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Pundit pastime: misleading public
By Erik Wiesner
wiesnere@mscd.edu

A favorite topic of pundits these days is how the Bush administration misled the country to start the war in Iraq, and frankly, I’m tired of hearing about it. It’s not that I disagree with them. It’s just the sheer hypocrisy of it all.

Back in 2002 and 2003, these same people now chiding the president were mocking people like me, who were saying exactly what they are saying now. The only difference is that more than 100,000 innocent people have now died in the war.

Although I am saying I told you so, I can’t have the childish pleasure that normally accompanies those words. In fact, I feel nothing but bitterness. The people who mocked those who opposed the Iraq war before it happened are now making the same arguments four years later.

However, the facts haven’t changed. What U.N. inspectors said in the late ’90s hasn’t changed. The fact remains that Iraq’s secular Baathist regime had nothing to do with a group like al-Qaeda. I could continue to fill this column with facts refuting the Bush administration’s claims – all facts known before the war started.

Back when it mattered, when an impending war needed to be stopped, almost all the Democrats in Congress and most mainstream pundits supported the war. They weren’t interested in the facts; they just wanted to take the politically easy road.

Now as they change their minds and start paying attention to reality, it isn’t because they are learning the truth, but because it is politically convenient.

Let this be a lesson to Americans when they think about political issues. Politicians and the media industry do not value facts and analysis. Neither do they care about accountability or conscience.

It is up to us to research what is happening and decipher the truth for ourselves. The reversal in the media’s attitude towards the Iraq war is but one example of how untrustworthy the media is. Rely on no one but yourself.