Weapons of Mass Distraction, Again

While Keith Obermann blames the Republicans for seeking distractions (like carping about Nancy Pelosi's desire to fly nonstop) from their effort to block the Iraq war debate, his own MSNBC, joined by CNN, spent hours this afternoon on the sadly premature death of a notorious quasi-celebrity (name supplied on request), bumping the first feed of Hardball and its coverage of the Scooter Libby trial. News network, heal thyself.

Meanwhile, while highbrow journalistic institutions ponder the need for an independent investigation of the media's pre-Iraq war performance, the lessons remain resolutely unlearned. On CNN, Lou Dobbs led with a brace of stories on Iran, referring at one point in his own copy to "Iran's escalating nuclear weapons program". In case you weren't scared enough, Christine Roman's followup piece asserted that "America's enemies are challenging America's interests around the globe." That list of enemies, in addition to North Korea and Iran, included China and Russia. Has Dobbs been fed some fine custom-tailored intel that provides actual evidence of an "escalating nuclear weapons program"?

Or is he just uncritically repeating the assumptions of the administration?