You Caused This

7:06 am EST June 15th, 2005 | Media | 2 Comments

There’s a stunningly idiotic editorial in today’s Washington Post.

The [Downing Street] memos add not a single fact to what was previously known about the administration’s prewar deliberations. Not only that: They add nothing to what was publicly known in July 2002.

….

Debate over whether the war should have been fought is appropriate and no doubt will continue for many years. But it ought not distract from what should be an urgent discussion of the present situation in Iraq.

Does the Post read its own paper? It was the Washington Post who led the mainstream media’s editorial pages in arguing in favor of the Iraq war. It was the Post who told us all to shut up and toe the line because our beloved wartime leader was in the driver’s seat so we better do what he says. It was the Post, and their cohorts in the mainstream media who uncritically accepted as fact the administrations pre-war and ongoing propaganda with nary a bit of attention paid to the niggling detractors across America.

And now the Post wants to simply pretend that all never happened and push the administration to have an honest accounting of what the hell we’re doing in Iraq? Talk about the heights of hypocrisy. It is the Post and the other members of the mainstream media who have allowed the administration to bring us to this point – where even Donald Rumsfeld admits not much is better off in Iraq than two years ago. We, the unwashed masses, have no way of questioning our leaders, submitting their proclamations to any sort of scrutiny – that is the job of the media, but they’ve abdicated their duty in the Bush era. Perhaps if the Post did their job we might have not gone into Iraq, and even once we did perhaps the paper and its allies in the press would have pushed the administration to present some sort of guide beyond “trust us” to explain what the heck it is we seek to accomplish.

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2 Responses to “You Caused This”

ignatz says:

June 15, 2005 at 10:06 am

Here was my comment on this stupid editorial, and I hope you don’t mind if I post it here:

I LOVE the excuse given by both the New York Whore Times and the Washington Post for not covering one of the most important stories of the last three years.

They already knew it.

They say they’ve known that Bush was exagerrating intelligence for three years.

And since they knew about it three years ago, it can’t be news NOW. Even if YOU didn’t know about it three years ago, because they didn’t cover it three years ago either. How’s THAT for convenient?

This is straight out of the Marx Brothers Duck Soup.

Rufus T. Firefly: And now, members of the cabinet we’ll take up old business.
Cabinet Member: I wish to discuss the tariff.
Rufus T. Firefly: Sit down, that’s new business. No old business? Very well, we’ll take up new business.
Cabinet Member: Now, about that tariff…
Rufus T. Firefly: Too late, that’s old business already. Sit down.

How about their damned-near-criminal negligence? Is that news? Probably not. After all, we’ve known about THAT for a long time, too.

AFTER LAGGING for months, debate on Iraq in Washington is picking up again. That’s a needed and welcome development, but much of the discussion is being diverted to the wrong subject. War opponents have been trumpeting several British government memos from July 2002, which describe the Bush administration’s preparations for invasion, as revelatory of President Bush’s deceptions about Iraq. Bloggers have demanded to know why “the mainstream media” have not paid more attention to them. Though we can’t speak for The Post’s news department, the answer appears obvious: The memos add not a single fact to what was previously known about the administration’s prewar deliberations. Not only that: They add nothing to what was publicly known in July 2002….

One observation in the memos is vague but intriguing: A British official is quoted as saying that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” Yet it was argued even then, and has since become conventional wisdom, that Mr. Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration spokesmen exaggerated the threat from Iraq to justify the elimination of its noxious regime.

Ok – let’s see all the news stories from the last three years showing this “conventional wisdom.” Go on – let’s see one story from the last three years saying that the Bush administration was playing with the facts in order to pursue a pre-determined policy. Not editorials saying that some people were WONDERING about that. Actual stories STATING it.

It was conventional wisdom?

So how come the American public seems completely unaware of it, if it’s “conventional wisdom?”

Because the major news outlets KNEW it, but didn’t see any need to PRINT it.

British Ministers were being told that the United States was going to go to war while Bush was still pretending that he was trying to avoid it. We all knew that? Really? We all knew that the British Ministers were told that the war was illegal, and that it was their job to make it legal? We all knew that?

Well, how the HELL did a news junkie like ME miss it if ALL THE NEWSPAPERS knew it?

If the Mainstream Media knew that Bush was fixing facts around a pre-determined decision to go to war, why didn’t they point this out when the Bushies trashed Richard Clarke’s reputation because he said EXACTLY THAT?

The fact is that 1700 Americans are dead, and the Bush administration spread bullshit far and wide for the purpose of CAUSING it.

And if the media knew about it three years ago, they are almost as guilty as HE is.
Vincent says:

June 15, 2005 at 3:06 pm

It’s lovely watching the left trip all over itself to play up the Downing Street Memo as if it were some kind of smoking gun.

I hate to break to to you guys, but it really isn’t. Not that you’ll be paying attention, of course, because you’ll be too busy up in the stratosphere riding around on the jet plane of your own overblown rhetoric.