Demagogue

The media have pretty much allowed their investigative skills to atrophy. The Bush administration has stonewalled inquires on the WMD fakery, the seemingly endless parade of Iraq- and 9/11-linked commissions have all avoided the topic, and the Senate Republicans have blocked any inquiry. So the media doesn’t know where to go: it’s as if they’ve forgotten how to investigate something—as if they’ve forgotten how to find second- and third-level folks to help assemble the story, how to background key players in the OSP and the U.S. intelligence community....

The clearest proof that this is all true is the stunning lack of editorial comment on the Downing Street memo. Where are the thundering editorials demanding that the White House explain itself? That Congress investigate? That a team of senators flies to London to look into this?

It isn’t like this scandal involves something small, as if it were one more peccadillo to be added to the list of Tom DeLay’s complicated transgressions. This is a basic issue of life and death, of war and peace. Upwards of 100,000 people have died because George W. Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, and $200 billion has been funneled down that black hole.