Apparently there were false statements made in the build-up to the Iraq War. Who’da thunk it?
WASHINGTON – A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. […]
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida,” according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. “In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.”
The study concludes that the administration deliberately orchestrated a propaganda campaign that “effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
There’s no doubt that public opinion was “galvanized”, and yup! We did indeed go off to war under false pretenses. No “new” news there, folks. But all these years later, I’m still not sure who led the orchestra and who played.
What I do know is that lots of folks listened… and the MSM had front row seats.
Meanwhile, it’s 2008, and although I find all of this to be somewhat irrelevant when it comes to current policy, it’s worth noting that Symphony 9/11 is still playing behind all our foreign policy discussions. It’s been incorporated into a wider song; a new National Anthem, even.
It’s called the Politics of Fear.
* * * * *
There’s a fair amount of reaction to this in the blogosphere (via memeorandum).
At the Glittering Eye (h/t to James Joyner), Dave Schuler expands on the culpability of the MSM:
One more point: the report takes journalists to task for failing to examine the statements made by various members of the Bush Administration more critically. In my view that’s one of the enormous weaknesses of the wholesale distribution model of newsgathering, particularly national and international newsgathering, that’s in use today. A failure in the centralized newsgathering mechanisms is proliferated through the entire system with incredible facility.
A defensive Captain Ed tries to throw up a smoke-screen:
However, the Center for Public Integrity hardly qualifies as “independent”. It gets much of its funding from George Soros, who has thrown millions of dollars behind Democratic political candidates, and explicitly campaigned to defeat George Bush in 2004
And via TMV, Robert Stein strains to draw a line between the current state of affairs in Iraq and the initial spin:
Now that 935 lies to get us into Iraq have been documented, collated and counted, how many more is it taking to keep us there?
This has been so thoroughly documents – in articles, in books (Frank Rich and the Stauber book come to mind), all over the place – that the most shocking thing here is that in 2008, it’s news. And yet, any suggestion of this marks one as suffering from “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Polimom,
There is a huge difference between issuing “false” statements based on the best intel available and purposely deceiving the public through deliberate acts of bad faith. Which was it? If you issued statements in good faith that were not, ultimately, validated by newly revealed facts, have you lied? Is false always synonymous with mendacious? How about something less pejorative, like, mistaken?
I had access to some of the intel. Based on the number of U.S. forces organized and deployed in support of this task (to seek out WMD storage sites), someone at the National Command Authority level believed that Iraq still had a WMD program.
You have to prove that, prior to mid 2002, senior people in this nation’s national security apparatus knew conclusively that Iraq was clean of WMD, to include WMD components and manufacturing capability ( btw, we’ve found significant evidence of the latter two).
Funny, I’ve yet to see the “no WMD” canard argued on practical, military efficiency grounds. If we deployed hundreds, if not thousands, of scare troops (to include a large percentage of of our special ops forces) in a sham search for knowingly non-existent WMD, did this not undermine our ability to secure vital Iraqi government sites and documents and to more expeditiously conduct the search for Saddam, sons, and the “Deck of Cards?” I don’t know about you, but if I were a general officer in charge of these ops, I’d be highly pissed to have been sent on a wild-goose chase and to have wasted the capability of my troops. Curiously, for all of the criticism that’s been leveled at the planning and execution of OIF by retired general officers, not one has alluded to a deliberatively false rationale for war.
Remember, but when these retired Generals were arguing against Rummy and stating that the war was, in essense, lost, they were the heroes of the anti-war crowd. Unquestionable integrity, extremely honorable and deeply patriotic men, to hear the BDSers say. I believe all of this talk of exemplary behavior to be true. That’s why I know that they would not have been party to a war based on deliberately false justifications.
BTW, didn’t Soros fund the thoroughly debunked Lancet study of civilian deaths in Iraq?
Hi belloscm,
As I said in the post (and supported with a link to a prior) — I don’t know who was duped and who was the “duper”. However, I firmly believe that the information at hand included plenty of reasonable questions, not only about the WMD’s, but also about the al-Qaeda “connection”. I haven’t any way to know whether Bush was deceived (along with most of the government), or whether he was part of a propaganda campaign.
It could be both or neither. But I do believe that there were questions about the intel that were not aired that should have been, and that we (as in “the public”) were presented only with information that supported a desired political outcome.
You stated that “We … as in ‘the public’ … were presented only with information that supported a desired political outcome.”
You are a good debater. As such, you know that one could debate ANY side to an argument & convincingly win.
Would you have preferred that the American public see/hear/read/view EVERY SINGLE piece of information before the decision was made whether or not to go into Iraq? I’m guessing the answer would be “No”.
