Gabriel Sherman's piece in New York magazine (10/3/10) on the cable news wars includes a bit of history on MSNBC's firing of progressive host Phil Donahue in 2003; an internal memo at the time worried that the show would be  "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." Sherman focuses on MSNBC personality Chris Matthews--who sometimes claims he was opposed to the Iraq War--and his desire to get Donahue fired:

Donahue's problems only increased when Chris Matthews let it be known that he wanted Donahue off the air. Matthews was a rising force at the network, with a reported salary of $5 million. He cultivated former GE CEO Jack Welch and had the ear of NBC CEO Bob Wright. (The two summered together on Nantucket.) Matthews saw himself as MSNBC's biggest star, and he was upset that the network was pumping significant resources into Donahue's show. In the fall of 2002, U.S. News & World Report ran a gossip item that had Matthews saying over lunch in Washington that if Donahue stays on the air, he could bring down the network.

After the item was published, Matthews showed up at Donahue's office and apologized. "He didn’t deny it," Donahue remembers. With the war looming, Sorenson and Griffin decided to take him off the air to make way for 24/7 war coverage.

With all the talk of the Iraq War winding down (never mind the ongoing violence, the U.S. troops still fighting, or the continuing U.S. casualties), filmmaker Michael Moore makes an important point about how the war started--specifically, that it happened not despite but because of the way the "liberal media" behaved:

But most importantly, they made this war (and its public support) happen because Bush & Co. had brilliantly conned the New York Times into running a bunch of phony front-page stories about how Saddam Hussein had all these "weapons of mass destruction." The administration gleefully fed this false information not to Fox News or the Washington Times. They gave it to America's leading liberal newspaper. They must have had a laugh riot each morning when they'd pick up the New York Times and read the nearly word-for-word scenarios and talking points that they had concocted in the vice president's office.

I blame the New York Times more for this war than Bush. I expected Bush and Cheney to try and get away with what they did. But the Times--and the rest of the press--was supposed to STOP them by doing their job: Be a relentless watchdog of government and business--and then inform the public so we can take action.

Instead, the New York Times gave the Bush administration the cover they needed. They could--and did--say, "Hey, look, even the Times says Saddam has WMD!"

Indeed, as Moore makes clear, right-wing media weren't  the only ones backing the Bush White House--MSNBC fired Phil Donahue for his anti-war views, while the ranks of media war boosters included Times editor Howell Raines, Times columnists Bill Keller and Nicholas Kristof (who attacked Moore for opposing the war), and New Yorker editor David Remnick.  Few media reputations suffered as a result of supporting the Iraq War. The few who opposed it, on the  hand, paid the price.

When Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies appeared on FAIR's radio show CounterSpin last week, she challenged Barack Obama's assertions that U.S. combat in Iraq was ending and that the  last combat brigade was leaving the country, describing the plans the U.S. actually has in store for Iraq:

The policy has not changed. It is true that the number of troops are significantly lower than they were at their height of 165,000; it's now down to about 50,000. That's a good thing. Reduction in troops is a good thing. But the notion that this troop reduction somehow means that all combat brigades, let alone combat troops, are out of Iraq is just specious.

The 50,000 troops that are in Iraq now are combat troops. The Pentagon has, in their own words, remissioned them. They have given combat troops a new mission, which is for training and assistance of the Iraqi military. But they remain combat troops, ready to reengage in combat at any given moment.

We heard from President Obama about the Fourth Stryker Brigade, which is, as he described it, the last combat brigade leaving Iraq. We didn't hear about the 3,000 new combat troops, more combat troops, from Fort Hood in Texas, who were just deployed to Iraq about 10 days ago. We also didn't hear about the 4,500 special forces, which have the job, one, of continuing its counterterrorism operation, meaning using its capture-or-kill list to run around the country and capture or kill people. The other is to train their Iraqi counterparts, the Iraqi Special Operations Force, which is shaping up to be something that looks suspiciously like an El Salvador-style death squad. This is not the end of combat.

