Slashdot Mirror
Could Twitter Have Stopped the Media's Rush To War In Iraq Ten Years Ago?
Hugh Pickens writes "On the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Eric Boehlert writes that if Twitter had been around during the winter of 2002-2003, it could have provided a forum for critics to badger Beltway media insiders who abdicated their role as journalists and fell in line behind the Bush White House's march to war. 'Twitter could have helped puncture the Beltway media bubble by providing news consumers with direct access to confront journalists during the run-up to the war,' writes Boehlert. 'And the pass-around nature of Twitter could have rescued forgotten or buried news stories and commentaries that ran against the let's-go-to-war narrative that engulfed so much of the mainstream press.' For example, imagine how Twitter could have been used in real time on February 5, 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell made his infamous attack-Iraq presentation to the United Nations. At the time, Beltway pundits positively swooned over Powell's air-tight case for war. 'But Twitter could have swarmed journalists with instant analysis about the obvious shortcoming. That kind of accurate, instant analysis of Powell's presentation was posted on blogs but ignored by a mainstream media enthralled by the White House's march to war.' Ten years ago, Twitter could have also performed the task of making sure news stories that raised doubts about the war didn't fall through the cracks, as invariably happened back then. With swarms of users touting the reports, it would have been much more difficult for reporters and pundits to dismiss important events and findings. 'Ignoring Twitter, and specifically ignoring what people are saying about your work on Twitter, isn't really an option the way turning a blind eye to anti-war bloggers may have been ten years ago,' concludes Boehlert. 'In other words, Twitter could have been the megaphone — the media equalizer — that war critics lacked ten years ago."
Which is worse, to remove the buffer between the crazy Shias and the crazy Sunnis, or to take out Saddam who was financing all sorts of crazy groups and allowing them to train on his soil. the second biggest export out of Iraq after oil was trained jihadis. Perhaps you think that if Saddam was left alone that it would have been rainbows and ponies for the Iraqi people and the world would not have been afflicted by jihadis? Well bro, you need to get clued up - the jihadis have been going for 1400 years and they're not gonna stop (especially funded by Saudi petrodollars). The smartest thing the US did was to fight on someone else's soil (removing a mass murdering dictator in the process, who had already used weapons of mass destruction against his own Kurdish population). The war against Iraq was strategic genius that the US *won*. However, there are those that keep trying to re-write the facts of history. The war against the ideology of Islam and its Third Jihad has only just begin. There is nothing the US, Israel or the West can do know except win - or capitulate (which is what the political elites are trying to convince you to do - since they are publicly ignorant about the political ideology of Islam).