A lot of people are blaming the MSM for their willingness to be led by the nose by the WH in selling the war in Iraq. Well I got news (no pun intended) for a whole lot of people. There is a whole lot of blame to go around. To be perfectly fair not everyone was fooled. There were those who said whoa up there Hoss. One of which is running for President. Also most of the people on this site. But, at the time, thinking people were far and few between. More below the flip.
Blame. Blame. Blame. Gotta blame someone or something. The latest meme is blame the MSM for not doing their job and vetting the information dished out by the WH prior to the start of the war in Iraq. In light of some of the revelations (like Phil D. getting booted by MSNBC for "not reflecting the tenor of American public opinion", being to left and horror of horror’s against the war) about the MSM’s attitude at the time it is hard not to lay a lot of the blame, and IMHO rightly so, at their collective front door. They helped enable BushCo to sell the irrational idea of kickin the crap out of a country that had nothing to do with 911. The only one you really can’t blame is good ole ‘Merican Faux News. You could feed those guys the most rancid, brain numbing, gut churning, bile inducing right-wing BS imaginable and they would call it yummy. But the other big 3, NBC, CBS, and ABC, and their so called executive management deserve every bit of finger pointing they get for their independent yet amazingly collective decision to peddle the WH line of total crap based on dollar signs. They CHOSE to ignore the duty of the fourth estate in favor of the almighty ratings number which in turn morphs into the almighty dollar. Thank you so much for confirming my worst thoughts. You schmucks wouldn’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.
After the planes were done hitting the buildings and our fearless leader finished reading about his pet goat, our first clue as to what was to come lay right in front of our noses. Only a few saw it for what it was at the time. The clueless leader of the free world spent the rest of 911 flying around and hiding under a desk in a bunker. The American public got breathless renditions of the days’ events in a never ending stream of somber opinion and all too realistic footage of death and carnage on a scale never before witnessed by the modern American TV viewer. No special effects here, this was the real thing. News paper headlines screamed out at us "UNDER ATTACK!!" over pictures of the burning World Trade Center buildings. As a people we were hurt, angry, shocked, saddened and truly grief stricken in far, far too many real cases.
Then we got used. We got manipulated. Some Bush appointed cold-assed calculating neocons saw this as an opportunity of a lifetime. We can use this they thought. Hey, lets’ remake the map of the middle east. Lets’ finish off Saddam, and grab all that oil. Oh man, it was just too good to pass up. WMD’s!!!! Mushroom clouds! Forget Afghanistan. IRAQ! SADDAM! DICTATOR! We can pay them back for 911! Oh yeah nothing like a few bombs to make us all feel better, especially when we can see it real time with all those embedded MSM reporters. Yeah buddy. We’re gonna Rambo their asses. We’ll be greeted as liberators. Flower petals thrown on the ground by happy smiling Iraqi children for our tank tracks to roll over. Just like the John Wayne films.
You know what happened? 70% of the American public bought it. Hook, line and sinker. Why? Because of the irrational "national" need for revenge. Remember the Alamo! Remember the Maine! Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember 911! Strike back. Kill something, anything, only help make this national pain, this national shame, go away. And you know what? The American sheepeople got what they asked for. Their very own the-boys-will-be-home-for-Christmas, no fuss, no muss, guaranteed a winner war. Only that didn’t happen. Did it?
Here we are seven years after 911 and the one person most responsible for that day is still running around a free man. Seven years later and we are stuck in a war that is going to break the bank if we don’t find a way out and soon. The American public can blame anyone they want to at this point. They can blame BushCo, blame the MSM, blame little pink elephants if it makes them feel better. But look in the mirror boys and girls if you want to see the REAL reason we are where we are as a country. If you want to know where the real blame lies, look in the mirror.