This was newsworthy enough, though few other media outlets challenged the White House "end of combat" hype. But Bennis had something even more troubling to add. When CounterSpin pointed out that John Pilger was reporting in the New Statesman that  U.S. policy with regard to airstrikes and bombings would be unaffected by the "new" policy, and that U.S. military contractors would be increasing in numbers, Bennis responded:

Absolutely. The number of contractors is quite disturbing, both in its own right and because it's the beginning of a process underway of militarizing U.S. diplomacy. There will be 7,000 new armed contractors coming into Iraq solely to work under the auspices of the State Department, not the Pentagon, when the State Department becomes the primary U.S. agency in Iraq. What we really didn't hear from President Obama is that the transition underway is not so much from U.S. control to Iraqi control as much as it is from Pentagon control to State Department control. The agreement that was signed between the U.S. and Iraq that requires, if it doesn't get changed--which is, I think, a likely possibility--required all U.S. troops and armed contractors under Pentagon control to be out of the country by the end of next year does not apply to contractors, armed or not, under the auspices of the State Department. So with this giant new embassy that holds 5,000 diplomats--it's the size of Vatican City--there will be at least 7,000 armed contractors. The State Department is bringing in armored cars, surveillance drones, planes and their own rapid response forces. So what we're seeing is the Pentagon leaving, largely, but the State Department taking on military tasks.

The planned militarization of the State Department has received some coverage in recent months. Stories by McClatchy's Warren Strobel, the Associated Press' Richard Lardner and Michael Gordon in the New York Times have reported on the State Department's new military role, fortress-like embassies, planned use of military contractors and purchase of military equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters and armored vehicles. According to AP's Lardner, State Department documents sent to the Pentagon last April reveal the agency expressing the need to "duplicate the capabilities of the U.S. military" by the end of 2011, when all American military forces are required to leave Iraq.

But journalists beguiled by the White House hype were apparently too busy perpetuating it to address such meddlesome details.

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald pointed out, NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported the withdrawal of combat forces without qualification (8/18/10): "It's gone on longer than the Civil War, longer than World War II.  And tonight, U.S. combat troops have pulled out of Iraq." Greenwald also cited liberal MSNBC commentators like Keith Olbermann, who touted the story as an historic event in a "special edition" of Countdown where his MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow gushed about the last U.S. combat troop to leave Iraq: "We just saw, right here live with that gate closing, the last U.S. combat troop. I'm totally covered in goose bumps. It is an important moment.’"

Greenwald did offer deserved kudos to Associated Press standards editor Tom Kent, who instructed AP journalists in a memorandum to challenge the White House hype, writing, "To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials."

But, overall, it was a bad showing by journalists, many of whom seemed more interested in regurgitating an officially endorsed feel-good story rather than the more complex truth that the U.S. military involvement in Iraq would  continue, and continue in some strange new ways.

"Seven Years of War Provides Many Answers" is USA Today's front-page headline (8/27/10) over a story by Jim Michaels and Mimi Hall that attempts to take stock of the Iraq War. But one issue that the paper can't seem to get right seven years later is how the war started.

USA Today provides this stunningly deceptive summary:

In October 2002, the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to authorize force against Iraq. In November, the United Nations Security Council adopted a unanimous resolution offering Saddam "a final opportunity" to comply with disarmament. Three months later, Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. and European intelligence agencies believed Iraq was hiding its weaponry and seeking more.

The final U.N. inspection report stated that Iraq failed to account for chemical and biological stockpiles. U.N. inspector Hans Blix said he had "no confidence" that the weaponry had been destroyed.

In his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush said: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late."

At 5:34 a.m., March 20, 2003, a U.S. force backed by 34 nations crossed into Iraq. The war was on.

A more accurate chronology of the weapons inspection--like this one from the Arms Control Association--reveals that while inspectors expressed frustration with some Iraqi behavior, they were encouraged by the progress they were making. They determined rather early in the process, for instance, that there was no Iraqi nuclear program to speak of. That was one of the Bush administration's most damning claims against Iraq; its falsehood should figure into any account of the pre-war period.

