CNN's Own Smoking Gun

There is no case to be made about the complicity of the news media in the selling of the invasion of Iraq. The case is already made. They plead guilty as charged. Check out this web site: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/iraq.debate . (Also see how long it takes CNN to take it down. Not to worry. It is saved.)

First note the URL. It ends in “iraq.debate.” Where is the debate? Senior managers at CNN considered this a debate. The story is about the PR campaign that the Administration was conducting at the time, the one that Scott McClellan wrote about in his recent book.

One half a sentence refers to a weapons inspector who says that the rest of the article is overblown. Even that is discounted in the other half of the sentence, as if CNN is laying out a straight flush against a pair of deuces, “the vice president, two Cabinet secretaries, the national security advisor and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pressed the point that a military intervention could be the only way to topple Saddam’s regime.” The rest of the article details their claims with no questioning.

The article includes that week’s high level TV tour of those Administration officials and their comments about aluminum tubes and smoking guns in the shape of mushroom clouds.

Note the box on the right, with the banner “Case Against Iraq.” At least it is accurate. This is the prosecution. Where is the defense argument in the “case?” Where is the box that says “Case Against Attacking Iraq?”

The inspector who says this case was overblown and his evidence should have been given half the article, not half a loaded sentence.

Talk about a smoking gun! This article is still hot, five and a half years later.