This ordering of priorities further means there is no practical reason to revisit who was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack. If Assad's government was innocent and Ergogan's government shared in the guilt, that would present a problem for NATO, which would have to decide if Turkey had crossed a "red line" and deserved being expelled from the military alliance.
But perhaps even more so, an admission that the U.S. government and the U.S. news media had rushed to another incorrect judgment in the Middle East -- and that another war policy was driven by propaganda rather than facts -- could destroy what trust the American people have left in those institutions. On a personal level, it might mean that the pundits and the politicians who were wrong about Iraq's WMD would have to acknowledge that they had learned nothing from that disaster.
It might even renew calls for some of them -- the likes of The New York Times' Friedman and The Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt -- to finally be held accountable for consistently misinforming and misleading the American people.
So, at least for now -- from a perspective of self-interest -- it makes more sense for the Obama administration and major news outlets to ignore the developing story of a NATO ally's ties to terrorism, including an alleged connection to a grave war crime, the sarin attack outside Damascus.
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