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Slow Burn from Slate launched a trailer for its fifth season focusing on what led us to the Iraq War invasion of 2003. The eight-episode season will go beyond the finger-pointing and dig up the facts.
Reporter Noreen Malone covered the investigation and Rolling Stone interviewed her by email.
“This started as a bit of an investigation for me — why exactly had they believed what they did?” Malone said. “What have we forgotten about that moment? What looks different now through the lens of recent history?”
Nearly 20 years later we still have troops in the Middle East from President Bush’s decision and Malone spoke about what that’s done to our culture.
“That period of time also probably helped erode trust in the media, which largely failed to actually investigate claims from the government at the time. A lot of what’s happened in our politics since can, unfortunately, be chalked up to that distrust.”
Among the people Malone interviewed for Season Five of Slow Burn are former George W. Bush White House official Frank Miller (a special assistant to Bush, and Senior Director for Defense policy and Arms on the National Security Council staff), Senators Tom Daschle and Dick Durbin, journalists Dan Rather, Bill Kristol and Ann Curry, and intellectuals like Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi academic who was one of the leading voices in America advocating for the other throw of Saddam Hussein.