What about Hinderaker's claim that CNN reported that Tillman was killed by friendly fire a month after his death?

How about the media's reports a month or two later that Jessica Lynch didn't shoot anyone or get shot -- after the lie was used to hype the war?

How about the media's reports a year or two later that there

really weren't WMDs in Iraq -- after those claims successfully provoked the invasion of Iraq?

How about ABC News' acknowledgment that the government claimed there was no bentonite found in anthrax -- after it pumped for five straight days the story Iraq was likely responsible for the anthrax attacks as a result of findings of bentonite?

Yes, after the pagentry dies down and all the exploitation is milked out of the lies, the news starts to seep out that they were, in fact, lies. So what? What point do you think should be drawn from that?

Reporters aren't going to revoke a grant of anonymity, even when the grant was a mistake.

There are no one formal set of rules of journalistic ethics and no professional body regulating those ethical rules -- the way there is for, say, lawyers or doctors.

But if you go read any journalism professors or other writers on journalistic ethics, you will find almost universal agreement for the proposition not only that journalists no longer have an obligation to protect the identity of sources who lie to them, but they have an affirmative duty to disclose the identity of those sources.

I have been trying to find instances where they have abided by this principle, and so far I can't. But few will deny the validity of this principle in the abstract.

Sorry for the dyslexic mis-spelling.

But how the hell did you ever reach the conclusion that we wouldn't have known what we did without some showoff hearing before a Congressional Committee?

Where? Where did the Tillman family have the opportunity to tell their story in such a public manner?

Why are the media covering these hearings so intensely if it's all old hat, stuff that has long ago been revealed?

Waxman's Committee has issued subpoenas to first-hand witnesses in order to find out who is responsible for these lies and how and why they were disseminated? Who else with the power to compel testimony has investigated any of this? Nobody.

Did Rumsfeld know about the Tillman deceit? Did Bush or Cheney? Do you want to find out?

I didn't get the impression that Russert was willing to account for his behavior.

I didn't mean in any way to imply that Russert (or Beinart) offered a persuasive, commendable or even slightly self-aware explanation for what they did. In particular, I found Russert's reliance on his "I'm-just-a-blue-collar-guy-from-Buffalo" shtick to be pathetic, and Beinart -- though admitting he was wrong about the invasion -- confined his admission of error, as they always do, to the most limited arena.

I just meant that at least they were willing to appear and be questioned about what they did. The credit they're due is confined exclusively to that willingness, but it's not nothing, particularly when compared to their ideological comrades hiding behind Brit Hume and Fred Hiatt.

Great Documentary . . . but I couldn't stand to watch the whole thing. I felt, after about a hour, that I was going to bust up my TV set. God, I despise those slimy bastards!

I share that sentiment exactly. I literally had to watch it in segments from the video clips because I couldn't take 90 minutes straight of it.

When I think about what the people did who are responsible for this war -- not the people who were duped as a result of poor judgment or paying insufficient attention or being manipulated -- but the deliberate liars who concocted falsehoods and fed them to the eager "journalists" who passed them along and smeared anyone who objected -- it's difficult not to feel a consuming anger because they're still doing it.

None of it has really been resolved. Not only is the war still ongoing, but the people responsible -- in the media and the government -- are still in the same positions, if not better ones, and there have been no real consequences, no reckoning, no accounability yet.