Five Years Ago Tonight: That Fateful Press Conference

[RamboLiberal]

Five years ago tonight, on March 6, 2003, President Bush conducted a televised press conference – less than two weeks before he would order the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- stating in his intro, “We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.”

Some of the questions from the press were sharp, many others weak, but one asking about his religious strength gave him an opportunity to say, “My faith sustains me because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength…. But it's a humbling experience to think that people I will never have met have lifted me and my family up in prayer. And for that I'm grateful.”

It was the mood of the affair that was most noteworthy. Bush smiled and made his usual quips, and many of the reporters played the game and did not press him hard. This was how these press gatherings had gone throughout the run-up to war. But this meeting was heavily scripted with Bush looking at a slip of paper and calling on reporters in a pre-arranged order. No one challenged him on this.

When it was over, I asked Ari Berman, then an intern with Editor & Publisher and now a talented veteran at The Nation, to come up with a few questions we wished reporters had asked that night. I added a few myself, and published them next day follow. We called it “Questions We Wish They’d Asked.”

Here are most of them. The episode is included in my new book, "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003720934

Yeah, what a bunch of cheer-leading toadies! They failed us then and for the most part they continue to fail us!

[gratuitous]

1. I recall around that time

Some reporter had the temerity to ask Commander Guy a question that presupposed the invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion. He snapped back that the invasion hadn’t been launched, and that it wouldn’t be launched without his official say-so. Needless to say, the question was never answered, and the message to the rest of the press corpse was clear: Don’t get ahead of things and never pretend you know more than George Dubya if you want to keep your access.

The press did not cover itself in glory in the weeks and months leading up to this war of aggression, and they’ve been hopelessly incompetent ever since. You’d think that after five solid years of lies, misdirection, obfuscation, petty quibbling, evasions, and direct abuse that they would evince the slightest skepticism when they know good and well what’s going on. Instead, they stolidly maintain the “he said/he said” school of reportorial balance, pretending that a blatant lie shares some equivalence with objective truth. But I’m sure that the day after a Democrat is sworn in on January 20, 2009 they’ll magically recover all their critical faculties and then some to question every single decision out of the White House.

[donkeyotay]

2. Good reminders. A) There really is a war in Iraq, and B) Don't trust the toady press.

They haven't changed. They've managed it all very well, really. A weapon of mass distraction.