That chronology also recalls that there was an effort to get the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution that would formally endorse the war, even though the weapons inspections process was not finished. The U.S. failed to prevail in that effort, and the inspectors were removed. Again, it's hard to imagine a summary of the run-up to the war that discounts the fact that the United States launched the war without the U.N. approval it sought.

It's not entirely clear where the Hans Blix quote ("no confidence") comes from. He does use that phrase in regards to a "preliminary assessment of Iraq's weapons declaration" (12/19/02)--pretty much the opposite of a "final U.N. inspection report"--explaining why such declarations have to be verified and can't be taken at face value.

In his February 14 presentation to the U.N., Blix seemed  pleased with Iraq's compliance:

Mr. President, in my 27th of January update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, most importantly on prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure.

This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has, so far, been without problems, including those that have never been declared or inspected, as well as to presidential sites and private residences.

Blix also said:

How much, if any, is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programs? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed.

Recalling this history merely as Blix saying that he had "no confidence"  that Iraq had destroyed any weapons is terribly misleading. But it is helpful to those who still wish to argue that the Iraq War was a good faith effort to destroy the weapons of a madman.

Some in the media just can't let go of John McCain. David Broder's column today is really headlined, "John McCain, Your Country Is Calling."

He explains that he wasn't "bothered by the doctrinal compromises the senator made to convince Arizona voters that he was, in fact, a conservative. McCain has always been a realist, doing what was necessary to survive a North Vietnamese prison camp or a tough political trap."

So a senator willing to do whatever it takes to get elected is apparently a badly needed voice of conscience in Washington. OK.

McCain's role, according to Broder, should be something like this:

One obvious area where he will be needed is his favorite field, national security. Iraq, where he was prescient and persistent, still poses challenges, and Afghanistan, where Obama badly needs a Republican partner, is likely to be in crisis before it can be called a success. Behind them looms Iran, which could be this nation's next big test.

Wait--John McCain opposed the Iraq War? No, he supported every effort to escalate the war. Apparently that counts as being "prescient."

Obama "badly needs a Republican partner" on Afghanistan? Last time I checked, there weren't many Republicans opposing his policies; in fact, many have argued that Obama needs to drop any mention of a withdrawal timeline (which is McCain's view). So presumably what Obama--and, also, the country--needs is another voice calling for a longer war.

As for Iran, I'm not sure what McCain's expertise is supposed to be. That "Bomb Iran" song from the 2008 campaign?

During an August 18 segment about the Iraq War, anchor Brian Williams said (emphasis added):

Let's bring into this conversation retired US Army Colonel Jack Jacobs. He's a decorated combat veteran, a recipient of the Medal of Honor and, of course, an NBC News military analyst.

Well, at this point, people like me always ask people like you, what have we learned. Critics of this war are always going to look at it as an elective. They're always going to say those 9/11 pilots weren't Iraqis. And they're always going to say we never found the weapons of mass destruction. So as an analyst--a civilian now, but a veteran military man, what do you think we've learned?

Williams is right about one thing -- people  like him do  always seem to prefer to pose questions to retired military officials. During the run-up to the Iraq War, for instance, NBC was running this advertisement touting their coverage:

Showdown Iraq, and only NBC News has the experts. General Norman Schwarzkopf, allied commander during the Gulf War. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, he was the most decorated four-star general in the Army. General Wayne Downing, former special operations commander and White House adviser. Ambassador Richard Butler and former U.N. weapons Inspector David Kay: Nobody has seen Iraq like they have. The experts. The best information from America's most watched news organization, NBC News.

 Whether those experts provided the "best information" can speak for itself.  Back to the present: If Williams really wanted to know what critics of the war think about the war, why didn't he just ask one?

