Go Bill go

I highly suggest that everyone watch this edition of the Bill Moyers Journal entitled "Buying the War." You can read the transcript here. His topic is how the news media, in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, got everything so terribly wrong. Where was the hardline objectivity? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 go largely unreported? Moyers begins thus:

Four years ago this spring the Bush administration took leave of reality and plunged our country into a war so poorly planned it soon turned into a disaster. The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on.

Since then thousands of people have died, and many are dying to this day. Yet the story of how the media bought what the White House was selling has not been told in depth on television. As the war rages into its fifth year, we look back at those months leading up to the invasion, when our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war.