Reply #53: Swanson: "Remember When Bush's Lies Weren't "Old News"? Neither do I."

[understandinglife]

Remember When Bush's Lies Weren't "Old News"?
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2005-06-20 23:10.

Neither do I.

By David Swanson, www.AfterDowningStreet.org

The most repeated excuse by U.S. media outlets for not covering the Downing Street Minutes and related documents is that they tell us nothing new, that they're old news. This conflicts, of course, with the second most common excuse, which is that they are false. If they're false, they can't be news at all, much less old news.

So, the question arises, when was this new news? At what point did it become old news to report that Bush had decided by the summer of 2002 to go to war and to use false justifications related to weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism? Of course, in one sense anything we discover now about secret goings on three years ago is old news – but that sense of being old news doesn't seem to spare us details of, for example, the Michael Jackson trial or the steroids in sports scandals. In those and many other cases, we're treated to news that's about old events. By that definition of old news we could have skipped Whitewater altogether.

<clip>

But what interests me is what the Post's editorial board believes was publicly known in July 2002. The Downing Street Minutes, if accurate, make clear that in July 2002 the Bush administration had secretly decided on war and was manipulating evidence related to WMD and terrorism in order to sell it through false advertising. The documents also make clear that going to the United Nations would be an attempt to legalize a predetermined war, not an attempt to avoid the Bush administration's publicly stated goal of "regime change."

Was this public knowledge in July 2002? Let's read the Post: Reading all the Washington Post articles, columns, and editorials containing the word "Iraq" and appearing in the Nexis database in June, July, and August, 2002, fails to find these facts publicly reported. Of course, I cannot comment on what Post editors knew and kept to themselves, but it is what they told the kids who were going to be sent off to kill and die that seems most significant.

The full analysis is definitely worth reading:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/407

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - WE THE PEOPLE....MUST FILE CHARGES AGAINST THE WAR CRIMINALS; IT'S THE LAW, STUPID