the Washington press corps remains almost as lax today about holding Bush accountable as it was in 2002 and 2003 ...

The Ongoing Iraq Intel Fraud | By Robert Parry | May 5, 2007

Almost five years and perhaps half a million deaths too late, it’s finally the accepted wisdom in Washington that the intelligence that George W. Bush used to justify invading Iraq was garbage. But the pattern of twisting the truth about Iraq continues unabated and the President is still rarely called on it.

Bush has never stopped making statements about the Iraq War that are untrue, illogical or irrelevant. Yet, the Washington press corps remains almost as lax today about holding Bush accountable as it was in 2002 and 2003.

So, when Bush mocks Democratic “politicians in Washington” who supposedly seek to substitute their judgments for those of experienced commanders on the ground, the national news media stays silent on Bush’s hypocrisy. It’s almost never mentioned that he was the Washington politician in December who overruled the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the two top generals in Iraq on the escalation of the war.

Bush not only rejected the advice of the Joint Chiefs and his field generals, John Abizaid and George Casey, but then replaced Abizaid and Casey with new commanders who were compliant to Bush’s wishes. Though the removals fell within Bush’s Commander-in-Chief powers, it can’t be said he was respecting the judgments of the combat generals. ...

More Cherry-Picking

But the U.S. news media continues to let Bush get away with cherry-picking the few facts that tend to bolster his position, while ignoring the more significant information that undercuts him.

For instance, the remarkable “Atiyah” comment that “prolonging the [Iraq] war is in our interest” was first reported by Consortiumnews.com in a story posted on the Internet on Oct. 3, 2006. That story was matched by a Christian Science Monitor article on Oct. 6, but the revelation has been widely ignored by other news organizations.
...
Hagel, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cited "national intelligence" attributing "maybe 10 percent" of the insurgency and violence to al-Qaeda and noting that Iraqis across the board have no fondness for the non-Iraqi terrorists who have swarmed into Iraq to fight the Americans.

The Iraqis “don't like the terrorists. What's happened in Anbar province is the tribes are finally starting to connect with us because al-Qaeda started killing some of their leadership and threatening their people. So the tribes now are at war with al-Qaeda."

"So," said Hagel, "when I hear people say, 'Well, if we leave them to that, it will be chaos' – what do you think is going on now? Scaring the American people into this blind alley is so dangerous." [Washington Post, April 30, 2007]

But President Bush continues to get a relatively easy ride on his Iraq arguments because the U.S. news media has little more appetite now for challenging him and his influential right-wing backers than the press corps did in 2002-03, when the prevailing Washington conventional wisdom was that invading Iraq was one peachy idea. ...