Former Israeli soldier and current writer for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg has a long cover story (9/10) on the "better than 50 percent chance" that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran by next July, with the aim of taking out the alleged nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Based on roughly 40 interviews with American, Arab and Israeli officials--some of them anonymously--Goldberg meanders from describing the worst-case scenario for what will happen after Israel attacks Iran to relaying dubious Israeli claims about how Iran is the new Nazi Germany to an analysis of Netanyahu's relationship with his right-wing 100-year-old father. He does this while assuring readers that he is "not engaging in a thought exercise, or a one-man war game."

Goldberg's is just the latest in a line of recent stories from neo-conservatives and others on Israel or the U.S. bombing Iran (The Weekly Standard, 7/26/10; The Washington Post, 8/1/10).

Why anyone would listen to Goldberg or give him space in a magazine to hype up the threat from another Middle Eastern country is beyond comprehension, given Goldberg's role in printing propaganda about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda (The New Yorker, 3/25/02; 2/10/03; Slate, 10/3/02). That turned out wonderfully, remember?

Ken Silverstein (Harper's, 6/30/06) is certainly shaking his head--he chronicled Goldberg's role in pushing for the Iraq War, writing that:

In urging war on Iraq, Goldberg took highly dubious assertions—for example, that Saddam was an irrational madman in control of vast quantities of WMDs and that Iraq and Al Qaeda were deeply in bed together—and essentially asserted them as fact...

Back in late 2003, at a panel discussion hosted by the New School for Social Research, the topic of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction came up. “Did the CIA simply mess up?” Goldberg asked Paul Wolfowitz. “Did I?” is the question he should have asked.

A lot has already been written about Goldberg's latest, so here's a selection of good analysis:

-Iran experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on "the weak case for war with Iran" (Foreign Policy, 8/11/10).

-Jonathan Schwartz (A Tiny Revolution, 8/11/10) argues that Goldberg is "America's greatest foreign policy propagandist."

-Glenn Greenwald on why Goldberg's piece is "exhibit A" on "how propagandists function" (Salon, 8/12/10).

-Eli Clifton on how Goldberg's article "is part of a campaign to push the Obama administration into authorizing a U.S. military strike rather than having any particularly believable scoops about an impending Israeli attack" (Lobelog, 8/10/10).

-Matt Duss on why an attack on Iran would have a "low likelihood of success" but a "high likelihood of disaster" (Wonk Room, 8/11/10).

-Paul Woodward on how the article is part of a campaign to put the Obama administration in a box to get the U.S. to bomb Iran (War in Context, 8/11/10).

-Tony Karon on Goldberg being willingly used by both U.S. and Israeli officials to "send messages" about both countries' postures toward Iran (Rootless Cosmopolitan, 8/12/10).

Noting that policies like the stimulus plan tend to poll pretty badly, New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes (7/16/10) that Obama says he has pursued such policies because they're "the right thing to do for America." To Stolberg, that sounds familiar:

It is an argument that sounds eerily similar to the one Mr. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, made to justify an unpopular war in Iraq as he watched his own poll numbers sink lower. Mr. Bush and his aides often felt they could not catch a break; when the economy was humming along--or at least seemed to be humming along--the Bush White House never got credit for it, because the public was so upset about the war.

Two things.

One, I think we can all agree that efforts to stimulate the economy are actually nothing at all like the invasion of Iraq.

Two, the "humming" Bush economy? Now that actually sounds familiar.... Where have we heard the argument that Bush wasn't getting enough credit for his economic boom? Oh yeah--that was from Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times:

FAIR Action Alert

NYT Falls for White House Spin on Economy
No one 'envies' Bush GDP record

1/28/08

The New York Times (1/28/08) claimed in a front-page story that George W. Bush's economic growth record "would be the envy of most presidents." This claim has no basis in fact and should be corrected by the newspaper.

The assertion was part of a "White House Memo" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg. Opening with the question, "Will George W. Bush be remembered as the president who lost the economy while trying to win a war?," she continued:

Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents. Yet much to the consternation of his political advisers, he has had trouble getting credit for it, in large part because Americans were consumed by the war in Iraq.

