A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a newspaper column about the Brian Williams debacle, except it really wasn't about that. It's about the way a relatively small story about a lie told by a news anchor seems to be the only national conversation we can have about our role in Iraq.
From that column:
I don't say this to excuse Williams, but the lies that were told by public officials in the press to get us into Iraq, and the passive lie of embedded journalism in which hand holding trumps scrutiny, and the long-flaming lie of the aftermath in which we never, ever reckoned with the mess we made -- those lies are vastly worse than the stupid lies of Williams -- and if he dies on the cross instead of Donald Rumsfeld or Judith Miller it really will be a bad joke.
This hour on the show, two writers help me have a better Iraq conversation.
Betsy Kaplan was the producer on today's show. Chion Wolf was the technical producer.
Please leave your comments below, email us at colin@wnpr.org, or tweet us @wnprcolin
GUESTS:
- Phil Klay is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, serving 13 months in Iraq. He's also the author of Redeployment, the 2014 National Book Award Winner
- Frank Rich is a writer-at-large at New York magazine and the executive producer of the HBO show "Veep." He's the author of several books, most recently, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush's America
