Writing about the media's failure to note in plain English George W. Bush lies about Iraq:

"What I want to know is why this kind of lying is apparently OK. Isn't it worse to refer "repeatedly to intelligence...that remains largely unverified"--as the Wall Street Journal puts it--in order to trick the nation into war, as Bush and other top US officials have done, than to lie about a blowjob? Isn't it worse to put "pressure...on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates," as USA Today worded its report? Isn't it more damaging to offer "cooked information," in the words of the CIA's former chief of counterterrorism, when you are asking young men and women to die for your lies? Don't we revile Lyndon Johnson for having done just that with his dishonest Gulf of Tonkin resolution?"

======

Choice quote from Alterman's article in THE NATION, Nov. 25, 2002:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=alterman