Congress and the media deserve some blame for not digging hard enough... but when assigning blame here, surely we ought blame the liars and misleaders more than the lied to and the misled?
Except that the Bush Administration story was on several key points, including the nature of the “winnebagos of mass destruction” a lie, and that the US knew it to be a lie, and that, they were, in fact, associated with a weather balloons used in artillery spotting and had been sold to Iraq by the UK, was reported, in the media, at the time the story was being presented by the Administration.
The media did not fail to dig hard enough. Neither really did Congress. The media reported the truth, Congress and much of the population had the truth in front of them and choose wilfull pretense of ignorance, and the former gave Bush the authority to decide to go to war—sure, there were factual determinations that had to be made first, but the Administration was already known to be lying about the facts to get authority to go to war, so it was predictable they would lie to exercise that authority.
Why would we give congress war powers if not as a specific check against a commander in chief who would otherwise start undesireable wars? It is congress' job to specifically not just go along with what the administration tells them. They have their own investigative powers, and 59 congress members voted against the invasion so clearly it was possible for congress people to question the validity of the administration's argument.
As for the media, accepting the government's narrative without question is the most heinous sin. That is not journalism, that is propaganda. Of course the government is going to massage the truth, just like any other institution. Most people take it as a given that politicians lie. However when the media, which is supposed to have an antagonistic relationship with the government, reaffirms what the government is saying, then it holds substantially more weight. It would be like if a prosecutor claimed the defendant was guilty and the defense attorney agreed.
You don't get any slack for having been lied to when your entire job is to identify lies.
If I tell you that some guy called you fat and you go kick the shit out of him, I'm at way less or even no fault. If I tell you that some guy diddled your kid, sure that's on me.
Plus, regardless of that - Congress had, at the very least, the information available to the public, which includes what the UN was saying, what weapons inspectors were saying etc. So they didn't need to "dig" anywhere.
And later it came out the administration lied extensively about that, including some in-retrospect ridiculous assessments about how long the war would take (what was that quote, doubt it would take 6 months, doubt it would cost much at all).
> No need to invoke tribalism
Oh yes there is, especially because after that complete and utter fiasco of the worst foreign policy decision by the US ever, was there any honest introspection or learning by the administration and/or Republicans in general? Nope, it just was completely ignored.
2008 brought a Democrat president along with an increased Democrat majority in both houses, so if they weren't faulted at the time (and they were) then they were certainly faulted just a few years later.
most people I read seems to fault the Republicans, the Democrats who went along and the Media who reported uncritically in that order.
You also seem to fault the Republicans.
I fault the Republicans, first.
So it's not noticeable to me I guess.
Not one. Russiagate in its many variations was and still is happily peddled by NYT. Coverage of Syria is also straight from warmonger 101 textbook. There is likely more, but I stopped reading them regularly after 2003.
> nobody ever faults the Republican Party, which actually made the decision to invade Iraq
Both parties happily voted to invade. Both bear the blame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
What the lies manufactured was not a "reality", it was an excuse.
It was the editorial board, or perhaps I should say the organization at large. And it wasn't just Iraq, it's US interventions in lots of places that are supported and/or positively spun. Also - AFAIK, there was no process undertaken to try and avoid this occurring again.
> In light of the stark policy choices facing voters in the 2016 election, it seems incredible that only five out of 150 front-page articles that The New York Times ran over the last, most critical months of the election, attempted to compare the candidate’s policies, while only 10 described the policies of either candidate in any detail.
> In this context, 10 is an interesting figure because it is also the number of front-page stories the Times ran on the Hillary Clinton email scandal in just six days, from October 29 (the day after FBI Director James Comey announced his decision to reopen his investigation of possible wrongdoing by Clinton) through November 3, just five days before the election. When compared with the Times’s overall coverage of the campaign, the intensity of focus on this one issue is extraordinary. To reiterate, in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election (and that does not include the three additional articles on October 18, and November 6 and 7, or the two articles on the emails taken from John Podesta). This intense focus on the email scandal cannot be written off as inconsequential: The Comey incident and its subsequent impact on Clinton’s approval rating among undecided voters could very well have tipped the election.
——
But here’s the real kicker. It’s not that the NYT made a mistake about prioritising the wrong coverage and convincing undecided voters to break for Trump or stay home. People make mistakes and we should forgive them.
The real issue is that since then the NYT has convinced people that it was the Russians and Facebook and Cambridge Analytica that got Trump elected. Their breathless coverage of the email non issue had 0 influence, it was entirely the fault of everyone else.
And it worked! No one blames the NYT now for their mistake in 2016. Which is why Greenwald thinks it’s the right thing to do to start emails 2.0.
This was typical elite-orientated journalism that articulated ideas to spread election talking points for Clinton. It was certainly no journalism, it was probably for rubbing some friends in Washington.
If you believe what is being said about the NYT it challenges a couple of core beliefs that many people (especially on this forum) might hold
1. Freedom of speech is not always a good thing. A free press reporting on topics like “but her emails” can have negative consequences, even if those journalists are acting in good faith.
2. People in the aggregate can’t be trusted to make sound judgements, even if that means democracy is built on shaky foundations. Give them all the information and let them take a call is a strategy that can backfire. Flat earth, anti vax, qanon are all ideologies with vast following online, regardless of how stupid they are.
When you challenge people’s core beliefs, it hurts them. They respond with downvotes.
True, but I think that doesn't matter. On the contrary, would be boring if we all believed the earth was some ball, wouldn't it.
It's noticeable that nobody ever faults the Republican Party, which actually made the decision to invade Iraq. And also to lie to the world, its citizens, and, yes, those people at the Times that were naive enough to believe them.