Yep, I remember a war that was clearly decided in advance but maintained a pretence of negotiability, on a bed of lies and manufactured fear of WMDs, supported

Yep, I remember a war that was clearly decided in advance but maintained a pretence of negotiability, on a bed of lies and manufactured fear of WMDs, supported in general by a compliant media with plenty of military embeds, glee over "shock and awe" and dropping of a lot more ordinance, and an almost complete absence of reporting of the victims of it. That war was Iraq. Nothing forgives Putin for what he's doing, or the laughable propaganda it rests on and Russian media promulgation of the same, but let's not pretend our media aren't also dancing to a political tune, filtering, ignoring, misrepresenting. And precisely because we claim to live in a free society we should hold our media to higher standards of independence, verifiability and circumspection.