Six years ago today the U.S. media and administration officials who plotted the invasion of Iraq celebrated the fall of Baghdad while expressing few fears about the future. "We're all neo-cons now!" crowed Chris Matthews on MSNBC. Joe Scarborough, also on MSNBC, declared, "I'm waiting to hear the words, 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians, and Hollywood types."
Vice President Cheney dismissed critics of the war as ''retired military officers embedded in T.V. studios'' (consider the irony of that given later revelations). Donald Rumsfeld compared the end of Saddam Hussein's government to the fall of the Berlin Wall - a tragically premature judgment, as we would soon learn.
Dick Morris at Fox News said, "Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
In all of this there was a special emphasis on the toppling of that tall statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. It was, in most cases, attributed solely to the Iraqis--with little or no mention of the crucial help provided by U.S. marines.
The stories were filled with gloating comments by administration officials. I happened to be in New Orleans for a newspaper conference where Vice President Cheney - I'm sure he would have preferred being back at the White House sharing a few toasts with his fellow architects of the war - offered that quip about the war critics. It was a surreal scene. In the ballroom at the Fairmont awaiting Cheney's arrival I watched a huge video screen, which was showing the toppling of the statue, fall over itself and nearly reach the floor before it was propped back into place.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003960993Yeah, we all remember how the MSM sold us this war and how gleeful they were to go to war. Grand adventure, sales & ratings for those f*ckers.