As that alert noted, this was not the first time Stolberg had tried to applaud the Bush boom:

More than a year ago (7/12/06), Stolberg described Bush as "blessed with a growing economy but facing voters who do not give him much credit for it." She claimed that "by standard measurements, the economy does look good," citing "a gross domestic product that grew an average of 4 percent in the past three years."

As Dean Baker wrote in response to Stolberg's 1/28/08 piece: "President Bush's growth record is better than his father's, but it is worse than the record of every other president in the last half century. It's not clear why they would be envious."

It's troubling that Stolberg seems so peculiarly wedded to this idea.

Philadelphia Inquirer TV critic Jonathan Storm (7/1/10) noted that tonight, July 2, the city's public TV station WHYY is airing a documentary called The Surge: The Untold Story. As he puts it, what's most interesting about the documentary is who's behind it:

The film was produced by communications companies that work predominantly for the GOP and was financed by an ambassador who served in the Bush administration.

The station had originally planned a panel event following the broadcast that would have featured far-right pundit Liz Cheney, but those plans were apparently derailed by a lack of public interest in the event or the protests of one station donor.

The documentary was also financed by the neo-con Institute for the Study of War. WHYY vice president Christine Dempsey told the Inquirer that the documentary was a  "well-produced film with a nontraditional point of view that we don't really put on frequently." And it's also apparently a matter of balance:

To the criticism that PBS's overall schedule contains several left-leaning series, she said, "I think it's important for PBS member stations to show many different views."

It's hard to know exactly which "left-leaning" shows this is intended to balance--or how to square the idea that neo-con foreign policy views are going unheard on PBS. Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War, for example, was just on the NewsHour on June 24, praising the move to replace Stanley McChrystal with David Petraeus.

With Gen. David Petraeus back in the media spotlight after being tapped to take control of the Afghanistan war following General Stanley McChrystal's fall from grace, the corporate media are trumpeting the "successful" surge in Iraq (Extra, 9/10/08) that Petraeus oversaw and are looking to him as the man to turn around the Afghan war.

Columnist David Ignatius (Washington Post, 6/24/10) writes:

Gen. David Petraeus didn't sign on as the new Afghanistan commander because he expects to lose.

That's the boldest aspect of President Obama's decision: He has put a troubled Afghanistan campaign in the hands of a man who bent what looked like failure in Iraq toward an acceptable measure of success. Obama has doubled down on his bet, much as George W. Bush did with his risky surge of troops in Iraq under Petraeus' command.

Similarly, NBC (6/23/10) reports that the White House and the Pentagon are "hoping that by enacting this stunning change in leadership, by putting somebody like General Petraeus in charge, the one who engineered that successful surge operation in Iraq, that it could buy them some badly needed time."

But as Middle East expert Juan Cole (6/24/10) notes, Iraq is hardly a success story.  Over three months after Iraqi elections, their parliament remains deadlocked (Reuters, 6/24/10).  Violence is a daily reality (New York Times, 6/24/10), and protests have broken out denouncing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for failing to deliver on basic services like working electricity (Reuters, 6/21/10).

Cole writes that, while there has been a decrease in violence compared to the height of the Sunni/Shiite civil war in Iraq, the surge was not the main reason for the decline in fighting:

The main reason for decrease in the virulence of the civil war (it is not over) was that the Shiites succeeded in ethnically cleansing the Sunnis from Baghdad. Based on U.S. military and NGO statistics, on patterns of ambient light from West Baghdad visible by satellite, on the on-the-ground investigations of journalists like AP's Hamza Hendawi, and on subsequent voting patterns, I don’t think Baghdad is now more than 10-15 percent Sunni, whereas it was probably about half and half Sunni and Shiite at the time of Bush's invasion in 2003.

Also missing from the "surge turned around the Iraq War" trope is any discussion of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's role in the reduction of violence.  While acknowledging that extra U.S. troops did play a role in the reduction of violence, a February 2008 International Crisis Group study states that "the dramatic decline in bloodshed in Iraq...is largely due to Muqtada al-Sadr's August 2007 unilateral ceasefire."