Who, then, bears that final burden of responsibility? There’s only one person, and he has taken that burden & borne it in a responsible fashion, in my opinion. Whether he is/was right/wrong is — really — beside the point. “What IS the point?” you might well ask.
“Better there than here,” is my answer. It’s not a good one, but it’s the best I can offer.
Polimom,
I read the links. Thanks. False/ inaccurate / wrong are being willfully conflated with lying. Changing many to most and, good to great, is the substance of most of these charges. Exaggerate and embelish just don’t have the same viceral effect, so let’s call it “lying.” Pretty thin soup, IMO.
The available intel was vetted and aired through many of our elected representatives. Members of the House and Senate Select Committees On Intelligence had access to most of the processed and evaluated intel, their comtemporary and, transparently political, claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Did anyone with this level of access throw the B.S. flag? Not in real-time, they didn’t. Wanna bet that what Hillary read and heard in ’02-’03 aligned with what she heard in ’98-’00? Does she get asked about her own personal failure to air questions about pre-war intel?
How about the media? They have done a pretty good job of accessing sources that have revealed inside info on the nefarious plans of the Bush Admin. Where were the “whistleblowers” with regard to fraudulent pre-war WMD intel? Kind of like the dog that didn’t bark, don’t you think?
The Al Qaeda connection was there, although Saddam appeared to exercise no “operational” control and had no provable connection to 9/11. The evidence of meetings between members of Al Qaeda and members of the Iraqi Govt is there, as well. Did they effectively conspire against us? There is no credible evidence to suggest that they did. I do, however, think that it is fair to remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There is no conclusive evidence that they did not engage in collusive acts.
The forced conflation between no operational coordination / control and the conclusion of no connection still mystifies me. People aren’t that lacking in cognition, are they? Intellectual dishonest?, no way!
“The Al Qaeda connection was there, although Saddam appeared to exercise no “operational” control and had no provable connection to 9/11. The evidence of meetings between members of Al Qaeda and members of the Iraqi Govt is there, as well. ”
Now let’s review the actual facts.
1. In the initial stages of the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency, under George Tenet, was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with President Bush that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, V.P. Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the CIA and Tenet. The questionable intelligence acquired by this secret program was “stovepiped” to the vice president and presented to the public. In some cases, Cheney’s office would leak the intelligence to reporters, where it would be reported by outlets such as The New York Times. Cheney would subsequently appear on the Sunday political television talk shows to discuss the intelligence, referencing The New York Times as the source to give it credence.[12]
“It is now known that the main source for the CIA’s claim that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases included the now recanted claims of captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The CIA has since recalled and reissued all its intelligence reporting about al-Libi’s recanted claims.[16] Likewise, the DIA communicated to President Bush in February 2002 its stance that al-Libi “was intentionally misleading his debriefers.””
In addition, Bush received on 21 September 2001 a classified Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), indicating the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attacks and that “there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.”[
Bottom line is prior to the office of the Vice President setting up his own intel shop, US intelligence was fairly united in the view that the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection was total BS.
Get over it, it’s now 2008 and offering up the same old tired and debunked lines from 2002 just make you look silly.
belloscm,
I’m not going to re-battle the same arguments. They’ve been thrashed and hashed mightily, many times. And you’re preaching to the choir about the MSM here. BUT — to defend the initiation of a war because “there is no conclusive evidence that they did not engage in collusive acts” is bizarre logic to me. We aren’t talking about whether we should have ratified a trade treaty, for goodness’ sake!
Goldenrod’s comment included this:
I presume the reference there is to George Bush, and whether one is uncertain (as I am) about whether he had full knowledge of the intel or not, that certainly hits right at the heart of why many folks are raging-mad at him.
Davebo — hey! Nice to see you here again, it’s been awhile! You said:
Now we’re much closer to where I suspect the root of this problem to lie…
Great to see you posting as well! I picked you up from the editorial page at chron.com
No, I can’t prove conclusively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Vice President or President intentionally manipulated intelligence to lead us to war.
Nor can I prove that the theory of evolution is correct.
But over the past 5 years a staggering amount of evidence has supported the idea that one or both of them did.
Add to that the also staggering amount of evidence that has been “lost” such as roughly 5 million email messages, and I’d be happy to wager that they did.
Forgot to say something in a prior comment to belloscm… The link I was referencing was this one, and it was unfortunately buried in the post text. Sorry I wasn’t more clear.
The links I often provide at the bottom of my posts are there to provide a range of alternative opinion and/or more information. Sometimes those links will be to supportive views, and sometimes they’re to opposing. In political discourse, especially, I think the wider the input the better.
Also — I almost never link someone that I think is totally off their rocker. Generally speaking, the sites linked are rational (or at least calm) in their presentation, even when I don’t agree.
