Comments on “Buying the War”, Bill Moyers Journal (3-7-2008)
“The story was there, but the vast majority ignored it.” We had all of the run up to this war on faith alone, faith in the administration’s willingness and competence in telling the truth and having motives of the highest order of responsibility for the best interests of the people. But the journalists just passed on and recycled the administration’s line, in the most prominent and respected journals.
After viewing the proigram, I am startled at the number of great news men and women in print and the broadcast and cable media who have, in my estimation, tarnished their credibility for their role in “buying the war”. Knight-Ridder newspeople and the organization come out as the rare heroes of a special, professional, healthy skepticism that dug deep and found the story and the truth, the Emperor had no clothes on, “bar nekked”. Now there will be lots of waffling among those who suffer from a disease of skepticism. They could not say, “Show me the evidence! The basis of your contention! Who are those who said so? We do not want your shills (Colin Powell, Condi Rice) to give it to us second-hand.”
To see those of my favorites under obvious stress as Moyers questioned them! A spectacle I was disappointed to see. They were all complicit in “truth-squadding” the President’s news conference at that time. Why did the press buy it? How were they flummoxed in a group-think approach to their professional duty? The answer: “Dissent is not only unpatriotic, it’s bad for business”, as Phil Donohue said in the program. They might have been ordered by their “owners” to squelch their better instincts.
Are these klieg-lights of journalistic organizations and expertise now feeling chastened and regenerated by their rough outing in this program? I might ask of the President and his minions, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Powell and all the rest, along with the journalists, don’t you feel the enormous weight of the deaths of our youth and the squandering of vast sums of our treasure in Iraq should rest on your consciences the rest of your lives for having sent them into a war for no reason except your own insane (and under-the-table) motives? You should never again have the ability to smile.
I will watch to see how they confront the candidates (nominees) for President. I will look for questioning abilities that probe for the important underlying issues at stake. On that basis so far, I must conclude that the focus of their questions has generally missed the core of all issues: how will you operate our government and formulate the policies you will submit to the people’s representatives, the policies and program of legislation? How will you present the face of the United States to the world? How? We must watch for the probity of our press corps carefully.
