Bill Moyers: “Buying the War”

By Scott Horton

PBS is now airing an extraordinary new program called “Bill Moyers Journal.” Having been on the road continuously for the last several weeks, I was not able to see its first installments, but I’ve now paid a visit to the website to do so. I recently wrote that America needed a journalist who could do what David Halberstam did in The Best and the Brightest with respect to the decision to go to war in Iraq. Well, Moyers has done exactly that. The story is called “Buying the War.” His work is patient, fair and sympathetic—in all those points it takes a softer approach than Halberstam would have—but it doesn’t shirk from asking the essential questions. This is well done, and essential. Don’t miss it.