Media morons inartfully dodge their malfeasance

By Libby

While I remain completely unimpressed by McLellan's mea culpa, I'm liking that our malingering media are being forced to account for their own failures to inform the public of the deceits leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Not that they're taking the scrutiny particularly seriously. The major culprits are laughing it off and adding insult to injury.

Politico reporter Mike Allen, formerly of The Washington Post and Time, appeared yesterday on the show of right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher. The two of them guffawed together at how absurd are Scott McCellan's claims that the media was "deferential" to the Bush administration and then Allen said this:

ALLEN: And indeed, Scott does adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric of the left wing haters. Can you believe it in here he says the White House press corps was too deferential to the administration?

This was exactly the narrative they were plying back then that allowed this disaster to occur. Anyone who dared question the White House lies was a left wing hater and besides it's not their job to question authority. They were of the mind that they deserved their bloated salaries for mere stenography. And it wasn't just in the runup to the invasion that they failed us. They continued their fluffing right through the 04 elections. One had to go to the foreign press to find a functioning media. Take for instance, the attack on Richard Clarke, who blew the whistle on Bush's long pre-planned invasion of Iraq.

The swiftness and ferocity of the Bush White House's attack on Richard Clarke tells you two things: his story may be largely true, and the Bush administration is terrified that the American people will believe it. [...]

The White House did not let a single news cycle go by before questioning that the alleged encounter between the president and Clarke had ever taken place, assigning dark motives to a man who has served four presidents, three of them Republicans.

And the self-serving US media stars, along with their pet neo-cons, jumped right in with their long knives to stab Clarke in the back. Small wonder so few thereafter showed any similiar courage, although the knowledge of the deceptions was widespread.

"The conversation absolutely took place. I was there, but you can't name me," the witness said. "I was one of several people present. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the president had Iraq on his mind, first and foremost." This former national security council official was too terrified to go on the record - he knows how vengeful this administration can be.

Former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill paid the price for truthtelling with his account of "how the Bush White House set its sights on Iraq from day one." Rumsfeld threatened him and when he failed to kowtow, he "instantly became the target of an investigation by his former department, which claimed that he had revealed state secrets."

Yet the facts were obvious and irrefutable. "The fact that the Pentagon pulled the fighting force most equipped for hunting down Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan in March 2002 in order to pre- position it for Iraq cannot be denied." After spending five months establishing rapport on the ground in Afghanistan, the elite unit was given two days notice to turn over their mission to those most ill-equipped to carry it out. But this was probably the most egregious failure.

Along with the redeployment of human assets came a reallocation of sophisticated hardware. The US air force has only two specially-equipped RC135 U spy planes. They had successfully vectored in on al-Qaida leadership radio transmissions and cellphone calls, but they would no longer circle over the mountains of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

We had AQ in our sights. We could have taken out bin Laden, actually won the so-called on terror right there, but Bush had other priorites, long in the planning. Back then, few expected our media to become so complicit in the lie, but they not only allowed the Bush administration to proclaim "it was the only qualified protector of national security," they actively persecuted the truthtellers on the administration's behalf. The Guardian said then that, "Sooner or later - and certainly before November - that truth will out." But it didn't out, it was buried in reams of White House press releases dutifully transcribed by a craven press corps too enamored of their own place on the guest lists of the powerful to do their duty to their profession or the American people.

Yesterday, Scott McClellan ran into Richard Clarke and apologized for denouncing Clarke's book at the time. That's not enough by a mile. He should set up on a street corner and apologize to every family who lost a loved one in this occupation, to every soldier who came home broken and to every Iraqi who lost everything to the lies he perpetrated in service to his former masters.

But really, that's even not enough. Almost the entire corporate media not only failed to tell the truth, they actively worked to destroy anyone brave to do so on the public record. There's no apology, no penance great enough to undo the damage and destruction caused by the negligence of McLellan and all those of his ilk in the punditry who enthusiastically 'created the reality' the White House demanded. In a sane world they would have long ago been relieved of their microphones and banished from civil society.