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Thom Hartmann takes our corporate media and the cheerleaders for war with Iraq to task and ten years after our invasion, asks 'Where are the apologies?'

Via Truthout: How the Media Fueled the War in Iraq:

Yesterday, the U.S. marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. And, over the course of the past ten years, we've learned more and more about how the war with Iraq actually started.

It's incredibly easy to blame the Bush administration for its lies that led us into Iraq. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and company weren't the only ones who played an integral role in convincing this nation that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that WMD's were a forgone conclusion.

In the days and weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq, corporate media – and even NPR and PBS - were abuzz with the talking points of the Bush Administration, echoing claims that Iraq had its hands on "yellow cake uranium" and that it had a massive arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction."

Thanks to the media's repeated claims that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were immediate threats to our nation, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, nearly three-quarters of Americans believed the lie promoted by Donald Rumsfeld that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the attacks of 9/11.

One of the biggest proponents of the Iraq War was Bill O'Reilly.

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As John already posted here at Crooks and Liars, Andrew Breitbart attacked both Nancy Pelosi and actress Janeane Garofalo at the recent TeaCon Convention held in Illinois which you can read about here -- Andrew Breitbart's Profanity Laced Tirades at TeaCon Convention. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell took Breitbart down a notch during his Rewrite segment on the Last Word this Monday night and all I can say is, this one's got to leave a mark. Ouch.

O'Donnell rightfully slammed Breitbart as someone who's grown up in the shadow of Hollywood, has always been intensely jealous of anyone else who's managed to make it in show business when he obviously never had a chance to do so himeself and who claims to know something about actress Janeane Garofalo and her career when he obviously doesn't know the first thing about it.

As someone who has worked with Garofalo, O'Donnell set the record straight as to just how many projects she's worked on and how many people have been thrilled to work with her. And as he noted, she was right about our invasion of Iraq but said at the time, if she was wrong, she'd be more than willing to apologize to President Bush or anyone else for that matter and has always been a much bigger and better person than someone like Breitbart with his baseless, sexist attacks on her could ever hope to be.

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Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo weighed in on Michele Bachmann's husband, Marcus Bachmann and the fact that most people who are as vehemently anti-gay as he is, usually turn out to be someone who is gay themselves and has some real issues with their own sexuality.

I was glad to see someone finally addressing the issue of just how damaging the type of "therapy" Bachmann and his clinic are using is to anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves subjected to it.

Janeane also thankfully called the "tea party" exactly what it is -- an astroturf Republican re-branding effort that is not grass roots but sponsored by a whole lot of big money. And as they noted, their efforts are apparently fizzling if this is any indication. We can only hope.

From the Minnesota Independent -- Tea party convention featuring Bachmann, Bradlee Dean cancelled:

Organizers for the Freedom Jamboree, billed as the national tea party straw poll convention, announced on Wednesday that the event has been canceled due to low attendance. The conference had pulled in two of Minnesota most controversial figures, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and rightwing preacher Bradlee Dean. It was also being organized by Iowa’s Bob Vander Plaats, whose organization, The Family Leader, sparked an uproar in the state after it released a presidential pledge on marriage.

“Everything was set up,” said William Temple, one of the organizers, told the Kansas City Star. “It was just the tea parties themselves weren’t prepared to spend the money to travel and bring their families.”

Roll Call notes that the organizers also had subpar fundraising in addition to low attendance, and it’s the second tea party convention in two years to be canceled because of low attendance.

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h/t rev24 at The Young Turks

Fox News recently sent out Griff Jenkins, one of its ambitious young stalkers ambush "reporters," to ambush Janeane Garofalo at a Boston appearance. Both Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity featured the clip; it would be interesting and I bet revealing to sometime get a look at one of these ambushes unedited.

In any event, it looks like Fox inspired another wannabe ambush reporter in the form of WBSM AM 1430's Ken Pittman. Apparently after writing this ambush piece urging fellow "tea baggers" to protest Janeane at the Somerville Theatre in Boston, the turnout was, shall we say, just a little smaller than Mr. Pittman had hoped.

Sam Seder had a bit of fun and called Pittman's radio show to ask him what happened to his protest.

Apparently Ken Pittman doesn't have any screeners for his show. For more on this story check out The Young Turks blog. I do agree with one of the commenters over there that it would have been nice for Janeane to have qualified her statement about the teabag protesters being racist. Not all of them were, but her point is one worth considering. If it's not racism, why weren't these people protesting while Bush was in office?