Simple.

From whom do the majority get news, and who looks bad when this story is played? Is it in TV's interest to cover that story?

Second, the story runs contrary the ingrained meme that "dictatorships in other counties use propaganda to start war, but in our enlightened democracy the free press will prevent this". As I see it, a majority of Americans got that fed almost daily while growing up. Information which counters these "known truths" will simply be ignored by the majority. It doesn't jive with what they know. Dealing with it is harder than ignoring it.

Oh yes, and the ones who are willing to face the truth are tired. There have been too many things to be outraged about.

Dein Grundsatz war, z'erst überleg'n, / a Meinung hab'n, dahinterstehn / Niemals Gewalt, alles bereden / Aber auch ka Angst vor irgendwem -- STS

I've done a lot of refugee work, and there's something called Compassion Fatigue which sets in after a while. Happened to me. The first few weeks in my first refugee camp were a barrage of jawdropping revelations. I wanted to change things, get people working, get the Lebanese to start caring, overcoming bureaucratic inertia, organizing things, overcome the vicious anomie of feuds and mutual hatred, get people to report crimes, get Americans to care, get the UN to stop hating the refugees. Did a lot of crying, mostly out of frustration.

Then one morning, I realized I didn't care any more. Rage and compassion were replaced by cynicism. Wrote a long letter to my mother and dad: they'd been missionaries. They wrote a long letter back. They told me to pace myself, or I'd become bitter, as my uncle, a missionary eye surgeon in Kano had become bitter. He stayed, but his reasons were all wrong: he viewed himself like the Little Dutch Boy with his fingers in the dike, and he stayed for 25 years. Eventually, his wife went round the bend, they divorced, and his life was a wreck.

In the same way, the nation and the media are past caring. Everyone knows this War in Iraq was based on a pack of lies, though the truth about Saddam would have served our purposes better. Abu Ghraib, Hilleh, Ramadi, Fallujah, the Walter Reed business, the contractor scandals -- now we sit at our keyboards and use expressions like "Legless as a Lamprey" about a scandal so serious, so damaging to our national sense of purpose, so fundamentally mendacious, and we're just burned out. Outrage solved nothing. We squalled and stamped our feet like petulant children, and nothing changed. We voted in a Democratic majority and they sit on their dead asses and do nothing.

And it's not just a Liberal thing. Even the Conservatives are burned out: they're tired of pointing out the entirely justifiable reasons we could and should have put an end to the wicked regime of Saddam Hussein. They're not getting anywhere either. The truth is, the War on Terror has gone so horribly awry, we're all scratching our heads and silently mouthing WTF to ourselves. OBL and Mullah Omar are still out there in Peshawar and Quetta, picking their noses and laughing, and we don't dare go after them, despite the obviousness of the threat. We're tiptoeing around, trying not to offend the Pakistanis, the very people who allowed the Taliban to be created, and who are now negotiating directly with them.

Maybe we need to pace ourselves. We can try, in our way, both Liberal and Conservative, pro- and anti-war, to respond to the barrage of lies with some truth-based debate. Maybe we aren't the solution, but we can begin to pare away the rind of lies, returning to a far more American position of healthy distrust for our elected officials.

In the original piece? Exactly the story you have in mind, only the DoD's way ahead of you on the retired old warhorse front:

But then again, of course

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH

against the military (in fact, the entire government) pushing its side of the story (if the push is covert).

for the Pentagon. You must look into the details of the story: these analysts concealed the fact they were being coached on talking points by DoD, and many of them have business ties with defense contractors who directly benefit from war coverage. The networks completely concealed the fact that these men had conditions placed on their access, had been vetted and trained by DoD, and had in many cases financial ties to companies affected by coverage of the war. This was coordinated, covert propaganda and the individuals involved had multiple conflicts of interest, but as far as the public knows to this day they were getting independently sourced news about the war.

Remember how I said US domestic news is entirely different from overseas versions? Here is a major reason: US news *is* government propaganda. At least in the case of war coverage.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH

I don't have anything to add, but thanks for keeping up with this one. I don't think we have the right to be surprised, really, but I think we're due some righteous indignation for the fact of the media's utter shamelessness. They can't even spare us a few crocodile tears?

Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.