From AfterDowningStreet, via CommonDreams:
Published on Saturday, April 14, 2007 by AfterDowningStreet.org
Record of Iraq War Lies to Air April 25 on PBS
by David Swanson
Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq War to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I’ve watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from 9 to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you’ll never watch television news again – not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism.
While a great many pundits, not to mention presidents, look remarkably stupid or dishonest in the four-year-old clips included in “Buying the War,” it’s hard to take any spiteful pleasure in holding them to account, and not just because the killing and dying they facilitated is ongoing, but also because of what this video reveals about the mindset of members of the DC media. Moyers interviews media personalities, including Dan Rather, who clearly both understand what the media did wrong and are unable to really see it as having been wrong or avoidable.
It’s great to see an American media outlet tell this story so well, but it leads one to ask: When will Congress tell it? While the Democrats were in the minority, they clamored for hearings and investigations, they pushed Resolutions of Inquiry into the White House Iraq Group and the Downing Street Minutes. Now, in the majority, they’ve gone largely silent. The chief exception is the House Judiciary Committee’s effort to question Condoleezza Rice next week about the forged Niger documents.
But what comes out of watching this show is a powerful realization that no investigation is needed by Congress, just as no hidden information was needed for the media to get the story right in the first place. The claims that the White House made were not honest mistakes. But neither were they deceptions. They were transparent and laughably absurd falsehoods. And they were high crimes and misdemeanors.
...(snip)...
Moyers questions a number of people about their awful work, including Dan Rather, Peter Beinart, and then Chairman and CEO of CNN Walter Isaacson. And he questions Simon, who soft-pedaled the story and avoided reporting that there was no evidence.
Landay at Knight Ridder did report the facts when it counted, but not enough people paid attention. He tells Moyers that all he had to do was read the UN weapons inspectors reports online to know the White House was lying to us. When Cheney said that Hussein was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, Landay knew he was lying: “You need tens of thousands of machines called ‘centrifuges’ to produce highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. You’ve got to house those in a fairly big place, and you’ve got to provide a huge amount of power to this facility.”
Moyers also hits Tim Russert with a couple of tough questions. Russert expressed regret for not having included any skeptical voices by saying he wished his phone had rung. So, Moyers begins the next segment by saying “Bob Simon didn’t wait for the phone to ring,” and describing Simon’s reporting. Simon says he knew the claims about aluminum tubes were false because 60 Minutes called up some scientists and researchers and asked them. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post says that skeptical stories did not get placed on the front page because they are not “definitive.” .....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/14/518/
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