Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Bill Moyers documentary on the press conduct during the run up to the war was excellent. If you didn't watch last night, it's online here. One thing that was brought up a bit which was the thing that sold me against the WMD claims was the fact that nobody could find them. Rummy, though this may shock you, lied when he said we knew where the WMD locations were.
Why wouldn't we at the very last minute sneak a word to the inspectors about exactly where they could find the WMDs if we had actual proof? Actually we did tell the inspectors about alot of places to look, and they always came up empty. It should have told us, and especially the media something.
Another point that was mentioned was the absurdity of a Saddam/Osama link. Hussein was ruthless against fundamentalists. He was supposed to be inviting in a fundamentalist organization with a charasmatic leader into his country? As if. It would be the equivalent of saying that Ted Kennedy and Sam Brownback are both Catholics so obviously they have to be in cahoots. We know that would be a very stupid argument to make, because we have knowledge of their positions and their alliances. Our media was too lazy or cowered to bother to refute the Saddam/Osama claims.
Tim Russert looked really bad in his interview as well. He pulled out that I am a poor country boy from Buffalo routine last night and it didn't stick. He has been in DC how long now? He also had no coherent answer to the question regarding Judy Miller's aluminum tubes story, and Dick Cheney pointing to the story that likely he or his minions leaked, in a self referring circle jerk.
I am not one for the navel gazing. I watched way too many Fred Friendly media wankathons on PBS when youthful. However, the media has not done enough to acknowledge how badly they screwed up. But more importantly, they haven't developed processes to prevent such a catostrophic lack of intellectual curiosity from leading us into such a flawed war again.
One of the chief things is there should be accountability for pundits. How networks can put Bill Kristol on the air to pontificate about foreign policy is not confusing. It is offensive. Better journalism please.
Subscribe to:
Comment Feed (RSS)
|