More than a decade ago, the Bush administration forced the United States into a war that was so poorly prepared and executed that it quickly turned into a total disaster. The fact that the bureaucrats are misleading the country has been said, but they cannot do it themselves; they need a submissive and docile media outlet to spread their disinformation as real news and encourage them to continue doing so.
Since then, thousands of people have lost their lives, and many are still suffering and dying today. But the story of how the media was sold to the White House has not been fully fleshed out. If we look back to the moment before the invasion, we see that the American media largely gave up their freedom and suspicion to accompany the US government to war.
President Bush called a media conference two weeks before ordering America to go to war to persuade the people to remove Saddam Hussein from power. His administration has long associated Iraq with 9/11. During this meeting, he will repeatedly invoke 9/11 and Al Qaeda to justify deterring an attack on a country that did not attack the United States.
This story has its roots in the horrors of 9/11…the media, like everyone else, was appalled by the horror and devastation of that day. A wave of solidarity swept the nation as people responded to the brutality of the terrorist attack. As the military prepares to fight terrorists, there is little tolerance for condemnatory media censorship. Walter Isaacson was CNN’s chairman and CEO at the time.
When U.S. forces attacked terrorists in Afghanistan, media outlets across the country began reporting civilian casualties. But soon the “patriotic police” arrived and began to influence the news. Isaacson sent a memo to his staff: “It seems counterintuitive to focus too much on casualties or suffering in Afghanistan,” he said. He also instructed his staff to balance images and stories of civilians being killed with the memory of 9/11.