Lapdogs

Although the history of the American mainstream media’s complicity in our falsely-predicated war with Iraq is still unfolding, this thick excerpt from Eric Boehlert’s Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush provides a good overview of the cowed post-9/11 mentality that allowed the Bush administration to get away with it.

America suffered a mass nervous breakdown after 9/11 and the Bush administration cynically took full advantage. While we grieved and reeled, the mainstream media fell down on the job like a scared child at the feet of its daddy president, dutifully reporting the administration’s misinformation about WMDs as fact and scaring us into buying useless plastic sheeting and duct tape.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan got relegated to the day stage and whoever was responsible for the anthrax letters (remember those?) remained at large.