The 10th anniversary of the start of America's illegal and aggressive war against Iraq should not pass without recalling that the mainstream news media eagerly participated in the Bush administration's dishonest campaign for public support. It is no exaggeration to say that most news operations were little more than extensions of the White House Office of Communications. Abandoning even the pretense of an adversarial relationship with the government, the media became shameful conduits for unsubstantiated and outright false information about Saddam Hussein's alleged threat to the American people. Included among the falsehoods were reports that Saddam had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, had trained al-Qaeda fighters, and had attempted to obtain uranium ore and aluminum tubes for nuclear bombs.

Put bluntly, the disastrous invasion of Iraq - which was sold on the basis of lies told by President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and others - might not have happened without the enthusiastic help of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and others. The blood of more than a hundred thousand - perhaps more than a million - Iraqis and 4,500 Americans is on their hands, too.

The spreading Occupy Wall Street movement, despite a vague worldview and agenda, properly senses that something is dreadfully wrong in America. The protesters vent their anger at the big financial institutions in New York's money district (as well as other big cities) for the housing and financial bubble, the resulting Great Recession, the virtual non-recovery, the threat of a second recession, and the long-term unemployment - which averages more than 9 percent but hits certain groups and areas far more severely than others.

The protest is understandable, even laudable, but there's something the protesters need to know: Wall Street couldn't have done it alone. The protesters' wrath should also be directed at the national government and its central bank, the Federal Reserve System, because it took the government or the Fed (or both) to:

• create barriers to entry, for the purpose of sheltering existing banks from competition and radical innovation;

• then regulate for the benefit of the privileged industry;