The "Monday morning quarterback" is commonly disparaged for criticizing, with the advantage of hindsight, those whose earlier reports and predictions, based necessarily upon limited and faulty information, prove to be false. To be sure, such "hindsighters," when they "rub it in," can be quite disagreeable.
And yet, if reports and predictions that turn out to be false are not critically examined in retrospect, then, as Santayana warned, having failed to learn from history, we may be condemned to repeat it.
Equally disagreeable are those mistaken reporters and prophets who attempt to excuse their errors by revising history. For example, the spectacularly misguided Judith Miller of The New York Times reflects: "WMD – I got it totally wrong... The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them – we were all wrong."
Alas, poor Judith is undone by Google and the written record. For in fact, as Arianna Huffington cites, numerous reporters and experts "got it right" in advance of this dreadful fiasco of a war. So too did some ten million ordinary citizens throughout the world who took to the streets to protest the pending war.
Ms. Miller's excuse? "If your sources are wrong, you are wrong. I did the best job that I could." Not really. If your primary source is Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted embezzler who aspires to be installed by US forces as the next President of Iraq, and not Hans Blix, Mohamed ElBaradei, and the UN inspectors in Iraq who are finding no WMDs, then you are not doing the best job that you can. One would suppose that an ability to scrupulously evaluate one's sources should be a fundamental qualification for a job with The New York Times.
While there was abundant reason not to believe the Bush administration's lies that led us into the war, the mainstream media, for the most part, reported those lies without critical analysis and rebuttal. Among them:
**"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent." (George W. Bush, State of the Union, January 28, 2003).
**The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (Ibid.)
**"We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." (Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003).
**"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." (Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002).
**"We know where [the WMDs] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." (Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003).
And who can forget Colin Powell's show-and-tell before the UN Security Council, featuring the Winnebagos of Death and the deadly vial of anthrax (don't drop it, Colin!). The MSM bought it all, without a peep of skepticism. We now know that it was a tissue of lies.
Early on, most of the public believed the Bushevik lies: that Saddam had WMDs and was hard at work pursuing nuclear weapons, that Saddam's Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, and that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. And who can blame them? Judith Miller's delusions were being printed on the front page of the New York Times, "the newspaper of historical record." Colin Powell's credibility was pure gold. And surely, the President, the Veep, and the SecDef wouldn't say such things if they were flat-out false. Ari Fleischer told us so on December 5, 2002:
The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.
But an alert, skeptical and resourceful media should have known better; that same media that could for eight years, search relentlessly, if futilely, to find some criminality in Bill and Hillary Clinton's real estate investments.
So we return now to our implied opening question: is it fair today to hold the mainstream media, and to be sure, members of Congress, responsible for their pre-war endorsement of Bush and Cheney's invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq?
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. Partridge has taught philosophy at the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" (www.crisispapers.org). His book in progress, "Conscience of a Progressive," can be seen at www.igc.org/gadfly/progressive/^toc.htm .
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