The Decline and Fall of American Journalism

As a million Shiite pilgrims streamed toward Karbala shouting, "No to America, no to Saddam, no to tyranny, no to Israel!" can't you just imagine the plash of complacent I Told Him So's from the lips of George Bush Sr., on the phone to Brent Scowcroft and other members of the old gang? Bush Sr.'s Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger recently took audible pleasure in telling the BBC that "if George Bush [Jr.] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about fifteen minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can't get away with that sort of thing in this democracy."

Until Judith Miller's piece showed up on the front page of the New York Times on April 21, I'd thought the distillation of disingenuous US press coverage of the invasion came with the images of Iraqis cheering US troops in the Baghdad square in front of the Palestine Hotel on April 9 as they hauled down Saddam's statue.

Remember, the photos of the statue going down, the flag on Saddam's face, the cheering Iraqis, were billed as the images that showed It Was All Worthwhile, up there in the pantheon with Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the raising of the US flag on Iwo Jima and the news film of the Berlin wall going down.

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