ContentLet me ask something — at what point does the American voting public actually start reading articles like this one in Newsweek that expose George Bush’s lies for what they were. I mean, Newsweek is a rather popular magazine, with 3.1 million readers in the U.S.. And for each of those 3.1 million people, there just isn’t a lot of ambiguity over statements like “taken together, the facts in the report show that virtually every major claim President George W. Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq — from Saddam’s growing nuclear program to his close ties with Al Qaeda — was either wrong or exaggerated.”
Now that certain elements of mainstream media are willing to just tell the story like it is, how can some 46% of Americans still be thinking of voting for Bush? Is it that the media is now so divided that magazines that support Kerry (and are read by Kerry voters) run articles like that, and ones that support Bush simply don’t?
Or is it that 3.1 million Newsweek readers aren’t even that many voters? That the vast majority of voters get their news not in print, not online, but exclusively over television. Now, it is hard for me to gauge that impact, as I have constant access to online news (which I read for several hours a day) and live in NYC and San Francisco, but I don’t have regular access to a television. What are they showing on television these days? Is NBC or FOX even reporting on the fact that George Bush either outright lied or distorted the truth in order to kill people in Iraq? If that’s where American voters are getting their news, are they getting the news they need to know to make an informed decision about the November election?
I’ll be living in a hotel and a temporary apartment for the next few weeks and I imagine that there will be a television. I’ll be very curious to see what news the majority of Americans are getting.
Oh, and by the way, Newsweek wasn’t the source of the report in question. Neither was Michael Moore. Neither was anyone with a left-wing media agenda or bias. No, that report is the 521 page Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq from the Senate Intelligence Committee. They even wrote a useful 30 page Conclusion that summarizes the findings.
Which state, in effect, that George Bush lied when he said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that he lied when he said Iraq had ties to Al-Qaeda, and that there was a systematic suppression of accurate findings at all levels of the American intelligence community. The question is, do 46% of American’s think that it is acceptable for their President to do this, or do they really just not know that he did?