What the war propagandists were saying

As I've said before, I have a long memory:

Here are some blasts from the not so distant past courtesy of Norman Solomon:

"the Defense Department has evolved highly selective and accurate munitions that can sharply reduce the need to take or receive casualties. The predictions of widespread mayhem turned out to be false last time – when the weapons [in the Gulf War] were nothing like so accurate. [...] it can now be proposed as a practical matter that one is able to fight against a regime and not a people or a nation."

-- Christopher Hitchens, March 18, 2003

"what I've seen of Iraqi television, with Saddam Hussein presenting propaganda to his people and showing off the Apache helicopter and claiming a farmer shot it down and trying to persuade his own public that he was really in charge, when we're trying to send the exact opposite message"

-- Michael Gordon, NYT reporter, March 25, 2003

"The American public knows how important this war is, and is not as casualty sensitive as the weenies in the American press are."

-- Fred Barnes, Fox News, March, 2003

"They are calling this the cleanest war in all of military history. They stress they're fighting a regime and not the people, using smart bombs, not dumb, older munitions. But there have been and will be accidents. … And there's a new weapon in this war: Arab media, especially al-Jazeera. It's on all the time, and unlike American media, it hardly reflects the Pentagon line. Its critics say it accentuates civilian casualties and provokes outrage on the Arab street."

-- Brian Williams, NBC News, April 2, 2003

"Thank you for coming on the show. And I want to add, I think the Special Forces rock!"

-- Katie Couric, NBC Today Show, April 3, 2003, to a US military official appearing on the show

"We're all neocons now."

-- Chris Matthews, MSNBC Hardball, April 10, 2003

"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."

-- Lou Dobbs, CNN, May 1, 2003

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple."

-- Chris Matthews, May 1, 2003

Never forget. Never forgive.