> You can't say that reported lies of the officials are the same as fiction made by media even if the outcome was the same. The notion that the media had no cl

> You can't say that reported lies of the officials are the same as fiction made by media even if the outcome was the same. The notion that the media had no clue the official claims were thin seems extremely dubious to me. They knew. Even the fact that they didn't make a big deal out of not getting UN approval, or dismissing any doubters as unpatriotic suggests otherwise. It was simply a case of not wanting to upset their owners who in many cases stood to make a profit off the war, not wanting to seem unpatriotic, wanting to maintain "access" to high-level officials and going to the same parties as many of the officials they are supposedly watching over, (a room full of reporters was laughing even as Bush was making "jokes" about not being able to find WMDs), so there was simply no incentive to report the truth. You can see it to this day, it's not like oopps, the media has learned from Iraq. They've been as gushy over military adventurism in Libya, Syria etc. Luckily, the debate around Yemen is changing somewhat, if very slowly.