This is especially maddening in light of how many of the recent obsession on the right with "cancel culture". In 2002 it was basically impossible to be truly opposed to the war unless you worked for a leftwing publication. https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1351177827874459656

I think a lot of younger people read this and think "how is that The Onion got it and nobody else did?" And the answer is that plenty of people did. You just couldn't express these views if you had a career you cared about. https://www.theonion.com/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mideast-region-and-1819594296

Unless, of course, you worked for the Village Voice or The Nation. But in that case, most people didn't listen to you, because those were "far left" publications.

To be clear, I mean in the press. You could be privately anti-war or whatever. Just not on TV or in the newspaper. This is a big reason, I think, that blogging became such an important medium during this period. It was a way to get these views past the gatekeepers.

It's fairly obvious, but I would read a good long form piece on why media complicity in the Iraq War led to the rise of unedited internet news which, unfortunately, led to the decentralization of truth and eventually (when combined with social media) stuff like Q Anon.