The Virginia Pilot has an excellent story about the end of the search for WMD in Iraq:

This week’s news that the Pentagon has officially ended its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was the quiet denouement to one of the most contentious issues in our nation’s recent history.

While the beginning of the hunt for Saddam Hussein’s rumored chemical, biological and nuclear weapons came in like a lion, it went out like a lamb.
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The CIA’s head weapons inspector is back home. President Bush’s Iraq Survey Group has decided to call it a day.

And America is left with a seemingly endless war in Iraq, but without a rationale for it.

A senior intelligence official told The Washington Post that chief weapons hunter Charles Duelfer’s interim report to Congress, which contradicted nearly every prewar claim of the Bush administration, will stand as the group’s final conclusion.

While the official end to our hunt for weapons is a sad, significant milestone, almost more noteworthy is our — Americans’ and the media’s — muted reaction to that news.


As I’ve been writing here recently, the question on my mind is why are the American people so easily fooled? I’ve come to expect the majority of corporate media to go along for the ride so that’s not a surprise. The corporate media has an agenda and generally speaking it is not seeking to be neutral, objective, or informative. It is designed to indoctrinate, not inform.

What is most disappointing is that in the year 2004 we humans are seemingly incapable of thoughtful and critical analysis of what is going on around us. Perhaps it is just an American phenomena and the product of a vast propaganda machine? I think there is some truth to that statement yet I also believe that most Americans have the common sense and resources to break through the indoctrination. Perhaps we should be asking: Do Americans want to know the truth in the first place?

What do I know? What are my sources? Have I corroborated my sources? Have I examined the sources of my sources? What about the social-economic background of my sources? Who funds my sources? Who owns the source? These are just a few of the questions I think we should be asking ourselves when we think we know something about something.

Bruce over at This is Class Warfare has added an excellent post on this discussion.

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