CNN and War

Greg Mitchell rebukes CNN: while their documentary about the failure of US intelligence and intelligence services in the build up to the Invasion and Powell's debilitatingly flawed presentation to the UN Security Council puts blame on The Administration; the role of the Media in the following days was key to maintaining America's stance for war. And that CNN itself did more to aid the war buildup than to investigate Powell's claims.

"I wish I had not been involved in it," Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005, told CNN. He said the information in Powell's presentation came from a document he described as "sort of a Chinese menu" that was provided by the White House. "It was anything but an intelligence document," he added, with some assertions based on the word of known fabricators.

While the long-awaited program is sure to revive interest, and anger, over the administration's false selling of the war on the basis of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, it may well leave the press off the hook. Yet it was the media's swallowing of the false claims in Powell's crucial speech that enabled the march to war to continue.

E&P raised questions about the credibility of the Powell speech at the time and was critical of the press coverage from the start. Then, two years ago, it presented the first in-depth demolition of the Powell speech, provided by Charles J. Hanley, special correspondent for the Associated Press. E&P called the Powell charade the turning point in the march to war, and charged that the media, in almost universally declaring that he had "made the case," fell for it, hook, line and sinker, thereby making the invasion (which some of the same newspapers later questioned) inevitable.

It's a depressing case study of journalistic shirking of responsibility. The press essentially acted like a jury that is ready, willing and (in this case) able to deliver a verdict — after the prosecution has spoken and before anyone else is heard or the evidence studied. As media writer Mark Jurkowitz put it at the time in the Boston Globe, Powell's speech may not have convinced France of the need to topple Saddam but "it seemed to work wonders on opinion makers and editorial shakers in the media universe."

The San Francisco Chronicle called the speech "impressive in its breadth and eloquence." The Denver Post likened Powell to "Marshal Dillon facing down a gunslinger in Dodge City," adding that he had presented "not just one 'smoking gun' but a battery of them." The Tampa (Fla.) Tribune called Powell's case "overwhelming," while The Oregonian in Portland found it "devastating." To The Hartford (Ct.) Courant it was "masterful." The Plain Dealer in Cleveland deemed it "credible and persuasive."

Be wary of too much self-agrandizing, CNN- sometimes you're part and party to the lowest points you're so willing to capitalize on.