It keeps going, and going, and going...

four years ago - it does seem like a long time ago now that I think about it - I remember throwing my hands up in the air and saying to myself (and just about anyone who would listen), "Iraq is in cahoots with Al-Qaeda - WTF?" and "Where are the skeptics in the national press? Why are they buying this crap spoon fed to them by the usual suspects?"

I remember thinking in 2002 as we geared up: How can Iraq have WMD? The whole country of Iraq had been under the most intense aerial scrutiny ever since Gulf War One ended: there were "no fly" zones, spy satellites & spy planes snapping endless pictures & video and intelligence analysts were pouring over the data - and finding nothing out of the ordinary. (Now, I had been lead to believe, as we all have - via Hollywood and bad pulp fiction no doubt, that we have spy satellites that can zoom in on you while you take a piss in the woods and tell you what brand of underwear you are sporting - so shouldn't we be able to see little old things like URANIUM ENRICHMENT PLANTS being constructed in a place with very little tree cover like a friggin' desert? etc. etc.)

Just when and where was Saddam building all these WMD's? Underground in a volcano like Dr. Evil? I remember hearing credible people like Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who personally combed through a great deal of Saddam's trash, trumpeting the horn and saying over and over again that there are no WMD's in Iraq.

Still, no one really cared about that (except the hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of war protesters who did, but they are of course the lunatic fringe so pay them no mind). As I said, no one cared, much less our press (who were all chomping at the bit to get "embedded" and win their Emmy or Pulitzers) or our elected Democratic officials (Senators Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards to name a vocal few) who voted for war out of political expediency: they rolled the dice as it were and said, "hey, if it goes well, great, I supported it and I'll be golden and if it all goes to shit I can just say "I'm sorry" and that will be that." Many of the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates did just that in the first South Carolina debate.

I remember that SMART people, EDUCATED people were buying into this load of horse shit concerning the administrations trumped up connection between Saddam and the 9/11 horsemen of the apocalypse with as much gusto as the "my country, right or wrong" right wing beef-wits who see any and all dissent, or any questioning for that matter, of the administration as treasonous and grounds for a firing squad.

I am utterly convinced that many Americans just wanted to go to war again, and could not have given a hoot if there were any WMD's over there at all. Now, they did not want to go to war PERSONALLY - or send their own sons and daughters - they just wanted to watch it on TV after Timmy's soccer practice and feel good about A'Merika because war is, you know, "exciting". It is no secret that we love our wars in this country. There is not a town or city anywhere that does not have some or many monuments deifying war. How many monuments to peace do you ever run into? and the people who fight initially like it (it was after all an "adventure" and boy howdy, we're ass kicking America, it'll be over in a few easy weeks, right?! sadly: wrong). Now, I'm not so sure how many of them feel about it now as thousands embark on their THIRD 15 month tour of hospitable Mesopotamia, but I'd betcha the grape is souring fast on the vine & those yellow ribbon magnets are starting to fade.

If I remember all the way back to 2002, Afghanistan was not playing out (and still isn't) as a very winnable endeavor and it didn't really "look good" on TV either and, oh yeah, it's lacking in real dollar natural resources and let's face it; until they start trading opium futures on the NASDAQ, it'll continue to remain an uninviting backwater & hotbed of the sort of moral idealism favored by the Spanish Inquisition.

I remember writing a piece that I emailed to friends about the war in Afghanistan in October 2001: I literally lost an old friend over this email - we've never spoken since. I said the "wily Afghans" had nailed the coffins shut on a long and impressive line of imperial minded adventurers and I believed we were not doing ourselves any favors by swatting at the hornets nest. He said it was the kind of thing a "pussy" would say. Well, SIX years later, ask a scared shitless of the reemerging Taliban Afghan woman how well the war there is going these days and listen to what she says.

Anyway, there were very few major media "journalists" (if you can call most of the hacks on TV "journalists" because press release journalism is what they practice) out there who took a good look at what the Administration was pushing. I was against the Iraq war and I knew I could easily go to any number of anti-war fringe media sites and find all sorts of sources and accounts about how this administration was ginning up a truck load of sketchy evidence to go to war (though let me say, I was, and am, just as skeptical about a lot of the wisdom that comes from the left as well - where conspiracy seems to lurk around every corner - and who have their own weird agenda as well: extremists, on either side, just plain scare me).

Though four years ago, during the lead up to the war the "big show" was on TV and most people suck what little information they get from its bellowing echo chamber - and worse - they tend to believe that most of what is peddled by men in suits is somehow "official" and is be seen as "the truth".

So, I've posted a link to a piece that ran online and on public television from Bill Moyers, who has done a good job looking at journalistic complicity during the buildup to the war. Is it a cautionary tale? Sadly, I don't think so. I don't think it will change the pack mentality of mainstream media coverage one iota. Bill's piece is actually old news if you were paying the least bit of attention to the buildup. I could SEE and READ about the lies being pushed every day in 2002 and 2003 and it never escaped my thinking that far above the editorial desk, way up in the gilded tower, were people with very different concerns on their minds. Concerns that had a lot more to do with the bottom line and stock holders than mining for the "truth".

I believe it can and will happen again. we are a nation of dupes: P.T. Barnum & Willy Randolph Hearst proved that a long time ago. Oh, and one of the initial architects of the whole fiasco, George Tenet is the first of the main players to come out with his book & the requisite tour of big media outlets that goes with it, trying to absolve himself, place blame on Cheney (who deserves it) and try to explain his "slam dunk" quote which he is fretful will define his career (it will). Put this in some perspective: There are thousands of dead and wounded American's and Iraqi's out there who had everything taken from them by this war. George Tenet walked away from the whole affair (rememeber that two of the worst intelligence blunders in history - this war and 9/11 - happened on his watch) with a bruised ego from Bob Woodward (the Slam Dunk quote that he hates so much) and a four million dollar advance for his whiney tell all. The whole evil lot of them will all make millions down the road - they'll all get massive book deals - washing in the blood of others. Food for thought. Don't buy these books.

Bill Moyers