The one newspaper chain that got it right about the foolish Iraq War policy, is now showing to what extent the Bush administration, and fellow journalist are still trying to cover there asses. America was willfully propagandized in the lead up to the Iraq War.
Even some of McClatchy's own newspaper chains carried articles written by the likes Judy Miller, and Michael Gordon rather than articles written by McClatchy's own Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, who got it right.
They first go after the Bush Administration:
...But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.
Bush loyalists have responded in three ways:
- Scott, how could you? This conveniently ignores the issue of what Bush did or didn't know and do about intelligence on Iraq, converting the story line into that of wounded leader and treasonous former aide. (That canard was the sole focus of a CBS news radio report Wednesday night).
- Invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Okay. When do Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, et al not say that? Dog bites man.
- It was an intelligence failure. The CIA gave us bad dope on WMD and, well, they're the experts. More on this in a second.
...
The Bush administration talking point was to be expected. But the push back to the assertion that the media did not do it's job is equally stunning. Alot of the journalist were buying into the talking saying "...this doesn't sound like McClellan...". The media loves looking at the Bush administration's incompetence while hang gliding over their own.
The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war.
Here's ABC News' Charles Gibson: "I think the questions were asked. It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. It is not our job to debate them. It is our job to ask the questions." And "I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently."
Really?
Or this from NBC's Brian Williams: "Sadly, we saw fellow Americans — in some cases floating past facedown (after Katrina). We knew what had just happened. We weren’t allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors [in Iraq]. I was in Kuwait for the buildup to the war, and, yes, we heard from the Pentagon, on my cell phone, the minute they heard us report something that they didn’t like. The tone of that time was quite extraordinary." And this: ""It’s tough to go back, to put ourselves in the mind-set. It was post-9/11 America."
So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?
Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.
We confess that here at McClatchy, which purchased Knight Ridder two years ago, we do have a dog in this fight. Our team - Joe Galloway, Clark Hoyt, Jon Landay, Renee Schoof, Warren Strobel, John Walcott, Tish Wells and many others - was, with a few exceptions, the only major news media organization that before the war consistently and aggressively challenged the White House's case for war, and its lack of planning for post-war Iraq...
It's a intersting read.