Revolutionary Moderation

You know what's nice?



The American press corps, who were notably silent when it came to criticism of the rationales for war in the leadup, are now starting to ask the right questions, and even imply the right accusations. How refreshing!



But I need to add, had the shakiness of the "evidence" been as widely reported as the American administration spin before the war, we might have avoided the whole thing in the first place. Here, we have a short description of an article (I'm too cheap too buy the thing) by the same writer, saying: "Pres Bush and Sec of State Colin Powell have demonstrated that Iraq is hiding weapons..." on February 7. But check the sources listed here... and in fairness to Mr. Kristof, check only those sources that existed before February 7. There was plenty, even then, to raise doubts that no one in the mainstream media was expressing.



Hints that Iraq had little or no useful WMD have been around for some time, and I'm sure there was more available to the State Department through still-classified documents. The evidence of "nothing serious" way outweighed the evidence of "security threat", even in January and February. But the American administration talked out their collective asses for months, no one at major media organisations bothered to fact-check them, and by the time the amateur reporters (bloggers, mostly) caught up, the big outlets didn't have time to correct or pursue the questions, because they were on to reporting the next big lie.



Consider the transcript of Hussien Kamel's interrogation. Kamel said "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed" And it was reported by Robin Wright, among so many others, as "In 1995, Saddam Hussein actually appeared to be winning in his strategy of cheat and retreat. He had actually managed to hide so many of his weapons that many of the U.N. weapons inspectors thought that he had turned over most of them, and were prepared to make that kind of recommendation. And it was only on the defection of his son-in-law and cousin [Kamel] that the international community realized how much he really still had." What?



I have to say it once more. They lied and lied and lied to get this war. I'm glad the big papers are starting to say so as well. Next time, catch them in the act, and we might avoid a war, the price of which can be found in the left column.



In the meantime, will those caught lying have to face some sort of Congressional review? Is lying about nuclear weapons owned by foreign powers so you can have a war more serious than, say, lying about getting a hummer in the Oval Office? I guess I'm just displaying some of the moral relativism we left-wingers are so fond of --- I have absolutely no concept of right and wrong.