Eyes Wide Shut on the Iraq War - by Ray McGovern

Ten years ago, as President George W. Bush and his administration were putting the finishing touches on their unprovoked invasion of Iraq, the mainstream U.S. news media had long since capitulated, accepting the conventional wisdom that nothing could - or should - stop the march to war.

The neocon conquest of the major U.S. news outlets - the likes of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the national TV news - was so total that the Bush administration could reliably count on them as eager co-conspirators in the Iraq adventure rather than diligent watchdogs for the American people.

By now a decade ago, the New York Times had published Judy Miller's infamous "mushroom cloud" article about Iraq's aluminum tubes, the Washington Post's op-ed page had lined up in lock-step to hail Colin Powell's misleading United Nations speech, MSNBC had dumped Phil Donahue after he allowed on a few anti-war voices, and CNN had assembled a chorus of pro-war ex-military officers as "analysts."

Despite massive worldwide protests against the impending invasion, the U.S. news media only grudgingly covered the spectacle of millions of people in the streets in dozens of cities. The coverage mostly had a tone of bemusement about how deluded such uninformed folks could be.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/266-32/16286-focus-eyes-wide-shut-on-the-iraq-war