This week the U.S. media establishment is mainlining another fix for the Iraq war: It isn't so bad after all, American military power could turn wrong into right, chronic misleaders now serve as truth-tellers. The hit is that the war must go on. When the White House...
Last week, a media advisory from "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" announced a new series of interviews on the PBS show that will address "what Iraq might look like when the U.S. military leaves." A few days later, Time magazine published a cover...
It was a chilling moment on a split-screen of history. While the Senate debated the Iraq war on Tuesday night, a long-dead senator again renounced a chronic lie about congressional options and presidential power. The Senate was in the final hours of another failure to...
Many of America's most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than four years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins. The media...
It's a popular notion: TV sets and other media devices let us in on the violence of war. "Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens," President Bush told a news conference more than three years ago. "I don't. It's a tough time...
Three years have passed since most Americans came to the conclusion that the Iraq war was a "mistake." Reporting the results of a Gallup poll in June 2004, USA Today declared: "It is the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a...
This week's cave-in on Capitol Hill – supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq – is surprising only to those who haven't grasped our current circumstances. Public opinion polls aren't the same as political leverage. The Vietnam...
Several days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the tragedy still dominate front pages and cable television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale – the war in Iraq – ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at...
The Pentagon's most likely next target is Iran. Hillary Clinton says "no option can be taken off the table." Barack Obama says that the Iranian government is "a threat to all of us" and "we should take no option, including military action, off...
The media spectacle that John McCain made of himself in Baghdad on Sunday was yet another reprise of a ghastly ritual. Sen. McCain expressed "very cautious optimism" and told reporters that the latest version of the U.S. war effort in Iraq is "making progress." Three...
