"I, think that we're in the mess we're in in Iraq not only because the administration invaded Iraq with too few troops, without significant international support, with no exit strategy and by diverting resources from the unfinished war against al Qaida, but also because two other American institutions fell down on the job. First the Congress. What we hear today, from some Democratic presidential candidates and others, is this: "If I had known then what I know today, I would never have voted to go to war." My response is this: You could have known then what you know today, and you should have known then what you know today. It was your job, and no part of your job is more important than a decision to send some of our finest young men and women to war.
...the second institution that failed us is my own, the press. There were much bigger problems with the media after 9/11 than just too-cozy relationships with the wrong sources and timidity about challenging a popular president in the wake of an attack on our country. There was simple laziness: Much of what the administration said, especially about Iraq and al Qaida, simply made no sense, yet very few reporters bothered to check it out. They were stenographers; they were not reporters."
-John Walcott, Bureau Chief, McClatchy Washington Bureau
I watched the Moyers special on the press last night, and many other have diaried about it. Again, thank you Bill Moyers for your true patriotism.
But I want to say thank you to John Walcott. I don't know when I have been so impressed with a member of the press. He sounded like a man of true integrity, and a very, very wise man. He knows the cost of real patriotism is high, and chose to be a patriot anyway.
To Congress:
"First the Congress. What we hear today, from some Democratic presidential candidates and others, is this: "If I had known then what I know today, I would never have voted to go to war."
Not only should you have known, congressmen, congresswomen and senators. You could have known.
If you had done your homework, you would have known that many of the real experts in the government, in the CIA, the DIA, the State Department, the uniformed military, the Energy Department and so on had grave doubts about this part or that part of the administration's case for war.
You would have known that the Secretary of Defense and the White House ignored them and relied instead on Iraqi exiles.
You would have known that the administration had no plan to secure Iraq after Saddam Hussein's fall, except for installing one of those exiles, Ahmad Chalabi, as the country's new leader, and that it threw out all the planning that had been done by the State Department and the Central Command.
How do I know that Congress could have known all that? Very simple: We knew it in what was then the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, and we wrote stories about it, over and over again."
On the "reality based world:"
"Journalists live in the reality-based world," a White House official said to Ron Suskind, writing for The New York Times Magazine back in the headier days of 2004. "The world doesn't really work that way any more. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."
I respectfully disagree.
The Church was wrong, and Copernicus and Galileo were right.
The Earth is not flat, and men did land on the Moon.
There is not one truth for Fox News and another for The Nation.
Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were wrong, no matter how devoutly they may have believed their own propaganda.
President Bush was wrong to think that it would be a simple matter to make Iraq the mother of all Mideast democracy.
Or, as Georges Clemenceau said when he was asked what he thought historians might say about the First World War: "They will not say that Belgium invaded Germany."
I'm not talking here about matters of taste or of partisan politics or, heaven help us, of faith: Whether Monet or Manet was a better painter; or whether Jesus was the Messiah, a prophet or a fraud. Those are personal matters: beliefs, opinions and preferences of which we, and hopefully our Iraqi friends, must simply learn to be more tolerant.
But as Harry G. Frankfurt, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton, puts it in his marvelous little book, "On Truth" (the sequel, I tell you truly, to his first classic, "On Bullshit"):
"It seems ever more clear to me that higher levels of civilization must depend even more heavily on a conscientious respect for the importance of honesty and clarity in reporting the facts, and on a stubborn concern for accuracy in determining what the facts are."
There you have it. That is why I do what I do."
The complete speech
Thank you, John Walcott. We are so grateful that you do what you do.
Please don't stop. Ever.
We need you too much.
I hope this can get on the recommened list because I think everyone needs to "hear" his words. Please recommend this diary if you agree.
The complete speech