The Situation: Doom

[SteppingRazor]

http://southflorida.metromix.com/politics/article/danation-the-situation-doom/353855/content

Danation: The situation: doom
With bedbugs and morons in the nation's newsrooms, has political journalism gone apocalyptic?
By Dan Sweeney

<snip>

The signs are everywhere, to those attuned enough to see them. But maybe they don't bespeak the rapture. Last week, after all, was also the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, the Big Dumb. (The week also saw the milestone of 4,000 American soldiers dead, but hey, who's counting?) The benchmark was celebrated with a typically bizarre, Opposite Day speech by our president, in which the war was a stunning success. Also, the week was characterized by the sort of Monday morning quarterbacking from the punditry that often leaves me reaching for a Kleenex to clean the blood shooting from my eyes. My favorite was MSNBC's Tucker Carlson's claim that before the war, he couldn't find three people out of 300 million who said we wouldn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But Carlson is right, in a way, if only in revealing that the press didn't look too hard. Five years later, the press' hard-on for war in the lead-up to the invasion still leaves me a bit nauseous. Hell, last Friday, the day after Carlson's ridiculous statement on Morning Joe, the same show had on The Washington Post's allegedly liberal columnist Richard Cohen, who wrote about Colin Powell's United Nations speech a month before the invasion. "This is where Colin Powell brought us all yesterday," Cohen argued. "The evidence he presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise."

Well, I'm pretty smart, and I don't speak French. Why did Cohen and his ilk take the Bush administration at its word despite the group's proven untrustworthiness? I recall seeing Powell's speech. I saw the cartoon drawings of "mobile weapons labs." I saw the satellite pictures of buildings that Powell claimed were weapons factories. I saw the vial of American-made anthrax Powell held up as an example of what Hussein had. I recall thinking what a vacuous charade the whole thing had been, and then nearly falling out of my chair as CNN cut back to Wolf Blitzer, who breathlessly reported on the powerful case for war that had just been made.

How the hell are people like Cohen and Blitzer so wrong, so often and still gainfully employed as anchors and opinion columnists? Perhaps the Washington press is, like Washington politicians, easily corruptible after too much time in D.C. Maybe that's Cohen's problem — too much time inside the Beltway has caused his brain to rot. In any case, we ought to start keeping better track of how credulous these jokers are in their reporting and how correct they are in their predictions. Those who prove too gullible or wrong should be subject to serious punishment — public castration, maybe. That way, the only people left in political journalism would be the ones with balls.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. At some point there, I turned from "atheist" to agnostic on the WMD issue.

Nevertheless I saw no justification for an invasion. Quite the reverse, in fact. Instead, I asked myself: IF Saddam has WMD, WHY would he have them? To attack Israel with? Hardly. To give to his neighbors or to terrorists? How on earth could it be in his self-interest to do that? I could only see one reason why he might want WMD: To discourage people from invading him. "If you come after me, it's gonna cost you big-time. I will make your army shit blood and glow in the dark." So, if there were WMD there, the worst thing to do would be to attack Iraq. When we went in, I immediately concluded that the Bushies were fully aware he had no WMD. Otherwise they would not have risked the huge military losses. I did expect us to plant some WMD, though. I still think that was on the agenda, but the planting operation went awry.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. more people are skeptical of the MSM's fairy tales now

I think that the American Public is starting to figure that the MSM
is just full of crap and that we cannot trust ABCCBSCNNNBCMSNBC.

And Silly Season in the media - we've figured that one out too!

[calimary]

3. Kick! It's about time more names were named in this outrageous media scandal.

I'm glad to see this out there. I just wish there were more outrage pieces like this one.

BTW - I sent one in last week that called out Richard Cohen and Andrew Sullivan and others who'd issued some fairly bland mea culpas, in Slate.com, for why they got it so wrong on Iraq. And HuffPo didn't take it.

But I think names should be named. I think there should be consequences for these people - for getting it so wrong, so willfully - because they ACTIVELY avoided the truth and truth-tellers like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter who couldn't even get arrested out there back in 2002 and early 2003 because they were literally mowed down by this avalanche of panting, fellating war-pushers and everyone else straining to climb onboard the Let's-All-Go-To-Iraq-NOW! bandwagon. The truth, as they said on "The X-Files," WAS out there, available to anyone. And it was suppressed, diminished, scorned, and ignored. Some people who tried to tell the truth were fired or publicly humiliated (see Helen Thomas being sent to the back of the room for having the gall to ask a tough question of bush). The rest of these opportunistic schmucks just strapped on their bibs and their kneepads and sucked away. And because they did not question or probe this, at least four thousand American troops went to needless deaths. Died in vain. And the only answer we have for THAT - when grieving families ask their "fearless" leaders to make sure that sacrifice was not in vain, is the declared "resolve" that we'll be certain to keep sending thousands MORE Americans to their own needless deaths. And STILL - nobody says anything!!!

I figure that's the least we can do to impose consequences on these thoughtless, mindless assholes - NAME THEM IN PUBLIC. CALL THEM OUT, BY NAME, AND LIST THEIR frickin IDIOCY and DISGRACEFUL fawning. NAME THEIR NAMES IN PUBLIC AND SAY WHAT THEY DID. And if we do it enough, and long enough, and loudly enough, and relentlessly enough, SOME of them might actually get some red faces. I'm surprised they all haven't been issued Presidential Medals of Freedom, which is the coin of the realm for this administration whenever somebody royally fucks up.

:mad: :grr: :banghead: