---

Colin Powell and 'The Power of Audacity'
[from the September 22, 2003 issue]

One of the problems with the media coverage of this Administration is that it requires bad manners. I don't mean the kind of bad manners usually associated with reporters: shouting over one another, elbowing a colleague to get closer to one's interview subject or even quoting an anonymous source reporting that so-and-so really isn't up to the job. Rather, to be an honest, objective and fair-minded reporter of the Bush Administration's policies requires pointing out repeatedly and without sentimentality that just about all the men and women responsible for the conduct of this nation's foreign (and many of its domestic) affairs are entirely without personal honor when it comes to the affairs of state. This simply isn't done in respectable journalism, and the Bush people understand that. Arthur Miller, speaking at a Nation Institute dinner last year, termed the willingness to use this kind of knowledge "the power of audacity."...

...In a truly nutty editorial published in June, Washington Times editors observed that "86 percent of Americans continue to be certain, or at least believe it is likely, that before the war Iraq not only had the facilities to develop weapons of mass destruction, but that it also possessed biological or chemical weapons." The editors were arguing that Americans don't care that their leaders deliberately misled them to convince them to enter this apparently never-ending quagmire, and so neither should the media. It's quite a trick: Lie to the American people and then fall back on the fact that they bought the lies to demonstrate that truth really doesn't matter anyway. It is in this and only this Alice-in-Wonderland universe that a dishonest propagandist like Colin Powell may be considered an "internationalist," a "moderate" and, sadly, a "man of honor."