Think Again: Are Journalists Any Less Gullible Today than They Were 10 Years Ago?
By Eric Alterman | March 21, 2013, Center for American Progress
It’s a tribute to the good sense of the broader American public that on the 10th anniversary of President George W. Bush’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq, a majority of Americans are aware that the entire enterprise was a bad idea, according to a poll by the Gallup Organization. As Eric Boehlert noted on the Media Matters for America blog, “To date, that conflict has claimed the lives of nearly 8,000 U.S. service members and contractors and more than 130,000 Iraqi citizens, and is projected to cost the U.S. Treasury more than two trillion dollars.”
The Gallup’s write-up points out that, “Majorities or near-majorities have viewed the conflict as a mistake continuously since August 2005, the current 53 percent is down from the high point of 63 percent in April 2008.” Despite this widely held view, the folks who battled to defend their misguided judgments 10 years ago—largely but not exclusively neoconservatives—are continuing their bloated claims about the purposes and benefits of the war. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for instance, took to Twitter to proclaim that, “10 yrs ago began the long, difficult work of liberating 25 mil Iraqis. All who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation.” And yet a majority of Americans are able to see the truth through this ongoing propaganda offensive.
It is no easy task to focus on just one deception when examining the Bush administration’s success of selling the war to the public. There were so many lies—some deliberate and some believed to be true by the tellers who were possibly under the influence of self-hypnosis. But I am most fascinated by the case for Iraq’s alleged cache of “weapons of mass destruction,” or WMDs, and the belief that Baghdad possessed not only the willingness but also the capacity to use these weapons against the United States.
(More here.)
It’s a tribute to the good sense of the broader American public that on the 10th anniversary of President George W. Bush’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq, a majority of Americans are aware that the entire enterprise was a bad idea, according to a poll by the Gallup Organization. As Eric Boehlert noted on the Media Matters for America blog, “To date, that conflict has claimed the lives of nearly 8,000 U.S. service members and contractors and more than 130,000 Iraqi citizens, and is projected to cost the U.S. Treasury more than two trillion dollars.”
The Gallup’s write-up points out that, “Majorities or near-majorities have viewed the conflict as a mistake continuously since August 2005, the current 53 percent is down from the high point of 63 percent in April 2008.” Despite this widely held view, the folks who battled to defend their misguided judgments 10 years ago—largely but not exclusively neoconservatives—are continuing their bloated claims about the purposes and benefits of the war. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for instance, took to Twitter to proclaim that, “10 yrs ago began the long, difficult work of liberating 25 mil Iraqis. All who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation.” And yet a majority of Americans are able to see the truth through this ongoing propaganda offensive.
It is no easy task to focus on just one deception when examining the Bush administration’s success of selling the war to the public. There were so many lies—some deliberate and some believed to be true by the tellers who were possibly under the influence of self-hypnosis. But I am most fascinated by the case for Iraq’s alleged cache of “weapons of mass destruction,” or WMDs, and the belief that Baghdad possessed not only the willingness but also the capacity to use these weapons against the United States.
(More here.)
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