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How We Got Into Iraq: A Recap

By Jack M. Balkin

In response to the controversy over Scott McClellan's new book What Happened, which disclosed that the Bush engaged in a propaganda campaign to push the United States into war, Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay lay out what actually happened, using sources and articles available at the time.

The media, they point out, have little excuse for having been misled either about the Administration's motives or about the strength of the case for war. The evidence was available; but the media simply didn't want ask the Administration tough questions about its war plans in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. At the moment when a strong independent media was necessary, most of it failed the country. Many members of Congress refused to support the Administration's call for war, and protests were held around the country. But the press downplayed the opposition.

Now that former Bush Administration officials like McClellan are attempting to salvage their reputations with disclosures of what happened, the mainstream press professes to be shocked and surprised at being taken in by a cynical and dishonest Administration. Surely the media's spinelessness in the first four years of the Bush Administration is an equally important scandal.

Full post as published by Balkinization on May 30, 2008 (boomark / email).