"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"

(above is a headline from the Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2003)

Atrios linked to this FAIR document providing dozens of idiotic quotes by the media about the war, taunting the "liberals" who were against it, spouting triumphant "the war is over" hosannas, and the like. It's an indisdpensable treasure trove of just how clueless the conventional wisdom was at that time. The media believed the bullshit that as long as we got to Baghdad and pulled the Saddam statue down (which was a military PSYOPS stunt, we now know), everything would take care of itself. Like a soccer team of 8 year-olds (Jon Stewart minted that, not I), the media ran past the business of winning the peace to breathlessly describe how we won the war and how all the naysayers were wrong. And when it turned out that the naysayers were actually, you know, RIGHT, they brushed past their own mistakes. The media shark just kept moving forward, without correction, without perspective.

Here's a sample quote:

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

The media will never, EVER, EVER take responsibility for their role in cheerleading this war and shouting down critics of it. But this is a good way to let them know that we remember.