I’d just add that the comment section on Capt. Ed’s post is right out of bizzaro land. They don’t even really dispute the list of “misconceptions”. Instead they just rail on about Soros.
Davebo,
Please read what I actually said.
I still stand by what I originally asserted: “The Al Qaeda connection was there, although Saddam appeared to exercise no “operational” control and had no provable connection to 9/11. The evidence of meetings between members of Al Qaeda and members of the Iraqi Govt is there, as well. ” Despite my inaccurate language, please take note that I do not assert the connections to be within the context of 9/11. I believe that the Report of the 9/11 Commission said something similar. The report said:
“… that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, but no cooperation” (WaPo, 16 June 2004).
Can there be contact without a connection? Let’s just say that any such “contact” probably qualifies as a “connection” due to the operational security and logistical complexities inherent to such a meeting. This was a big deal and not a chance encounter at Starbucks. Lots of due diligence would be exercised prior to a meeting between AQ and an agent of the Mukhabarat.
“It is now known that the main source for the CIA’s claim that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases included the now recanted claims of captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The CIA has since recalled and reissued all its intelligence reporting about al-Libi’s recanted claims.[16] Likewise, the DIA communicated to President Bush in February 2002 its stance that al-Libi “was intentionally misleading his debriefers.”
It appears that you are aggressively presenting evidence in an attempt to discredit a claim that I never made.
“In addition, Bush received on 21 September 2001 a classified Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), indicating the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attacks and that “there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.”
Once again, you’re pushing against an open door here, buddy; I never stated otherwise. What else have you read into what I have said?
‘Bottom line is prior to the office of the Vice President setting up his own intel shop, US intelligence was fairly united in the view that the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection was total BS.”
Not exactly. I think that the official, non-conjecture driven, opinion of the Intelligence Community was that too much, if not most, of the intel on Al Qaeda /Iraq was believed to be of a non-determinative nature. This was mostly due to the lack of real time humint assets and the corroboration that such assets would provide. But there had been contact . Only the level of coordination, if any, is in dispute.
Polimom you said:
BUT — to defend the initiation of a war because “there is no conclusive evidence that they did not engage in collusive acts” is bizarre logic to me.”
My comments were offered in response to:
“As I said in the post (and supported with a link to a prior) — I don’t know who was duped and who was the “duper”… However, I firmly believe that the information at hand included plenty of reasonable questions, not only about the WMD’s, but also about the al-Qaeda “connection”.
I responded to your post and the linked article. I did so, primarily because I am always on point to respond to any mention of the two following Iraqi War myths: No AQ/Iraq relationship and Gen Shinseki was fired for telling the truth. I didn’t “…defend the initiation of a war” because “there is no conclusive evidence that they did not engage in collusive acts.” In the same paragraph from which you quote, I had previously written: “Did they (AQ/Iraq) effectively conspire against us? There is no credible evidence to suggest that they did.” This was my main point, don’t you agree? Context, please.
Sigh…
I really really really don’t want to go over all this again. It’s been battled for years, and it’s tiring.
The problem then, belloscm, was that the public, the MSM, our leadership… everybody went along for the ride. I’m not interested at the moment in whether the bus driver lied to get us there or not. The end result is that we were proven to be a gullible bunch. And all these years later, we still dance on the end of the string. Politicians know this, and they use it against us.
Polimom,
Fair enough and agreed: this field has been plowed over many times. I do have more to say about this, but don’t want to wear out my welcome.
Here are two links to news articles regarding chemical weapons found in Iraq. Chemical weapons are classified as WMDs (along with nuclear and biological weapons). These independent journalists are either ignorant of the reports, or choose not to believe them.
.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300530.html
“I’m not interested at the moment in whether the bus driver lied to get us there or not. The end result is that we were proven to be a gullible bunch. And all these years later, we still dance on the end of the string. Politicians know this, and they use it against us. ”
And are you really sure you want the opposite of this?
In fact, let’s get away from this debate and ask one basic question about going to Iraq: If George W Bush had backtracked on his own rhetoric, opted not to go to Iraq, and said Hans Blix and crew were doing the job right, would George W Bush even be in office right now? Think of what his father (and lets not forget, SECDEF Dick Cheney) did around, oh, early March 1991 for the proper answer.
O.k., I’m going back in.
Brad, you wouldn’t be alluding to the fact that George H.W. Bush brought Gulf War I to an inconclusive end, would you?
Let’s see, in early March 1991, we and the Iraqis were parties to a ceasefire agreement, the terms of which left Saddam in power and committed the Iraqi government to numerous other conditions, none of which they ever honored.
Are you saying that the current President would have had electoral difficulties if he had signed up for another round of this game?