If that's what he feared, how was having Christians kill a bunch of Muslims going to prevent it?

I think it's a mistake to try and assign any intellectual or moral depth to the post 9/11 hysteria. A lot of folks, including me, kind of lost their shit after that and our reactions tended to flow from our essential nature. In Hitchens' case, he responded as an arrogant thug who was really cavalier about the existence of others when they confliced with his own sense of moral superiority.

Mike

Well, that's Hitchens for you. Erudite rambling covering up for an appaling lack of judgment.

Mike

Well, yes. As I said, Hitchens was wrong.

I'm not sure what the proper U.S. response should be to Islamic fundamentalism. Ignore it unless we're attacked and then limit our response to the people who attacked us? Blanket the region with humanitarian aid? Obviously, invading and occupying Iraq wasn't it, and there are signs Iraq is unraveling even now, as our final troops depart.

How did they get duped? Was MSNBC liberal back then, and did they have moderate/liberal commentators who were supporting the administration's push for war? Did they not check sources?

I can't recall too much from that time. I just remember a NEWSWEEK article before the Iraq Resolution passed that was theorizing that Saddam could possibly unleash a wave of chemical weapons on our troops.

On FOX, there was some guest that was saying that the "we" were looking into possible ties between Saddam and the OKC bombing.

Then after the Iraq War started I remember some news stories on AOL home page of discovered Iraqi documents showing ties to Al-Qaeda. The documents were haphazardly whited-out.

But either way, it's the American public that was duped. The media is just going to do what's in it's nature.

Some MSNBC guy, Schultz, was cheerleading Obama's decision to help the Libyan rebels. He was justifying saying, if the president says Gaddafi has killed American citizens, then he needs to be taken out! Even though this was before he started helping us out in the war on terror.

The public doesn't keep track of timelines here, or remember history. That's why the public falls for stuff like, "Saddam killed his own people!! He started a war with Iran!!! (Even though he was our ally during this time).

(It's been a few days now, but...) The panel I was watching seemed to take it as a given that the media in general, seemed to not press for more proof of the administration's assertions during the run up to the Iraq war...

The U.S. officials from U.N. weapons inspection teams that had been on the ground in iraq that contradicted Cheney's assertions that Iraq had WMD turned out to be right

Ambassador Joe Wilson turned out to be right in his criticism, of the WH case for war, oh well sorry Mrs Wilson but Carl Rove felt that falsely discrediting your husband was more important than your job

Colin Powell turned out to be greatlymisinformed regarding some of his assertion made at the UN.

Almost anything from the Judith Miller

Stuff like that

I was alive and consuming the news in 2001 and 2002 and 2003. For anyone paying attention, there were plenty of skeptical news stories raising questions about the Bush administration's claims on Iraq. My own concerns about a U.S. invasion were based on these news stories.

In fact, one of the best sources of pre-invasion news coverage was the Washington bureau of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, which included newspapers outside the New York-Washington axis, papers like the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star and the San Jose Mercury News. They won awards for their coverage, which was based on reporters on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and solid but low-level sources in the intelligence community.

It's true some people fucked up. Judith Miller at The New York Times is a prime example, and that was the beginning of the end of her career at the Times. I think she's a Fox News consultant now.

It's also true that if you just watch TV news, you're not going to learn much of anything about anything.

Years later, I hear liberals bitch about how "the news media" didn't question Bush on Iraq. I guess they were consuming less media or worse media than I was. Whose fault is that?

Ah, ok. I remember when they were talking about Saddam trying to purchase yellow cake from somewhere in Africa I think. Turned out to fake or something. Then they were basing info about Iraq on what turned out to be an essay paper by a UK student from the late 90s, something like that.

I remember Cheney and Rice were on TV saying that Saddam and Iraq were connected to 9/11 and that Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda.

None of the hijackers were from Iraq. I never saw or heard any hard proof of Iraq connections to September 11th.

They were building a case for war with Iraq before the UN inspectors even went in there, so to me, it looks like they were just looking for reasons to justify war, which made me doubt that there would be any WMD's found.

The reasons to justify the war:

1)They have WMD's! They could be close to developing a nuclear weapon in as soon as 6 months!

2)September 11th. Saddam was connected to that.

3)Saddam butchers his own people and invades neighboring countries. He's like a modern day Hitler, and if you don't think we should go to war with him, you're an appeaser.

I remember callers to the Sean Hannity show were asking, after we "won" the war, where are the WMD's? Hannity replied, "There in Syria!!"

I remember people who questioned the war, being told "they hated America," or "then the terrorist have already one.

I love that tape of Rice saying, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," thing.

I seem to remember Senator Byrd being a solitary voice in dissent. I recall listening to a very long speech by him while people in my office bitched about people like him being "liberals" and "communists."

Well, now, you guys are talking about two different things, aren't you?

Initially, you were saying that NOBODY in the news media or American public life questioned or challenged the Bush administration's plans to invade Iraq.

Then you acknowledged that SOME PEOPLE did publicly question or challenge, but they seemed to be outnumbered, outshouted and smeared by the administration and its supporters.

I would dispute the first point, but not the second.

Sometimes it sucks to be in the minority. But that's no excuse for throwing in with the monkey-masses. With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear who was right and who was wrong in 2003, just as we can look back at civil rights in 1954 and make the same declaration.