Democracies require vibrant debates, especially before wars are launched. There are virtually no dissenting views and no debates on U.S. television as the world is led again to war. This time over Ukraine.

Remember the run-up to the Iraq War and FAIR’s 2-week study of the four biggest TV news shows, including PBS: only three antiwar advocates of 393 guests interviewed. A fraction of 1%. It may be worse today.

Some of the same “experts” now on TV were the ones who got it so wrong on Iraq nearly 20 years ago — “experts” that hawkish MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell refers to as “the greatest foreign policy minds.” I keep waiting to see a single expert who got Iraq right. (I was one of them. See “Cable News Confidential.”)

None of TV’s experts bring up the repeated pledges made to Russia’s leaders by U.S. leaders (George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Secretary of State James Baker, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) and Western allies for years in early 1990s — as the Soviet Union and its military alliance (Warsaw Pact) dissolved — that NATO, a military alliance, would not move “one inch eastward” toward Russia’s borders.

The declassified documents are here. It’s one of the most blatant broken promises in recent diplomatic history. The Warsaw Pact dissolved but thank God NATO stayed together to do great things. (See 20 years in Afghanistan.)

No “expert” on TV brings up Victoria Nuland’s “Fuck the E.U.” tape, as they howl about Russia wanting to handpick Ukraine’s leaders and a puppet government.