Do your job!

Here is Digby at his best, excoriating the media for failing to do its job. Check it out...

For the life of me, I failed to see then, and fail to see now, why the fact that Bush lied about the trailers wasn't headline news in June, 2003. The country wasn't ready for the truth? Of course it wasn't, because the press had stopped doing its job in November, 2000, when the election was stolen. And that just walks the question back. Why wasn't the country ready for the truth in November, 2000? Because the press covered the 2000 election campaign in an utterly incompetent fashion. And, herdlike, everyone in the press - Krugman the only serious exception - chose to ignore what was staring them in the face. It was too uncomfortable to believe that a major presidential candidate would blatantly lie about his economic program, or that that same candidate actually would steal an American election. It was too painful to imagine that as president, that same incompetent liar would neglect the most dangerous threats to America, an incompetence so spectacular that a bunch of ignorant fanatics could pull off a still unbelievably horrible series of terrorist attacks. It was simply beyond the pale to imagine that this same unspeakable bastard would then lie the United States into a bogus war, causing the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people, American and Iraqi alike, and mind-boggling anarchy.

In short, it doesn't matter what the public is ready for, or what the press corps as a whole thinks is important to report. It's what the real story is. Hersh understands this. Danner understands this. Fisk, too, and a few others. Unfortunately, aside from these few, and what appears to be somewhat more aggresive reporting, what happened with the trailer story is still happening. Even now, the American press as a whole simply is not reporting the real story of this administration when it's still news.

And that brings me to my point from yesterday. Man, I hate to be a prick about this, but let's get serious here. We are talking about the very real possibility of Bush launching a first-strike nuclear war. Dammit, we should be pricks about it. Okay, Josh hasn't mentioned the tactical nukes yet in Hersh's article - nor did he find time to read Hersh's article right away. Big deal - it's not his job and he's chasing other stories in far more detail than I ever will. The problem is that the nuclear war plans angle has disappeared from the mainstream news. Just like the exposure of Bush's lies about the trailers disappeared. The only thing bloggers can do to influence the discourse, and that only rarely, is to keep the salient parts of a story alive until the msm picks up on it.

The fact that Bush is seriously planning to start a nuclear war must not be permitted to drop out of sight. If it is ignored, chances are we will learn that the first 21st Century nuclear war - but not the last - will have started when we weren't looking. Bush isn't going to ask for authorization to use nuclear weapons. He isn't even going to ask authorization to attack Iran. It is going to happen and if they are very nice, they'll boast about it afterwards to the right reporters. The use of nukes will ooze out, contributing to the anomie and "whatever" attitude that Bush has cultivated towards news about his behavior.

Unless the press holds Bush's feet to the fire and refuse to let this story suffer the same fate as the story about the trailers, we will slouch into Armageddon. It is sheer moral cowardice to ignore this, or minimize its importance. Hersh may be wrong - he's been wrong before. But as far as I know, he's never been wrong about the dangers of the Bush administration. The press must press the question: Does Bush plan to start a nuclear war?