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And it's happened before - read up on NYT's Iraq War lies told on behalf of USG. This is how America works.

• JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > read up on NYT's Iraq War lies told on behalf of USG. This is how America works TL; DR the New York Times unquestioningly published what the government told them, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction [1]. This reminds me of the faith Americans had in their government preceding the Vietnam War. Saying this is "how America works," however, is a willful short-circuiting of cognitive faculties. It's how any trusting society works until it's burned. We got burned, again, and now the press is more critical of anything the government says. I know a few reporters at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Catching the government (or anyone occupying a position of power) in a compromising lie is a prize they aggressively seek. It seems like whenever articles critical of significant foreign governments come up on Hacker News, these sorts of comments materialize. Just because the American media is criticizing a country doesn't mean (a) the criticism is invalid, (b) it was directed by the U.S. government or (c) said organization isn't similarly critical of the American government. (It's still good to read multiple countries' newspapers, though. On the topic at hand, Der Spiegel and Le Temps have written extensively.) [1] http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/ http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/