a critical moment, that stupor appeared almost literal.
#27 Oh, and Semour Hersh is an American hero. The next president should yank Paul Bremer’s Medal of Freedom and give it to Hersh.
I love how evryones 20/20 hind sight is completely dialed in on this issue….horses and barndoors also come to mind.
#33, Damn you doug. You so quietly corrected my spelling of Hersh. I bow in your presence.
So the fact that Zarqawi was running terrorist training camps in northern Iraq before the war and was killed in Iraq still means there is no connection betwen Iraq and Al Qaeda? There is is absolutely a connection between Iraq and *terrorism* which existed even before we invaded. (The connection between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda is far more tenuous).
However, that terrorists were training in Iraq is not the issue (they were and probably are in the US for that matter). The issue was never whether Saddam was a bad guy or even whether he was trying to develop weapons of mass destruction (everyone believed he was) or even whether he’d use them (he already had against the Kurds). The issue has always been, whether he was bad enough and whether the situation was dire enough *and sufficiently imminent* to warrant preemptive invasion. Since the only thing that made it sufficiently imminent were the WMD, when we discovered that information was faulty, the justification for the war fell apart which by that time it was too late.
So, unless you think the media could have blown the cover off the fact that Saddam didn’t have WMDs and done so in a way that specifically contradicted the intelligence communities worldwide, I’m not sure what the media could have done that would have changed the outcome.
As a Canadian, I watched some American news coverage and I was actually somewhat baffled by the willingness to believe that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. People were made to feel guilty for asking questions, They exploited the mentality that “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” to make people feel guilty for not supporting their country. I think it’s a fallacy that if you love your country, you don’t ask questions. You can argue how it was portrayed by the media, I still never saw the American news show clear-cut evidence of WMD or make a direct link of Iraq to 9/11. People believe what they want to believe, and at the risk of being called a traitor or terrorist sympathizer simply by expressing any doubts or asking questions, people will choose to support their government no matter what.
oh brother. Boys, boys! Forget the “liberal media” crap, it’s a corporate media….all our major players in the media market aren’t even enough for a little sandlot softball game. I believe, at last count, there are FIVE media companies — and all of them are having quite the orgy together. Let US eat cake. They’re all in it for MONEY. All are going to do/say whatever the government wants them to because when they do what they’re told they get laws that restrict them removed. Haven’t you noticed?
We’re in Iraq because the big corporations want us to be there. Iraq is a very strategic nation…dead center (pun not intended, but works) in the middle of that region. It has WATER. It has OIL. It can be developed. You know, the big mega developments like in Saudia Arabia. They need everything, and they have the oil (and water) to pay for it. Of course, wasn’t like Saddam was smart and tried to save his skin. He was a ding-bat leader who didn’t listen to anyone, especially the oil companies. Oh gee, so the prez lied, no WMD. “My bad…” How much you want to bet someone is laughing about that. “hahahah, they’ll fall for anything that Fox says…”
I’m so sick of the bulldookie about “liberal media”. It’s not. How can it be? You’re mistaking brain dead, isolated, talking heads more concerned about how their hair looks and if they “seem sincere” than real reporting, and they SAY whatever is put on the teleprompter! Please. Their no more liberal than I am a duck.
We have a dumbed down population who thinks that whatever Limb-o-ugh said is important enough to parrot back at you. The majority fill their heads with who’s on Idol tonight, and what Trump said to some pretend apprentice. We are at an all time low….intellectually. How many of YOU read a book last week, last month, this year?
Oh, yeah, and it’s such a shame about that war in Iraq, isn’t it? Support our troops or you’re not patriotic. Say anything against the president and you’re a lefty. Is that it? Wow. How simple.
As for the labels, folks, it’s not about left or right, demo or republi, white collar or blue collar…it’s about mega corporations making us all poorer while making themselves richer. That’s all it’s about anymore. We’re serfs and slaves to them. (Check the interest rate on your credit card, and what is your FICO score? What relevance does this have to anyone? We’re paying a bigger chunk of our salaries to corporations…look at gas prices, food prices, water prices, heating costs, credit card fees.)
We’ve lost health care, consumer protection laws, product and food safety. Heck, chances are we’ve lost the corner store and almost every small to medium business that we’ve shopped out all our lives. Remember when you could actually KNOW the guy who owned the newspaper or the radio station. Not any more.
What’s happened to our wages? What has happened to education? What happened with Hurricane Katrina?
The more we fight among ourselves, the less anyone needs to worry about us banding together to make any sort of difference at all.
So something that;s corporate could never be liberal? Board members can’t be liberals? Rich people can’t be liberals? Plus the corporations never get involved much in news except to cut their budgets on occasion.