In a sense, it was Watergate in reverse. Instead of digging for the truth, lots of journalists tried to bury it.

That note of yours is itself a pretty good bit of disinformation.

The story of the effort to purchase Yellowcake is only complete if you include the FACTS that the regulatory system worked from the start and did prevent Saddam from buying the stuff. And that happened years before Bush  used yellowcake to fear-monger America into a stupid and treasonous war.

And the FACT that the Niger document was a forged document.

Cheney/Bush took America into a bloody and fruitless personal vendetta which gave our real enemy bin Laden, "aid and comfort" in the process.

No yellowcake.

No WMD.

Saddam is dead and his regime gone.

No matter which way you approach it, and no matter who said what to who, if the press had accurately and even handedly made these two facts known, nothing else would have followed.

Its not just the Plame case either. Look at the way they repeat the totally false innuendo that there was no credible opposition to the war before the war. they have to continue this lie today because to atmit the truth now would be an admission that they intentionally ignored or attacked that valid opposition in league with the White House. Remember what they did to Scott Ridder and the sex allegations in the middle of the run-up?

I worked in the media for 18-years as a photog. My wife still works at a daily as an editor and has for 30-years. The actions of the Washington press corps in the past six years has been nothing less than dereliction of duty. They 1. allowed themselves to be intimidated with denial of access threats. And 2. they got too close to their sources and put their sources interests above the interests of the American people. The White House 'journalists' put their self-interest and the interests of those threatening above the interests of the people.

My Gannon/Guckert theory:

It has mystified people why Jeff Gannon was able to stay in the White House so long. And what his purpose was for the administration to keep him around.

There are two potential avenues here. 1. Gannon spent every day in the press 'back' room. 2. A gay honey trap.

1. Gannon had daily access to the gossip and back room activities of the  White House media. A great intelligence gathering position. Also, water cooler talk is an excellent location from which to launch disinformation.

2. White House reporters are at the top of their market potential. Reputation is everything. The prevailing political climate in the WH is intolerant of gays. So your at the top of your form and industry and Gannon talks you into a cloak room tryst. Do you give up your career . Or do you capitulate to whatever coercion Karl Rove can inflict through Gannon?

Whatever the press didn't do, we know that the press trumpted Wilson's tale of what he wanted the world to know.... the fact that Iraq had not purchased yellowcake... while ignoring the fact, as Wilson confirmed to the CIA, that the truth was Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake.

as far as the record is concerned, mr. wilson did no such thing, that wasn't his mandate. his job, as he stated multiple times, and the cia confirmed, multiple times, was to ascertain whether or not iraq had purchased yellowcake, period. he determined it had not. that's all he reported. anything else would have been speculative, since he hadn't investigated whether or not they'd tried to purchase it, and failed.

Except, ummm, "no deal had been done", as Joe Wilson ascertained, making the " sky is falling - we're all gonna die!" IMMINENCE a lie. Which the peasants, being peasants, also bought.

What else to expect? From peasants:

...clever misinformation, aimed at an audience that would accept it. But why would anyone accept it? Only by suspension of all critical faculties, curiosity about American society, the wider world and indeed, one's information provider. I would also add indifference to the truth, which is crucial in matters of warfare and the lives of men. The American peasant cannot protect his country as he believes he is doing because by his indifference, ignorance and credulity he cannot differentiate truth from falsehood.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S.  At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly.  In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies.  He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies.  This was greeted with skepticism at the time.  When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six.  Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market.  More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation.

In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S.  General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.

LINK

Who Owns What (comprehensive list of media ownership by the Columbia Journalism Review)

Global Concentration: The Media Ownership Chart

The Alternative to a Failed Status Quo
02/07/07, John Nichols, The Nation

President Bush and Vice President Cheney constantly claim that critics of the war have not offered an alternative to their proposals to surge deeper into the quagmire they have created in Iraq.
...
But the truth is that the "there-is-no-alternative" spin is every bit as disingenuous as the claim that Congress saw the same intelligence as the president and vice president and then fully and unquestioningly bendorsed attacking Iraq. In fact, 133 members of the House and 23 members of the Senate saw the "intelligence" that the administration was peddling in 2002 and voted against authorizing the president to attack and occupy Iraq.
...
Now, the 71-member caucus, which is by far the largest and most diverse ideological grouping of House Democrats, has issued a detailed policy statement regarding the war. It reads:

Over the last four years, the insurgency in Iraq has strengthened and sectarian violence has increased. Furthermore, the current situation on the ground in Iraq is grave and rapidly deteriorating. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has determined accordingly that a predominantly military approach is no longer a viable solution to stabilizing Iraq.

We are committed to bringing all of the US troops and military contractors in Iraq home in a six-month time frame as part of a fully-funded redeployment plan.

More specifically, we oppose sending additional US troops and military contractors to Iraq and favor binding votes to block President Bush's escalation of US military involvement in Iraq.

U.S. Representatives Lynn Woolsey (D-California) and Barbara Lee (D-California), Co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), issued the following strongly-worded position on Iraq today on behalf of CPC Members:

NEW YORK Saturday's New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the "deadliest weapon aimed at American troops" in Iraq. The author notes, "Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile."

What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than "civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies."

Sound pretty convincing? Well, almost all the sources in the story are unnamed. It also may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

Gordon wrote with Miller the paper's most widely criticized -- even by the Times itself -- WMD story of all, the Sept. 8, 2002, "aluminum tubes" story that proved so influential, especially since the administration trumpeted it on TV talk shows.