It has been almost two weeks since that secret memo was released in the British Sunday Times that disclosed that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence reports (re: Lied) to support its desire to begin a war
on Iraq and still barely a trickle of media coverage.
Oh but we forgot, the mainstream media is busy covering the runaway
bride story. Consider: according to Media Matters "A search of the Nexis database yields 125 news reports about Wilbanks on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox since May 1 (including online news reports).
Or perhaps the Media would have had to pare down it's coverage of American Idol or the Michael Jackson trial..
CNN even had the nerve to defend it's coverage decisions: In an interview with
On the Media's Bob Garfield, CNN chief Jonathan Klein had this
to say on the matter:
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, let's talk about the other end
of that gamut then. Let's talk about Monday, May 2nd.
"CNN Daybreak." The rundown had Runaway Bride,
"American Morning" - Runaway Bride Could Face Criminal
Charges. "Live from CNN" - Runaway Bride back Home.
"Crossfire" - Should Runaway Bride Faces Charges?
Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, Larry King, Aaron Brown -
all of them devoted at least part of their program to
Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride, and Jonathan, I
have to ask you - does this fit into the roll up your
sleeves storytelling that you have in mind?
JONATHAN KLEIN: Well, sure. I mean the New York Times
covered the runaway bride too, and I'm sure I heard a
story about it on NPR.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It was way buried in the New York Times.
Hellooooooooo..is something wrong with this scenario?
In a nutshell, the document in question is the record of a meeting held on
July 23, 2002--eight months before the invasion of Iraq--involving Prime Minister Tony Blair and his key advisors. Reporting on his meeting with CIA director George Tenet, one advisor explained: "Military action was now seen as inevitable...Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action...the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Oh, let's see. No kidding!
Last week, eighty-nine members of the U.S. Congress--all Democrats--sent a letter to George W. Bush, asking for an explanation, stating that the document "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration..."
Naturally, of course, the White House has yet to comment on the congressional letter. And--let's be honest--why should they? Not only are the Democrats the minority party in the House, and the letter was signed by a minority of that minority, but the ones who are supposed to sound the alarm, keep feet to the fire, so to speak, are just as impotent. Instead of wall to wall coverage of trite and inconsequential drivel, the Media should be subjecting the Adminsration to hard hitting questioning regarding the latest in a series of inconsistencies and half truths. In fact, perhaps the American people should be subjected to wall to wall coverage of impeachment hearings. After all, we got it from the Media with that other inconsequential story---the Clinton Impeachment. Remember?
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