“The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was supposed to provide the world with a demonstration of American power. It didn’t work out that way. But the Bush administration has come up with the next best thing: a demonstration of American PowerPoint.”
Paul Krugman in today’s New York Times
Krugman goes on to conclude:
The point isn’t just that the administration is trying, yet again, to deceive the public. It’s the fact that this attempt at deception shows such contempt – contempt for the public, and especially contempt for the news media. And why not? The truth is that the level of misrepresentation in this new document is no worse than that in a typical speech by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. Yet for much of the past five years, many major news organizations failed to provide the public with effective fact-checking.
So Mr. Bush’s new public relations offensive on Iraq is a test. Are the news media still too cowed, too addicted to articles that contain little more than dueling quotes to tell the public when the administration is saying things that aren’t true? Or has the worm finally turned?