The days are getting longer, but the media shadows are no shorter as
they cover the war in Iraq through American eyes, squinting in
Washington’s pallid sun.
Debated as an issue of politics, the actual war keeps being drained
of life. Abstractions thrive inside the Beltway, while the war effort
continues: funded by the U.S. Treasury every day, as the original
crime of invasion is replicated with occupation.
More than ever, in the aftermath of the Scooter Libby verdict, the
country’s major news outlets are willing to acknowledge that the
political road to war in Iraq was paved with deceptions. But the same
media outlets were integral to laying the flagstones along the path to war
-- and they’re now integral to prolonging the war.
With the same logic of one, two, and three years ago, the conformist
media wisdom is that a cutoff of funds for the war is not practical.
Likewise, on Capitol Hill, there’s a lot of huffing and puffing about how
the war must wind down -- but the money for it, we’re told, must keep
moving. Like two rails along the same track, the dispensers of
