Media avoids responsibility for Iraq War

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

The American media,
having committed so many sins commission and omission
to get us into the Iraq War,
is now systematically rewriting history
to put all blame on the Bush administration,
especially the designated (white Christian male) villains
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld,
while ignoring how they, the media, sounded the drumbeat for war.

Here are some examples of this Orwellian rewrite of history.

2007-02-26-WP-Dionne

Smearing Like It’s 2003
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, 2007-02-26

Back in 2002 and early 2003, [the Bush administration]
browbeat a reluctant country
into this war
by making assertions about an Iraqi nuclear program
that proved to be groundless and
by inventing ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda that didn’t exist.

[Dionne is a regular op-ed columnist for the Post.
He surely must have read its prewar editorials advocating the war.
Where’s the reluctance?

In general, most of the “browbeating” came from the media,
which on the other hand never found much, if any,
space for the arguments against invading Iraq
(for example).]