It was a chilling moment on a split-screen of history. While the Senate debated the Iraq war on Tuesday night, a long-dead senator again renounced a chronic lie about congressional options and presidential power.The Senate was in the final hours of another failure to impede the momentum of war. As the New York Times was to report, President Bush “essentially won the added time he said he needed to demonstrate that his troop buildup was succeeding.”

Meanwhile, inside a movie theater on the opposite coast, the thunderous voice of Senator Wayne Morse spoke to 140 people at an event organized by the activist group Sacramento for Democracy. The extraordinary senator was speaking in May 1964 — and in July 2007…

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Many of America’s most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than four years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins.

The media watch group FAIR (where I’m an associate) has performed a public service in the latest edition of its magazine Extra. The organization’s activism director, Peter Hart, drew on FAIR’s extensive research to assemble a sample of notable quotations from media cheerleading for the Iraq invasion. One of the earliest quotes to merit special attention came from ace New York Times reporter — and chronic Pentagon promoter — Michael Gordon. In a CNN appearance on March 25, 2003, just a few days into the invasion, Gordon gave his easy blessing to the invaders’ bombing of Iraqi TV.

Gordon cited “what I’ve seen of Iraqi television, with Saddam Hussein presenting propaganda to his people and showing off the Apache helicopter and claiming a farmer shot it down and trying to persuade his own public that he was really in charge, when we’re trying to send the exact opposite message” — and so, the Times reporter went on, Iraqi TV was “an appropriate target.”

Let’s unpack Gordon’s rationale for a military attack on Iraqi broadcasters: They presented propaganda to viewers, aired triumphal images and touted the authority of the top man in the government, while an adversary was “trying to send the exact opposite message.” By those standards, Iraqis would have been justified in targeting any one of the American cable news networks, most especially Fox News Channel…

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This week’s cave-in on Capitol Hill — supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq — is surprising only to those who haven’t grasped our current circumstances. Public opinion polls aren’t the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans opposed the war and even saw it as immoral.

Slick phrases about the need to bring our troops home can easily become little more than platitudes on wallpaper in media echo chambers.

No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, they won’t end this war unless an antiwar movement develops enough grassroots strength to compel them to do so.

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Predictably, some critics have decried the current efforts by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to buy the Dow Jones company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal. But let’s imagine the dynamics that might emerge if Murdoch gains control of that newspaper. Like viewers of his Fox News Channel, readers of The Wall Street Journal under Murdoch could look forward to jaw-dropping claims along the lines of “We invest, you decide.”

The Wall Street Journal would need to make some changes in order to be in sync with Murdoch-brand journalism. The Journal’s recent design make-over could provide a tidy framework for spreading the content of the editorial page to the rest of the newsprint pages.

But executives at News Corp. would swiftly face a dilemma. Investors and money managers — prime demographic targets of The Wall Street Journal — are apt to be intolerant of financial news reporting that’s unduly screened through an ideological mesh.

Slanted journalism may be fine for big commercial enterprises when news consumers largely base their outlooks on prevailing media biases. But investors and others who move large amounts of money are apt to be less forgiving when political agendas behind news reports might impede the quest to maximize profits.

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Several days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly
stories about the tragedy still dominate front pages and cable
television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale — the war in Iraq
— ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at home and
far away, reflects the chronic evasions of the American media
establishment.

In the world of U.S. mainline journalism, the boilerplate legitimacy
of official American violence overseas is a routine assumption.

“The first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence,” George Will wrote
three years ago in the Washington Post. But now, his latest Newsweek
column laments: “Vietnam produced an antiwar movement in America; Iraq
has produced an antiwar America.”

Current polls and public discourse — in spite of media inclinations
to tamp down authentic anger at the war — do reflect an “antiwar
America” of sorts. So, why is the ghastly war effort continuing
unabated? A big factor is the undue respect that’s reserved for
American warriors in American society.

When a mentally unstable person goes on a shooting rampage in the
United States, no one questions that such actions are intrinsically,
fundamentally and absolutely wrong. The media condemnation is 100
percent…

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