And as Cole notes, Iraq is not Afghanistan:

The Shiite victory in the Civil War was thus absolutely crucial as an Iraqi social-history background for what success Petraeus' policies had.

No such major social-historical change has occurred in Afghanistan or is likely to. The Taliban and other insurgents primarily spring from the Pashtun ethnic group that predominates in the east and southwest of the country. Pashtuns probably make up about 42 percent of Afghanistan’s some 34 million people. Pashtun clans provided the top political leadership to Afghanistan from the 18th century, through the Durrani monarchy, and they look down on the northern Tajik and Hazarah ethnic groups (who speak dialects of Persian). Although probably only 20-30 percent of Afghan Pashtuns view the Taliban favorably, more may admire the Taliban as a group that stands up for Afghanistan's independence from the Western nations now occupying it.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are complex and multifaceted.  But don't expect corporate media to throw nuance into the debate; instead, look forward to more pronouncements like this one from David Gergen, a CNN political analyst (6/23/10):  "[President Obama]...put in place the best general we have right now and a man who turned around the war in Iraq and possibly can turn around this war in Afghanistan, who can take over without losing momentum."

Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt wrote a piece today (5/24/10) headlined, "In the Absence of Debate, Iraq and Afghanistan Go Unnoticed." Hiatt laments the silence surrounding U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ponders whether "the absence of debate reflects not full-bodied consensus but a wishful averting of eyes."

Fair enough. But what kind of debate does Hiatt wish the country to have, anyway? His job gives him a chance to affect the national discussion about these wars, and the evidence suggests that he's done little to provide a forum for dissenting views. 

As FAIR's Steve Rendall wrote in his study of the Post's op-ed page and Afghanistan (for the first 10 months of 2009):

In the Washington Post, pro-war columns outnumbered antiwar columns by more than 10 to 1: Of 67 Post columns on U.S. military policy in Afghanistan, 61 supported a continued war, while just six expressed antiwar views. Of the pro-war columns, 31 were for escalation and 30 for an alternative strategy.

At times the Post's editors seemed unaware that an antiwar position even existed. For instance, in an op-ed roundtable (9/27/09) appearing in its recurring "Topic A" feature, the section's editors, in their words, "asked foreign policy experts whether President Obama should maintain a focus on protecting the population and rebuilding the country, or on striking terrorists."

Excluding withdrawal from the discussion was a theme echoed by Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, who began a column (9/14/09): "It is time to get real about Afghanistan. Withdrawal is not a serious option."

Interestingly, Hiatt also had a similar beef with the debate over healthcare reform--writing (from the right) back in October,  "Single-payer national health insurance may be the best outcome, but we should get there after an honest debate, not through the back door." As we pointed out then, the Post had done next to nothing to provide an "honest debate."

If Hiatt really wants the country to debate these issues, he should start with his own paper.

On May 4, 2010:

What killed President Bush's credibility?  His utter claim that the reason we went to war in Iraq was to search for nuclear weapons.  Because he and his people were dishonest enough to make that claim, he ended up looking like an incompetent when we fought our way into that country and are still fighting our way out, only to find there were no nuclear weapons on hand.

The incompetence became downright staggering when the commander in chief pranced on to an aircraft carrier with that "Mission Accomplished" banner flying overhead.  The bozos couldn't even get the PR right.

Flashback to Chris Matthews on "Mission Accomplished" day (5/1/03):

We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits.

And also a few weeks earlier, when a Saddam Hussein statue was pulled down in Baghdad:

Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today....

We're all neo-cons now....

What's [Howard Dean] going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?

Newsweek's Jacob Weisberg is tired of people picking on Robert Rubin. Sure, his critics to point to his involvement in the financial deregulation of the 1990s and his disastrous tenure at Citibank,  but they're wrong.

At least that's what Weisberg tries to argue in his column "In Defense of Robert Rubin" (5/10/10). Weisberg admits early on that he "helped Rubin write a memoir," but not to worry--this column is all Weisberg.

