Fleischer Defends the Media

"So with this in mind, we look back to . . . where the [White House] correspondents -- the really good ones -- these correspondents ask their tough questions. And these questions are met with what is now called, euphemistically and much too kindly, what is now called 'message discipline.' Well, we used to have a better and more accurate term for 'message discipline.' We called it 'stonewalling.'

"Now, cut back to your evening news, or your daily newspaper . . . where that White House Correspondent dutifully repeats the question he asked of the president or his press secretary, and dutifully relates the answer he was given -- the same non-answer we've already heard dozens of times, which amounts to a pitch for the administration's point of view, whether or NOT the answer had anything to do with the actual question that was asked. . . .

"In our news media, in our press, those who wield power were, in the lead-up to Iraq, given the opportunity to present their views as a coherent whole, to connect the dots, as they saw the dots and the connections . . . no matter how much these views may have flown in the face of precedent, established practice -- or, indeed, the facts. . . .

"But when a tough question is asked and not answered, when reputable people come before the public and say, 'wait a minute, something's not right here,' the press has treated them like voices crying in the wilderness. These views, though they might be given air time, become lone dots -- dots that journalists don't dare connect, even if the connections are obvious, even if people on the Internet and in the independent press are making these very same connections. The mainstream press doesn't connect these dots because someone might then accuse them of editorializing, or of being the, quote, 'liberal media.'

"But connecting these dots -- making disparate facts make sense -- is a big part of the real work of journalism."

The Campaign for War

I wrote in Friday's column about the new Senate Intelligence Committee report. The report found that some of what Bush and others said about Iraq was corroborated by what later turned out to be inaccurate intelligence. But the most gut-wrenching stuff -- for instance, that Saddam Hussein was ready to supply his friends in al-Qaeda with nuclear weapons -- was simply made up.

The Portland Oregonian editorial board writes: "Is it really true, as so many bumper stickers in this blue state argue, that 'Bush lied -- people died'? An unusually rancorous report released last week by the Intelligence Senate Committee provides strong support for the idea that the president and his top advisers intentionally misled the American public in order to make a case for attacking Iraq.

"They did so, it is apparent, by focusing on and embellishing the items that suggested Saddam Hussein's government was up to no good, and by ignoring or failing to explore evidence to the contrary. . . .

"It's quite troubling to read public statements by the president, the vice-president, the then-national security adviser and the then-secretaries of defense and state and understand that they knew their words to be either untrue or deliberately misleading.

"Most of us would call that lying. And it was followed by a war in which, so far, 4,091 U.S. service members and 85,000 or so civilians have died."

The Albany Times Union editorial board writes: "It must be heartbreaking for the families of the more than 4,000 troops killed in this war to read this report, as well as for the thousands more who have welcomed home a loved one with missing limbs, horrible burns and other injuries for a cause that was grossly misrepresented to the American public."

But Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt sees vindication for Bush: "There's no question that the administration, and particularly Vice President Cheney, spoke with too much certainty at times and failed to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq.