How the press failed on Iraq

A hard look back at the past five years -- with all its death and destruction and missteps -- reveals that the American media has been sleepwalking through the war.

Editor's note: This is excerpted by permission from "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq," published this month by Union Square Press.

By Greg Mitchell

Read more: George W. Bush, War, Books, Iraq, Weapons of mass destruction, Iraq War, Stephen Colbert

March 11, 2008 | Stephen Colbert's routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2006 was celebrated or lamented for his pointed barbs at the president while Bush sat just a few feet away. What many may forget, however, is that his critique of the press was just as biting -- and widely resented by many of the journalists in attendance. Some of the same guests had attended a similar dinner two years earlier and roared with laughter when the president aired a goofy video which showed him looking around the White House for those darn missing WMDs (as dozens of American kids were dying in Iraq that month).

One of Colbert's passages could serve as an epitaph for the early coverage of the war. Addressing the reporters in the hall, Colbert, in his faux right-wing blowhard persona, said, "Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell-check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction."

Perhaps, as Colbert had observed when he was still on "The Daily Show," it's all Saddam Hussein's fault -- for not having those weapons of mass destruction. Surely, if we'd found them, public opinion about the media's performance before and after the U.S. invasion in 2003 would have remained at favorable levels far longer. Yet the fact that we did not find WMD did not inspire much of the media to quickly look more deeply, and with more skepticism, at how we got into the war. Nor did it seem to shred the authority most commentators continued to grant the president, Pentagon officials, and others involved in planning and running the war. Not even the disgraceful propaganda campaigns surrounding the capture of Jessica Lynch and the friendly-fire killing of Pat Tillman accomplished that.

As events unfolded in Iraq over many months, and then years, since the 2003 invasion, some of us old-timers -- David Halberstam, to name another -- who had lived through the Vietnam era knew that the longer we stayed, the longer we'd have to stay, to justify the invasion and all the killing and maiming since we'd arrived on the scene. At least this would be the view of those directing the war, calcified editorial writers at The Washington Post and various hosts and guests on cable news channels.

As years passed, reporters in Iraq (and some in Washington) grew more skeptical, but by then it was too late. Editorial pages and TV pundits, meanwhile, lagged far behind the public -- and even behind some conservative Republicans in Congress -- in failing to cry "enough!" Victory, or at least a decisive turning point, was always just around the next IED-blasted corner, in their view.

In early 2007, with the announcement of the "surge" of troops in Iraq, TV commentators punted at the most crucial moment since the invasion of Iraq -- and not a single major newspaper came out against the escalation until after it was announced. They were all sleepwalking into the abyss. Even if the "surge" proved relatively successful, it would guarantee at least several more years of heavy U.S. presence in Iraq, and the deaths of thousands of more Americans.

By the time of Gen. David Petraeus's report to Congress in September 2007 -- giving a thumb's up to Gen. David Petraeus's handling of the "surge" -- media commentary had grown more critical. Still, The Washington Post editorial page and legions of pundits continued to back the war, despite their promises, months earlier, to withdraw support if "benchmarks" were not met. Glenn Greenwald, the popular Salon blogger, described the formula this way: "1) If X does not happen, there is no justification for staying; 2) X has not happened; 3) we must stay."

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Much of what journalists need to know about public officials can be summed up in two words: as the muckraker I. F. Stone once advised, "Governments lie." Early in my training as a reporter in the late 1960s -- in journalism school and on a daily newspaper -- I was taught to always be skeptical of statements, by those in authority, that just might be self-serving. (At the time, I only got a chance to put that into practice in interviewing the local mayor or housing department chief.) A few years later, the lies of President Nixon -- on the war, on Watergate, on not being a crook -- promoted a period of aggressive probing throughout the news business.

Sure, some in the media went overboard, trying to be the next Woodward or Bernstein; but better to be overly skeptical than overly credulous. We saw the result of the latter, three decades later, surrounding the run-up to the Iraq adventure, and then in too much of the mainstream coverage since. Who can forget the days when simply questioning the evidence of WMD in Iraq made you appear weak-kneed or even, god forbid, "French"?

Next page: "Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all the contrary stuff?"