Columnist Paul Krugman compares the war on Iraq to the 1997 movie Wag the Dog, saying that "if you don't think it bears a resemblance to recent events, you're in denial" because "much of the supposed justification for the war turns out to have been fictional. The war was justified to the public by links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. No evidence of the Qaeda link has ever surfaced, and no W.M.D.'s that could have posed any threat to the U.S. or its allies have been found. ...

"The American people were manipulated" about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, says a member of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Several U.S. intelligence officers who are angry about the politicized distortion of their work and have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

"The nation's top broadcasters have met behind
closed doors with Federal Communications Commission officials more than
70 times to discuss a sweeping set of proposals to relax media ownership
rules," the Center for Public Integrity writes. "The private sessions
included dozens of meetings between broadcasters and the agency's five
commissioners and their top advisors. A June 2 vote is scheduled on the
controversial proposals, which critics fear will touch off a major new
round of media consolidation. In contrast, FCC officials held five