And he writes: "To me, the most wrong-headed accusation is that Rubin prevented effective regulation during the Clinton years."  This is a false charge because Rubin's "view has always been that the financial system needs to be protected from market excesses. Rubin regarded derivatives as risky because of the way they could magnify market moves and implicate interconnected financial institutions."

OK, that's what he believed; what did he do as Treasury secretary? He helped push deregulatory policies. But Weisberg tells us that that this had a lot to do with the fact that his deputy Larry Summers ridiculed his ideas. It's a rather unconvincing argument.

But the same pattern held during Rubin's tenure at Citigroup, where (according to Weisberg) Rubin had no power over much of anything--hence, the company's spectacular collapse cannot be pinned on him. Weisberg uses a peculiar analogy to drive home his point:

But even with a more conventional kind of authority, it's unrealistic to think he could have prevented the mistakes that necessitated a government bailout of Citi. The assumption that the rating agencies knew their business, a key enabler of the subprime meltdown, is analogous to the view before the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein had WMD. There are a lot of people who now scoff about what an obvious fallacy this was and not many who can point to doubts expressed at the time.

The fact that "not many" elites can claim to have been right about Iraq shouldn't be confused with the fact that there were ample reasons to be skeptical of the Bush administration's WMD claims; it's just that elite media (including Newsweek) tended to ignore or dismiss those facts, and the people who pointed them out. It wasn't hard to find the evidence, though; United Nations weapons inspectors were very visibly failing to find the Iraqi weapons the White House insisted were there.

The corporate media mythology about the Iraq War has long held that no one could have known things that some people did know. Weisberg wants the same standard to apply to the financial meltdown--and particularly to his friend Robert Rubin. Lucky for him he's got a column in Newsweek he can use to make that case.

Offering a critique of the Iraq War drama Green Zone, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat (3/15/10) offers a "narrative of the Iraq invasion, properly told," that ends with:

And you had Saddam Hussein himself, the dictator in his labyrinth, apparently convinced that pretending to have WMD was the best way to keep his grip on power.

The idea that Saddam Hussein fooled the U.S. into thinking he still had chemical and biological weapons is a very popular myth that has no real evidence behind it. (See Extra!, "Saddam's 'Bluff'"  by Peter Hart, 1-2/04; "From Speculation to History"  by Seth Ackerman, 5-6/04.) Needless to say, when you're complaining that a fictional film isn't factual enough, you want to make sure that your facts aren't fictional.

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove is making the rounds to promote his new book Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. He landed on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday (3/14/10), interviewed by Tom Brokaw.  Brokaw asked him about his book's discussion of the Iraq War:

BROKAW:  And in it, you acknowledge when weapons of mass destruction were not found, everyone was startled and not very happy about that.  If that had been the case before war began, you couldn't have gotten congressional authorization.

ROVE:  Nor in all likelihood U.N. approval, as we had as well.

BROKAW:  Would you have launched the war if you had known there were weapons of mass destruction?

ROVE:  Well, as I say in the book, we would not have had either the authorization from Congress nor the U.N., and we probably would have found other ways to constrain his behavior.

There was no U.N. approval for the Iraq War.

The White House always argued that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 gave them legal cover for the war, but it did not--it warned of "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to disarm.

As the U.N. weapons inspectors were reporting back from Iraq, the White House was seeking a second Security Council vote that would have officially sanctioned military action. That effort was unsuccessful, and the U.S./U.K. attack began without that Security Council approval.

This is not ancient history, nor is particularly obscure; coverage of Iraq and the U.N. weapons inspections in early 2003 was fairly intense, and Brokaw's NBC newscast aired several reports on the U.S. efforts to win U.N. support for a war resolution. (Brokaw himself on March 10, 2003, for example: "Tonight, the French vowed to veto any U.S. war resolution at the U.N., while Secretary of State Powell continued to look for votes and a plan that would allow the United States to go to war with some kind of U.N. approval.")

Rove undoubtedly knows this history, too. What he's counting on is that journalists like Brokaw will either not remember these facts, or will be too polite to bring them up.