Buying The War

I just finished watching Bill Moyers' new PBS documentary Buying The War, and I highly recommend it. It's hard to imagine that we've learned so little from all of this, but at the end of the show, Moyers shows that aside from Judy Miller (the token scapegoat), most of the people championing the war have only had continued success and rising stature in the media. Freakin' amazing.

I have to admit I believed Saddam had WMDs (a phrase that in retrospect seems totally meaningless - mustard gas and nuclear arms are not related in any meaningful way), mostly because I didn't believe it was possibly to twist the arms of the entire media that way. I thought the incentives to bring out the truth would be high enough to ensure someone would be there to do it. As it turns out, Knight Ridder was doing just that - but unfortunately I don't remember reading any of their articles.

I'm not really sure how we can avoid being swindled the same way next time there's a rush to war or some other such thing. The current distrust of the administration in the media gets no points with me - it's simply the popular thing to do now, as was supporting the war in 2003. What's clear to me is that I need to pay much closer attention to the stories I read, and give very little credibility to something simply because it comes from a major news source. Anonymous sources, defectors, and other interested parties need to be scrutinized much more closely.

I also seem to remember being somewhat persuaded by a surprisingly hawkish Frontline show on Iraq right before the invasion - that show wasn't mentioned in Moyers' documentary.

I may have more thoughts on this later, but for now, if you haven't seen Buying the War, you really should.