Petraeus=Powell

Seagull and I have been saying it (I think he might have been the one who said it first), but now everyone is saying it: how very stupid is the media consensus that Gen. Petraeus is a completely unassailable witness, that we have to believe everything he says even when it contradicts everything else we know and even though he's transparently a frontman for a president no one believes anymore, that generals never, ever lie.

And it's just so reminiscent of how, in February of 2003, retired General and then-Secretary of state Colin Powell bullshat the U.N. with a basically truth-free account of Saddam's big scary weapons of mass destruction, and the media establishment declared that, since Powell would never ever lie to us--the man is a decorated general!--at that point, not supporting the war was actually a horrible character flaw.

As is often the case, Jamison Foser, at Media Matters (which might be the most important site on the internet), has spelled it out better than I could hope to.

When Colin Powell delivered the case for the invasion of Iraq before the UN Security Council, the media accepted his argument with unquestioning obedience. Even after it became clear that Powell's address was riddled with untruths, many journalists steadfastly refused to criticize Powell believing that his stellar credentials and polished military reputation transcended ordinary political criticism. The results were disastrous. Four years later Gen. Petraeus has assumed the role as the as the polished mouthpiece of the Iraq war, but the question remains; can the media overlook Petraeus' unvarnished reputation or will they make the same mistakes?

Unfortunately, the answer was probably a foregone conclusion. To our national punditry, history is whatever just happened in the last week.