Richard Cohen, good guy, but dead wrong about Karl Rove and the war in Iraq

LeftCoaster today quotes Wash Post op ed writer Richard Cohen (who usually gets it) not getting it about Karl Rove or the war in Iraq.

On Karl Rove:

"This is not a major story. It's a crappy little crime and it may not be a crime at all." -Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen this morning on Valerie Plame’s outing

On Bush lying about the justification for going to war in Iraq:

Cohen said that everybody got it wrong, that reporters are not CIA agents, and that you have to rely on your sources. "I don't fault reporters for getting it wrong," he said.

See, now here's the funny part. I'm a reporter, a writer, an activist, and many other things. And I didn't "get it wrong" like Richard Cohen apparently did. I totally got that something didn't add up BEFORE the war in Iraq started. I remember telling many people that the fact that the rationale for going to war in Iraq had changed, oh, 27 times (literally) had me a bit concerned. I remember telling them that I supported going into Afghanistan but Iraq smelled fishy - Bush didn't have a clear reason for going in and something didn't smell quite right.

Some folks at the CIA felt that the administration was playing fast and loose with the intelligence even BEFORE the war, it's too bad that Richard Cohen doesn't have the contacts to have known that before the war, but lots of NYT and Wash Post and other reporters did and do. If I could get that info, they could get that info.

And in any case, if I could get a sense in my gut that the story didn't smell right, why couldn't the Wash Post and the NYT? Reporters may not be CIA agents, but that's a cop out. They have CIA agents as sources, and more importantly, reporters do just as much sleuthing for their articles - well, at least GOOD reporters do - as any analyst working for the government. Taking the Bush administration's "facts" and presenting them as, well, facts is unprofessional, and in this case, dangerous.

The mainstream media that bought into this war hook, line and sinker without ever questioning this administration is partly to blame for this war. And Richard Cohen's attempt to simply shrug off criticism by saying "what's a journalist to do?" - well, a real journalist would have known what to do.