Wow. Who would have thought that the incompetent Scott McClellan of all people would force the talking heads to re-evaluate their role in the lead up to the war, and make them finally realize that the White House deliberately manipulated them into mindlessly passing along pure government propaganda? To his credit, Chris Matthews today connected the dots and made as clear a case as possible that the White House used, in the case he cited, The New York Times to inject into the national dialogue completely bogus information that Cheney, Bush and Condoleezza Rice would later cite on the Sunday talk shows in order to scare Americans into supporting the Iraq War.
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“There was a lot of salesmanship here….a lot of propaganda.”
Chris Matthews and David Gregory seem to get it. Mike Allen…not so much. We’ll see how the rest of media handles it.
Of course, for those of us who actually pay attention to this sort of stuff, Bill Moyers chronicled this manipulation extensively in his fascinating documentary, Buying The War.
Memo to the media: Better late than never.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/Media/Download/29647/2/Hardball-McClellan-MeaCulpa.mov