Crisis of Confidence-Man

VDH blows a gasket (and skull-crushing irony ensues):

...I was wondering who will monitor our self-righteous monitors?

The answer, like it or not, in the post-Plame, post-Scheuer, post-Tenet era is that no one believes much what the CIA says any more about the Middle East; no one believes that a wire-photo from there is genuine or its caption accurate; and no one necessarily believes anything in once respected magazines, whether the Periscope section of Newsweek or anything published in The New Republic. The common gripe is that the administration lied to the public about WMD in Iraq; but what is lost is that once revered institutions proved disingenuous in their accusations and unreliable in their performance. [Linkless per original.]

That's right, in the post-Watergate, post-Iran-Contra, post-nonexistent-WMD political environment, our society's real problem is that "once revered institutions" like Newsweek and TNR "proved disingenuous in their accusations and unreliable in their performance." Oh, and the [Bush] CIA has zero credibility.

Bush Newsweek lied, people died may have been inadvertently misled.