16 Years Later, How the Press That Sold the Iraq War Got Away With It

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Sixteen years ago this week, the United States invaded Iraq. We went in on an unconvincing excuse, articulated by George W. Bush in a speech days before invasion:

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.”

To the lie about the possession of WMDs, Bush added a few more: that Hussein “trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda.” Moreover, left unchecked, those Saddam-supplied terrorists could “kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country.”

The disaster that followed cost over a hundred-thousand lives just in Iraq and drained north of $2 trillion from the budget. Once we were in and the “most lethal weapons ever devised” were not discovered, it quickly became obvious that large numbers of people at the highest levels of society had either lied, screwed up, or both.

The news media appropriately caught a huge chunk of the blame. But a public that had been fooled once was not prepared for the multiple rounds of post-invasion deceptions that followed, issued by many of the same pols and press actors. These were designed to rewrite history in real time, creating new legends that have now lasted 16 years.

These have allowed people like Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer — through whose mouth many of the chief lies of the era flowed — to come out this week and claim it was a “myth” that “Bush lied, people died.”

-more-

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iraq-war-media-fail-matt-taibbi-812230/

[GusBob]

1. The day I stopped watching TV

Did they find the WMDs they all were yapping about

[madville]

2. How soon everyone forgets

Biggest criminals and caused more death and destruction than any administration in history. Look who else was warning us all about Saddam giving WMDs to terrorists:

[moondust]

5. That's troubling.

I suppose his best defense is that the FBI was tasked with domestic intelligence and his job as a team member was to support CIA director Tenet, whose job was foreign intelligence, and the White House, which had access to all the intelligence reports.

[Wellstone ruled]

3. That was the price CNN

paid to get the SCOOP and exclusives.

[Shemp Howard]

4. George W. Bush is a war criminal.

George W. Bush is a war criminal. I believe that now even most conservatives would agree with that statement. They just won't publicly admit it. Maybe in 25 more years they will.

And where does that leave the press, and the members of Congress who voted for the Iraqi war resolution? They were willing accessories to Bush's war crimes.

Let's assume that every last thing that Bush said about the WMD's were true. Every last thing. Attacking Iraq would still have been a war crime, because it still would have been a "preventative" war.

By the way, that was the Japanese excuse for bombing Pearl Harbor. It was a preventative attack, meant to stop the United States from possibly doing something bad in the future. The Allies held Tojo and others accountable for that.

[BlueFlorida]

6. The print and electronic press love wars

More readers, more audiences and none of them have to die or get injured.

Money at the expense of other people's misery and let the ethics and morals be damned.