Posted on 08/28/2005 12:07:17 AM PDT by RadicalSon2
As the American people wise up about the war in Iraq, and the shifting rationale behind it, they aren't letting the press off the hook.
Good for them.
As President Bush led the nation into the invasion of Iraq, the evidence he cited as justification for the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime was too often echoed by news organizations that holstered the skepticism they customarily bring to their work. As a result, any doubts about the wisdom of the war focused on strategy rather than factual truth.
Hussein's purported possession of weapons of mass destruction was accepted as established fact. His alleged attempt to build nuclear bombs was reported without the qualifying statements it deserved. And members of the Bush administration were given greater credibility than those who remained skeptical, including United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix.
The public now knows that. It says so in a new Gallup poll commissioned by the McCormick Tribune Foundation of Chicago.
Sixty-one percent of the poll's respondents said the press keeps them well informed on military and national security issues. That might not sound so bad, but 79 percent gave the same response to the same question in 1999.
More telling is that more than 60 percent of people criticized the news media and the government for failing to inform them adequately before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The problem wasn't that news organizations uniformly expressed support for an invasion -- some did and some did not -- but that they almost universally confirmed the factual basis for it. Since that factual basis has been found to have been untrue, some of the larger organizations responsible, notably including the New York Times, have publicly acknowledged their errors.
Many smaller organizations, however, served as an amen chorus for the drumbeat of news about how dangerous Iraq was. This page, for example, opposed the invasion itself, but spoke uncritically of Saddam Hussein's dangers, at least to his neighbors.
It turned out Hussein was a paper tiger, in more ways than one. His menace to the world existed only on paper -- and in the nation's newspapers.
Most Americans apparently have learned that lesson. Let's hope most of the news organizations responsible for it have. -- J.F.
They've definitely learned not to interview the "right" people. Every time they interview Iraqis, it's in coffee shops with the speakers huddled around their hookahs.
And they definitely haven't interviewed any Kuwaitis about the war since... what, right before it started? Hmmm...
This fisher character would have failed 10th grade writing course. He meanders all over the place, just throwing statements out as though they were facts. Pitiful.
Same old story...I'm so sick of these effing idiots.
Let's see, an evil megalomaniac with the biggest single oil reserves in the world, and he is a paper tiger? Talk about a complete inability to analyze a situation globally. For that matter, Hitler was a paper tiger in 1934.
Another liberal robot heard from. Same lines. Same irrational rationalizing:
Hussein's purported possession of weapons of mass destruction was accepted as established fact
Yes, because he not only HAD them, he USED them! Ah hell, I'm too tired to eat spaghetti right now.
I love it when these people promote this fantasy that the MSM supported President Bush in the build up to the war. And oh by the way, Saddam did have WMD and used them against the Kurds and oh by the way, Saddam did attempt to buy that famous yellowcake from Niger, despite what the lying Joe Wison said. This stupid article could have, and I guess has been, written by a hundred other biased reporters.
That's probably because it is an established fact.
His alleged attempt to build nuclear bombs was reported without the qualifying statements it deserved.
I heard "qualifying statements" nonstop since Joe Wilson went to Niger to sip sweet mint tea.
Just for fun, just google up "Sudan," "Iraq," "libya" "WMD." Oh, what the heck, add "Qadeer Khan" too.
And members of the Bush administration were given greater credibility than those who remained skeptical, including United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix.
Hans Blix? Google up his name with the word "Chernobl."
This kind of BS is getting so tiresome. Why is it they never mention that most of the leading Democrats also voted to back the president in this venture?
This is as far as I read. Don't even bother asking why.
I suppose it is possible for idiots to get space to spout inanities forever, It is tedious, however.
Using poll numbers that support one's point of view as a basis to write an article is such lazy reporting. If the poll numbers didn't support his point of view we never would have heard from this guy. Come to think of it, I never heard of him before anyway.
Don't worry, they will.
The only thing that shifts regularly is the dems attacks on Bush.
There is no link between saddam and terrorism. Remember that one? An oldie but goodie. It was replaced with There is no link between saddam and al-queada. The rationalizations for that one were legendary. Saddam was too secular they complained. That one lasted a little longer. Next it was there are no operational links between saddam and alqueada. Then it was shifted to there is no link between saddam and 9-11. Remember all the articles and editorials from the msm on how stupid fox news viewers were for believing that saddam might have had something to do with 9-11? Enter Able Danger and the next arguement will be that saddam didn't actually fly the planes himself.
Then there's the wmd's. WMD's always seem to pop back up every time one of the other attacks come flying apart at the seams. They've gotten good mileage out of it with much help from the press, but it has moved around a bit too. First there were no wmd's. Next came the condemnation that there weren't as many as predicted. Then they are just pre-1991 wmd's (whatever that means).
Anybody up for that no blood for oil number. Don't see that sign around much anymore.
Did I miss anything?
Last I heard, British Intelligence is still standing by the contention that SH was trying to buy yellow cake uranium in Africa.
And weren't the families of homocide bombers in Israel getting a huge check from Iraq?
Sounds like "supporting terrorism" to me.
They're holding the blood for oil sign among all the others outside of WalterReed this week.
With these gas prices, someone didn't get the memo.
Hussein - the paper tiger who invaded Kuwait, tried to assassinate a US President, sponsored suicide bombing in Israel, sponsored the 1993 WTC bombing, made the only military-grade anthrax outside the US and USSR, attempted to invade Iran at the cost of 1.5 million lives, used nerve gas to wipe out a village of 5000 people, and, as we are finding out more every day, was also a major sponsor of 9/11.
Newspaper editors live in an alternate reality where nothing is unless they say it is.
Yeah you missed a few. See post 19. Also I forgot to add that Mr. Paper Tiger averaged a casualty count of 119 people per day over the course of his 23+ years in power.
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