Part Four -- Lexington and the Iraq War

Picking up from where I left off, let's move on to The Economist's unpardonable coverage of and support for the Iraq war.

In direct contradiction to Lexington's column about the war, no one who can be taken seriously is saying the president knew there were no WMDs. Many who should be taken seriously are saying the president presented a case as unvarnished truth when he and his subordinates knew full well the evidence supporting it was variously cherry-picked, suspect or outright fraudulent.

This, in the context of a supposed “imminent threat” of attack on the nation, from a paper which demanded another president's resignation because he lied about oral sex.

The Economist has pointedly ignored or dismissed very serious concerns relating to how dubbya and his subordinates used and presented information to the congress and the people in making the case for war on Iraq. Like an angry alcoholic, the Economist simply refuses to admit it has a problem.

Why has The Economist so stubbornly, so persistently, framed the debate about the war in this way? Why has it steadfastly refused even to acknowledge what lies in plain sight: a veritable smorgasbord of dishonesty exhibited toward the American people by the Bush administration, not to mention toward the Iraqi people, who never seem to have suffered enough. Why can't this newspaper -- of all newspapers -- bring itself to say even the minimally decent thing, i.e., “taking the country to war on a false prospectus is, perhaps, a problem.”

Instead, true to its long-standing assertion that the president’s wackiest hard-core right-wing supporters are no more obnoxious than and anyone left of John McCain, Lexington wrote (in a previous week's column) "American conservatives" are no worse than "Michael Moore and the 'I hate Republicans crowd'". It is on this basis, and only on this basis, that the Economist evades any serious discussion of such minor indelicacies as separation of powers and the administration's misuse of the nation's intelligence apparatus. As the debacle in Iraq goes from bad to unendingly worse, The Economist doggedly perseveres, FawltyTowers-style: "Don't mention the war!"

So . . . the clear message from The Economist -- either by saying so directly or by refusing to discuss the casus belli of the Iraq war seriously -- is there is no need to discuss how we got into the Iraq mess because those people who have raised questions are hate-filled lunatic Bush-haters.

Well, I challenge anyone to cite examples of legitimate, professed liberal commentators, pundits or columnists openly sliming the opposition as "traitors" or worse. Such is the vitriol commonly put forward by commentators on Fox News, various right-wing pundits and even by Republican elected officials (witness Representative’s Schmidt’s recent viciousness directed at Representative Murtha). Hell, this approach was a key tactic used by Karl Rove to defeat Kerry.

What does The Economist hope to accomplish with all this ducking-and-weaving?

My guess is The Economist, like much of the American mainstream media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, has come to realize that it has not yet even begun to atone for its own manifold sins in the lead-up-to-Iraq fiasco. Perhaps its editors have begun to notice the increasing number of journalists in the U.S. who have started to become a part of the story about how the Bush administration so ably misled Americans in so many ways. Funny, isn't it, how so many of these journalists have been revealed to be highly reliable transmitters for Bush administration-disseminated information that has turned out to be false, misleading or intended to intimidate critics.

In other words, if The Economist were to acknowledge the validity of the war critics' concerns, it would then need to consider the media's -- and its own -- complicity in perpetrating the larger con.

Now, don't get me wrong: I don't put The Economist on par with Judy Judy Judy Miller or Timmeh Russert, but there's no doubting they do bear some responsibility as enablers of Bush administration deception. I just hold them to a much higher standard, I guess.