I was flipping channels just now and came across a program on CNN called “Dead Wrong: Inside an Intelligence Meltdown”. It turns out to be an in depth presentation about how the Iraq war started by Dubya was justified and supported by brutally bad intelligence. Not just bad intelligence, but deliberately misleading and unsubstantiated intelligence. And I’m sitting there watching this thinking: Yeah. A lot of people suspected that the WMD story, and later the “liberation” story was all bogus crap — that the real motivations to go to war were much more nefarious and self-serving in nature than presented.
But where was CNN then? Where was any news organization? They all rolled over as happy as could be and turned into government propoganda machines. They ate up and regurgitated everything that the government fed them without so much as giving the slightest hint that any of the information conveniently provided in press releases may have been in any way suspect. Without even checking sources. Without even being the least bit critical about the information they were receiving and promulgating. They became active promoters of hysteria the government had hoped to create. And at what cost? Look at the world today. A nervous and trigger-happy United States is now more in fear than ever of it’s planetary co-habitants.
Nice job, CNN.