My new book on Iraq and the media, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundit --and the President -- Failed on Iraq, has just been published by Union Square Press and you can order it online or find it in stores for a little more than $10. Bruce Springsteen wrote a preface and Joe Galloway wrote the foreword. To order, see the links to Amazon and B&N under the book cover over on the left rail at this blog. It's the first five-year history of the war. Reviews are just arriving, with Kirkus saying that it is "worthy of shelving alongside the best of the Iraq books to date." Major excerpts are now (March 11) up at Salon.com, MotherJones and elsewhere, I'm doing "book salon" things at Talking Points Memo and FireDogLake, NPR radio, TV and more. Here are other early comments on the book:
"Greg Mitchell has given us a razor-sharp critique of how the media and the government connived in one of the great blunders of American foreign policy. Every aspiring journalist, every veteran, every pundit—and every citizen who cares about the difference between illusion and reality, propaganda and the truth, and looks to the press to help keep them separate—should read this book. Twice."
— Bill Moyers
“The profound failure of the American press with regard to the Iraq War may very well be the most significant political story of this generation. Greg Mitchell has established himself as one of our country's most perceptive media critics, and here he provides invaluable insight into how massive journalistic failures enabled the greatest strategic disaster in the nation's history.”
— Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com writer and author of A Tragic Legacy and How Would a Patriot Act?
"With the tragic war in Iraq dragging on, and the drumbeat for new conflicts growing louder, this is more than a five-year history of the biggest foreign policy debacle of our times—it's a cautionary tale that is as relevant as this morning's headlines. Read it and weep; read it and get enraged; read it and make sure it doesn't happen again."
— Arianna Huffington
"Anyone who cares about the integrity of the American media should read this book. Greg Mitchell asks tough questions about the Iraq war that should have been asked long ago, in a poignant, patriotic, and thoughtful dissection of our war in Iraq. Mitchell names names and places blame on those who’ve blundered. Examining the most complex issue of our time, he connects the dots like no one else has."
— Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director, Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America and author of Chasing Ghosts
"In war truth is too often the first casualty, and it is not just a President or a Secretary of Defense or assorted official spokesmen who do the killing. Our brothers and sisters in the media also participate in the execution. Greg Mitchell has taken that as his lesson and in so doing has done a service to future generations in our business."
--Joseph L. Galloway, military reporter and co-author, We Were Soldiers Once...and Young
2 comments:
If this monograph contains actual quotes from self-anointed pundits cheer leading the invasion and occupation, with dates and sources, it will be of tremendous help to me in completing my Kool-Aid menu.
It is difficult for the average citizen to keep up with the tragic events cheerleading their way up to the illegal Bush war on Iraq. It is also hard to find the time to read a whole book on any issue, even though important for a citizen's political self-education, but, I think that this is the time and this -- the irresponsibility of news media on its failure to cover the calls to action as outlined in the NeoCon manifesto -- is the issue that will compel me and others to purchase the $10 or so book.
And the former Nightline host, Ted Koppel, should be ashamed over his failure to do an expiatory last show, perhaps titled "Had We Been Had and/or Was It My Failure Too?" and then do a self-analytical exposition of his own bad coverage of the drawings of the Mobile Bio Labs, the Plame smear and the implication of exposing this expert on Iran while pushing for war with that country, this, by interviewing bona fide media luminaries like David Korn, Greg Palast, or that logician instead of trotting out the usual list of laughingstock generals and Rightwingers employed to big media who refused to speak on the advisability /legality of kicking out the inspectors and then invading Iraq.
Why Koppel did not do such a show is a tragedy that I will not completely understand. He let me down and left his failure unanswered.
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