I doubt anything could have stopped the war machine, but twitter has made things a bit different. It isn't just twitter that has changed things, but twitter is a big part of it. Back in the dark ages of blogging, we were like people screaming through mostly soundproof windows, rarely heard. The media largely bowed to the administration, and conservative messaging could be reinforced through partisan outlets. Conservative bloggers mostly weren't important, but if they found a nut it would find its way through the puke funnel. Journalists hated those pesky liberal bloggers and felt free to ignore them.
But they like twitter. And it is hard to ignore. It's apparently taken Bill Keller this long to realize that sometimes people on the internet are mean (though he deserves it. I was a bit mean to him myself). In other words, he hasn't heard a damn thing we've been saying. If twitter was around 10 years ago he just might have.
