Continued from a thread on the Space Science page
where Mark Eby wrote:

You blame the media which has been mostly negative on Bush for helping him wage war on Iraq?

Yes, I do. As I have pointed out on several occasions, the proof of the media's bias resides in its coverage (or lack thereof).

In the run up to war, the media served as a PR outlet for the adminstration's war mongering against Iraq, never once giving front page coverage to the very serious doubts being raised about the legitimacy of the Niger yellowcake claims, and other questionable issues the Bush administration was using to scare the public into supporting the threatened pre-emptive (sic) attack on Iraq.

Included in Pres. Bush's SOTU address, but since completely debunked, the yellowcake caper helped sway public opinion to support for the invasion.

Other stories such as the aluminum tubes, the drones, the mobile labs, and others also played a significant role in helping terrify the public into support for the pre-emptive strike against Iraqj, but were also mostly imaginary.

In all these cases, and others, dating from mid- to late 2002, there was relaible information in the public realm which negated the authenticity of each and every one of these claims, but in every case, the media chose, for the most part, to ignore the evidence discounting the hype, and continued to assault the public consciousness with the 72 pt headlines screaming about the Iraqi threat.

So, yes, I do blame the media. At the same time, I blame the public for being so easily duped. The information countering the scare tactics was there. One only had to dig just a little.

S